References and citations — keep every source with the sentence it supports
Wretify is a clean, minimalist writing app for nonfiction writers, built for focus — with an AI that has read everything you've written and refuses to write it for you.
The short answer
In Wretify a citation is not a list you keep somewhere else. It is a footnote inside the sentence it supports, and the reference list at the end of the chapter is built from those footnotes every time you look at it. Move the sentence and the source moves with it. Delete the sentence and the reference goes too. Nothing has to be kept in step by hand.
Why this page exists
I struggled with references, citations and sources for years, and that was the reason I never wrote a book. Every writing app I tried removed distractions. None of them removed that.
How do I find a real source for a claim?
Highlight the sentence and choose Check this fact. Wretify searches published research (OpenAlex, the free open catalogue of scholarly work) and tells you plainly what it found: supported, conflicting, complicated, or no direct source. When a source supports the claim, Add citation to this sentence puts the footnote in. Define a term works the same way: an explanation, and up to three real papers you can cite.
Can the AI invent a reference?
It is built so it cannot slip one in. Every citation comes from a real record retrieved from OpenAlex, and the reference is written from that record, not from the model’s memory. A quote the model returns is kept only if it appears word for word in the source. When nothing supports a claim, Wretify says so — no source is better than a made-up one.
What does a citation look like on the page?
Author and year in the sentence — (Lally et al., 2009) — and a References list under the chapter: alphabetical, one entry per source, in APA 7, with a link to the DOI.
Can I bring research in from the AI?
Yes, on the desktop. Ask the AI sidebar to research a question; it searches your own saved research first, then published papers. Sentences backed by a single real paper arrive as small cards you can drag into your chapter — and each one lands with its footnote already attached.
Does the bibliography survive export?
Yes. Export a chapter to Markdown, Word or PDF and it ends with its References. Export the whole book to Markdown or Word and it ends with a Bibliography, grouped by chapter. Your files are plain Markdown in your own Google Drive, so the sources are yours whether or not Wretify exists.
What Wretify does not do yet
When you highlight a passage in a book in the Reading Room, Wretify keeps the book’s title and chapter — but not yet the author, the page or the link, and sending a highlight to your writing pastes it as a quote without a footnote. Wretify also uses one citation style (APA 7) and does not import from Zotero or BibTeX.
Updated · Carlos Vettorazzi