In-bounds bibliography and integrity

Course Readings is a local integrity desk. An instructor locks assigned readings; a student writes every sentence, inserts citations only from that locked corpus, and reviews an evidence map before export. The public static tool deliberately omits grounded prose generation.

Last updated 19 August 2026

1. What “in-bounds” means

A course essay should engage the readings on the syllabus — not whatever a search engine returns. In-bounds means the citation pool is fixed: title, author, year, and a short excerpt the instructor enters and then locks. Until the corpus is locked, citation insert is disabled. After lock, students can insert APA-like (Author, Year) labels drawn only from that list.

The lock is a teaching boundary, not DRM. It makes the allowed sources explicit so evidence maps and exports reflect the assignment, not an open web.

2. Why generation was stripped from the public tool

A fuller course-aware assistant — the 2025 design — paired retrieval over uploaded PDFs with grounded paragraph generation: an orchestrator retrieved passage windows, an LLM drafted prose with inline citations, and a verifier blocked export until each paragraph had supporting evidence. That stack needs OCR pipelines, vector indexes, auth, and EU-hosted inference. It is not something a static HTML file can ship honestly.

The public Course Readings page keeps the parts that survive without a backend:

• Corpus upload as instructor-entered metadata and excerpts (not PDF OCR).
• Corpus lock / unlock with confirmation.
• Student-authored thesis and draft — no auto-write.
• Citation insert from locked readings only.
• Evidence map: per-paragraph citation coverage and quote vs paraphrase labels.
• Markdown export with bibliography and draft.

What was removed: hybrid retrieval, reranking, LLM drafting, regenerate-within-bounds, Pangram-style scoring, humanizers, and any feature that writes sentences for the student. Those belong in a hosted product with audit logs and institutional controls — not in a free browser tool that must run offline-capable and zero-trust.

3. Evidence map rules

Paragraphs are split on blank lines. Each non-empty paragraph receives one label:

The twelve-character rule is a coarse heuristic for teaching review, not plagiarism detection. Long common substrings and short word runs inside excerpts are also checked so obvious paste-quotes surface before export.

4. Pair with Draft Coach for joins

Course Readings enforces which sources you may cite. Draft Coach helps you keep thesis and synthesis yours: lock sourced quotes and facts, then write the connective joins yourself. Heuristic flags mark ledger-closing wrap-ups — not a Pangram score and not a humanizer.

Course Readings  →  in-bounds citations + evidence map
Draft Coach      →  thesis, joins, and keeper/suspect labels on your prose

Typical flow: lock the syllabus corpus here, draft with locked citations, then paste into Draft Coach if you need help separating keepers from joins you should rewrite.

5. What this tool is not

• Not an LLM or RAG endpoint — nothing is sent for generation.
• Not a citation manager import — no bulk bibliography sync.
• Not a Pangram detector or humanizer.
• Not a grader — instructors still read the argument.
• Not PDF OCR — excerpts are typed or pasted by the instructor.

6. Privacy

Everything runs in the browser. Optional “Save on this device” uses localStorage under the key kt-course-readings. Clear saved data anytime. Export produces a local .md file; no upload.

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