Exact citation lookup is a deterministic key check. Honesty note: simplified toy corpus; jurisdictions vary; the pinned first step states the as-of date; not legal advice; retrieval points to sources and does not answer the legal question.
highlighted = computed this step
Retrieval honesty note
Honesty note: simplified toy corpus; jurisdictions vary; as of June 24, 2026; not legal advice; retrieval points to sources and does not answer the legal question.
toy corpus as of June24,2026
Citation lookup is a key check
The stated process is exact lookup. The model compares the authored citation key to corpus citation fields and reports a lookup status.
lookup=exact key comparison
Example found and missing keys
One lookup asks for Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(a)(1). The variant lookup asks for Toy Citation 0.
lookup variants=2
The model returns status rows
The first key returns found and record id rule6. The variant key returns not_found.
found traces=1,missing traces=1
Diagram note
The diagram keeps lookup status separate from any legal reading. A found citation is a pointer to a record.
status labels=found or not found
Jurisdiction: US; as of 2026-06-24; not legal advice; Code encodes the stated-rule interpretation.
Summary
Exact citation lookup is deterministic: either the corpus key is present or the model records a miss.