Scholar Sidekick is built as deterministic citation infrastructure. These principles guide development and deployment.
Identical inputs produce identical outputs. CSL styles and locales are pinned to specific versions to prevent silent behavioral drift.
Public API behavior does not change without explicit versioning. Headers, error semantics, and export structures are treated as contract guarantees.
Marketplace integrations and MCP servers wrap the canonical HTTP API. No formatting or resolution logic is duplicated outside the core service.
Export formats conform to their published specifications. Outputs are validated through semantic tests rather than brittle snapshots.
Request identifiers, rate-limit headers, and health endpoints are consistently exposed to support operational transparency.
Requests are processed on demand. Raw citation inputs are not retained as application data after processing.