When an answer is grounded in search results or documents, this links each claim back to where it came from. It's the same idea as an academic footnote, but instead of jumping to a bibliography, a hover card surfaces the source title and domain right there.
Numbers run in order of first appearance, and citing the same source again reuses its number. The card should carry at minimum a title and domain (or publisher), and ideally a short excerpt backing the sentence, so the user can judge trustworthiness without leaving the page.
Having a citation doesn't guarantee the claim is accurate — whether the source actually supports what's being said is a separate question, so the badge should signal "checkable," not be oversold as "verified."
When to use
Use it for answers grounded in web search or retrieved documents (RAG). Bolting citations onto an answer the model generated from general knowledge, with nothing actually retrieved, risks looking like it invented a source.