Fix citation verifier to handle backtick-quoted paths

LLMs commonly format dot-paths with backticks (`steps.x.y` = 3.0).
The regex now strips optional backticks before matching.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Author: Andrey Golovanov

netlab/autoresearch/citation_verifier.py

@@ -111,9 +111,10 @@ def verify_claims(claims: list[Claim], data: dict) -> VerificationResult:
 
 # --- Claim extraction from structured LLM output ---
 
-# Pattern: "path = value" or "path: value" in LLM-structured output
+# Pattern: "path = value" or "path: value" in LLM-structured output.
+# Handles optional backtick quoting (e.g., `steps.msd.data.alpha_star` = 3.0).
 _CLAIM_PATTERN = re.compile(
-    r"(?P<path>[\w.]+(?:\.[\w.]+)+)\s*[=:]\s*(?P<value>-?[\d.]+)"
+    r"`?(?P<path>[\w.]+(?:\.[\w.]+)+)`?\s*[=:]\s*(?P<value>-?[\d.]+)"
 )
 
 

tests/autoresearch/test_citation_verifier.py

@@ -133,6 +133,13 @@ def test_colon_separator(self) -> None:
         claims = extract_claims_from_text(text)
         assert len(claims) == 1
 
+    def test_backtick_quoted_path(self) -> None:
+        text = "`steps.msd_baseline.data.alpha_star` = 3.0"
+        claims = extract_claims_from_text(text)
+        assert len(claims) == 1
+        assert claims[0].path == "steps.msd_baseline.data.alpha_star"
+        assert claims[0].claimed_value == 3.0
+
     def test_no_claims(self) -> None:
         text = "The results look good overall."
         claims = extract_claims_from_text(text)