Individual skill
language-reference
Use when a task needs dictionary or encyclopedia lookups from a live source - "define this word", "pronunciation / phonetics / synonyms of X", "get the Wikipedia summary of Y", "search Wikipedia for Z", or pulling a topic's intro paragraph and thumbnail into an app. Free Dictionary API covers words; Wikipedia's REST API covers topics; both keyless. Do NOT use for country facts or geography - use geo-places instead; do NOT use for trivia questions or random facts - use fun-content instead; if the request is a vague "I need live data", route through public-data-api-picker.
skills/language-reference/SKILL.md
Source commit 97a13607d669157a4a16d5ba79b77f208319f7b9
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- Yes
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- Observed behavior
- Not checked yet
- Last checked
- Nov 6, 2026
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Repository context
- Repository stars (not skill ratings)
- 24
- Repository last updated
- Oct 13, 2026
- License
- MIT
Observed agent integration: No specific integration evidence. Standard SKILL.md installation does not imply verified compatibility.
- claude Repository topic
- claude-skills Repository topic
- skill-me Repository topic
- writing Derived category
- data Derived category
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# Language & Reference Data
Look up words and topics against live keyless sources. The mistake this prevents: paraphrasing a definition or article summary from training memory when the task calls for a *citable* source - and, on the Wikipedia side, scraping HTML or hitting the heavyweight action API when the REST summary endpoint returns exactly the intro + thumbnail an app needs.
## Ranked APIs
1. **Free Dictionary API** (api.dictionaryapi.dev) - DEFAULT for word lookups: definitions, part of speech, phonetics with audio, synonyms/antonyms. English is reliable; other language codes exist but coverage is thin. No key.
2. **Wikipedia REST API** (en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1 and /w/rest.php/v1) - topic summaries, search, full page content. No key, but Wikimedia etiquette is enforced: send a real `User-Agent` (app name + contact), serialize requests, never hammer in parallel.
## Procedure
1. **Word vs topic.** A dictionary question ("define", "how do you pronounce", "synonym") → Free Dictionary. A knowledge question ("what is", "who was", "summary of") → Wikipedia.
2. **Wikipedia is two steps when the title is uncertain**: search first, then summary - guessing at title spelling gets 404s. Titles in URLs use underscores (`Albert_Einstein`) and are case-sensitive after the first letter.
3. **Attribute.** Wikipedia content is CC BY-SA - quote with a link to the page (`content_urls.desktop.page` in the summary response). Dictionary audio files carry their own license field.