Thanks! That's helpful to hear. Honestly just did numbers because the LLM has no trouble remembering which is which, and it's easier to programmatically parse out the citations to build hyperlinks (compared to names/years, where little variations creep in).
It could be a rendering thing rather than llm output. Output a number, pull the name/year when creating the page.
Arbitrary numbers are really the least information. At least use last names and years, so I can have some idea which paper you are talking about without scrolling back and forth.