diff --git a/_cite/requirements.txt b/_cite/requirements.txt
index 44de590bd0..9808e76307 100644
--- a/_cite/requirements.txt
+++ b/_cite/requirements.txt
@@ -2,5 +2,6 @@ manubot~=0.6
 PyYAML~=6.0
 diskcache~=5.6
 rich~=13.6
-python-dotenv~=1.0
+python-dotenv~=0.21
 google-search-results~=2.4
+