I have found a few situations is confusing/breaking ConTeXt:
- Footnotes inside tables, figures, frames, margins (won't render the cited item).
- Custom index items inside those items (displays "entry not flushed").
My workaround has been to define a size 0 font \tfz, then put it in a block like this:
{\tfz%
\starteffect[hidden]%
\cite[author1912]
\stopeffect%
}%
The problem this seems to create, is sometimes if placed between two passages, it interprets a need to create two paragraph breaks:
\input knuth