The avian diversity of the mountainous regions of New Guinea is amongst the most poorly known in the world; the Bird's Neck, which connects the Bird's Head Peninsula to the rest of New Guinea, is especially understudied due to its treacherous karst terrain, steep slopes, and complete lack of surface freshwater at high elevations.

[4] The satin berrypecker was first seen for certain in 2013, with specimens first being collected during a November 2014 expedition to the Kumawa Mountains organized by the Bogor Zoology Museum and Research Institute for Development.

[4] The species was described in 2021 as Melanocharis citreola by the Spanish ornithologist Borja Milá and her colleagues on the basis of an adult male specimen collected from the Kumawa Mountains in 2014.

[4] The name of the genus, Melanocharis, is derived from the Ancient Greek words melas and kharis, meaning 'black beauty'.

The specific epithet citreola is from the Modern Latin citreolus, meaning 'lemon-colored', and refers to lemon-yellow wash on the white underparts of males.

[5] 'Satin berrypecker' is the official English common name designated by the International Ornithologists' Union (IOU).

Immature males share the yellow-tinted white underparts of adults, but have iridescent olive-green upperparts with interspersed blue-black feathers.

The central tail feathers are tinted olive, while the four outer rectrices have distal white or light grey spots.

[2][4] The satin berrypecker is the only bird known to be endemic to the Bird's Neck Isthmus in Western New Guinea, where it inhabits two disjunct mountain ranges (the Fakfak and Kumawa Mountains) separated by 80 km of lowland rainforest habitat unsuitable for the species.

In the Kumawa Mountains, it inhabits mid-montane cloud forest with a canopy height of 10–30 m (30–100 ft) and an abundance of terrestrial and epiphytic ferns, mosses, and lichens.

The species's diet is unknown, but it is known to join mixed-species foraging flocks and has been observed 2 to 9 m (7 to 30 ft) above the ground.

[4] Species that the satin berrypecker is known to flock with include several types of flycatchers and warblers, the hooded pitohui, the black-billed sicklebill, and the magnificent bird-of-paradise.