Best practices
Decide what goes in your library
Updated 6 Oct 2026
On this page
For agents
Load this page when: you decide what to add to the library, or what to refuse
- Add the user's own documents first, then their agent knowledge, then reference books.
- Never add code, secrets or generated files. Say why in one sentence.
- After you add a book, wait for
READY, runtrove items toc <id>and read two or three pages. - Never change, reprocess or delete a book the user did not ask you to touch.
Summary
The most valuable books are the ones only you have. Add your own documents first, then your agent knowledge, then reference books for your field. Leave out code, secrets and generated files.
Start with your own knowledge
Your agent may already know part of a famous book. It cannot know your product spec or your decision log. That knowledge exists nowhere else, so it is the most useful thing you can add.
Add things in this order:
- Your own documents: specs, decisions, playbooks, runbooks, brand guides, customer research and meeting notes.
- Your agent knowledge, turned into books.
- Reference books for your field.
Do not start with a large reference book and leave your own documents out. To get going, you can ask your agent:
Turn my skills into books and suggest marketplace books for my work.Leave out code, secrets and generated files
Your agent already sees your repository, so code in the library only repeats it. Secrets in a library can leak. Build output and lock files waste space.
Leave out .env files, keys, passwords, tokens, build output, lock files and dependencies. Leave out text that only repeats your README. If you are not sure about a file, do not add it "just in case".
Check a book after you add it
A bad title or an empty table of contents makes the librarian skip the book. Bad pages give wrong citations. So check each new book before you rely on it.
Ask your agent to check the book for you:
Wait until my new Trove book is ready. Show me its table of contents and two or three pages.If the title or description is weak, ask your agent to enrich the book. See Book enricher.
When you want to use the book, ask your agent to search your Trove library. For example: "Search my Trove library for our billing rules." Today this is the most reliable way to get the book read.
Be careful with books you did not choose to change
Books hold your work. A rebuild or a delete can lose edits. Only reprocess, edit or delete a book when you decide to. If your agent offers to tidy the library, ask which book it means and what will change.
Want your agent to follow these practices? Ask it: "Read How to Use Trove in my Trove library and follow it."
Direct CLI
Your agent runs these through the trove command. You can run them yourself in a terminal, but asking your agent is the recommended way: it picks the right flags, waits for processing and checks the result.
| Task | Command |
|---|---|
| Show the table of contents | trove items toc <id> |
| Read some pages | trove items read "<id>:<pages>" |
See the CLI reference.