---
title: "Citations"
description: "Use when you want to check where an answer came from, read the Trove citation block, or turn the block off."
url: https://docs.heytrove.ai/concepts/citations
updated: 2026-10-06
---

# Citations

> Load this page when: you are verifying a cited claim, or you want to hide or show the citation block

## For agents

- Cite inline as (*Title*, pp. 10-12) and append the citation block unless the user hid it.
- Hiding the block keeps inline citations.
- On a Professional-only book read from the Personal plan, say the reader saw a preview and link to billing.

Every answer that uses your [books](https://docs.heytrove.ai/concepts/library-and-books.md) names the book and the pages. You can open those pages yourself and confirm the claim.

## Inline citations

[Readers](https://docs.heytrove.ai/subagents/item-reader.md) cite inside the sentence, as in (*Designing Data-Intensive Applications*, pp. 10-12). The pages are the ones the reader opened. To check one, open those pages in the book, or ask your agent: "Show me pages 10-12 of Designing Data-Intensive Applications."

## The citation block

After the answer, a boxed summary lists what happened. It has four fields: Read, Learned, How it helped, and Worth remembering.

```text
Trove
Read: Designing Data-Intensive Applications, pp. 10-12
Learned: Replication lag can make a reader see old data.
How it helped: Chose read-your-writes for the profile page.
Worth remembering: Test failover with a lagging replica.
```

## Turn the block off

Open Settings → Answers → Citation block and choose Show or Hide. Hide removes only the box. Inline citations stay, so you can still check every claim.

## Preview pages on Personal

Some books are Professional-only. When you are on the Personal plan, a reader sees a preview of the first pages and says so, for example "preview of N of M pages". Upgrade at [billing](https://heytrove.ai/billing) to read the rest. See [Plans and limits](https://docs.heytrove.ai/reference/plans-and-limits.md).

## When books disagree

If two books conflict or one is out of date, a good answer shows both with citations, recommends one and asks you to choose. See [Get answers you can trust](https://docs.heytrove.ai/best-practices/answers-you-can-trust.md).

## Common mistakes

- No citation block appears: check Settings → Answers → Citation block. If it says Hide, choose Show.
- A cited page looks wrong: ask your agent to show the table of contents of the book, and confirm that you have the right edition.

## 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.

- Read the cited pages: `trove items read "<id>:10-12"`
- Show the table of contents: `trove items toc <id>`

See the [CLI reference](https://docs.heytrove.ai/reference/cli.md).

## Related

- [Get answers you can trust](https://docs.heytrove.ai/best-practices/answers-you-can-trust.md) covers conflicting books and topics no book covers.
- [Research a topic](https://docs.heytrove.ai/usage/research-a-topic.md) shows how to read a cited answer.
- [Item reader](https://docs.heytrove.ai/subagents/item-reader.md) is the subagent that writes citations.
- [Library and books](https://docs.heytrove.ai/concepts/library-and-books.md) explains reading by page range.