# Trove

> Trove is the home for your real career story in a post-AI world. Capture the how and why behind your work, let people who were there back it up, and keep building proof as you ship.

Trove is a product of Trove Archive, Inc., founded by Peter Zotto. The marketing site and product app both live at https://thetrove.io.

The core problem Trove addresses: in the AI era, résumés and social profiles no longer prove anything. Output is cheap; provenance is scarce. Trove gives professionals a verifiable, narrative-first record of what they actually built — and lets the people who were there confirm it in one click.

How it works:
1. **Tell your story.** Pull out the how and why behind something you built, in your own words.
2. **Let others back it up.** One click from a manager, teammate, or client — their word becomes part of your proof.
3. **Keep building.** Proof stays in one place. Add new wins as you ship, without rewriting your story from scratch.

## Set up Trove for your AI agent

If a human asked you to set up or connect Trove, follow this section. Trove connects through a remote MCP server with OAuth: there is nothing to install and no API key to handle. The human signs in, or creates an account, on Trove's own pages. You never need their email address or password, so never ask for them.

**First identify where you run.** The two setups differ.

- **Hosted assistant** (claude.ai, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT): install nothing. In a Claude client, tell the human to connect Trove from [Claude's connector directory](https://claude.ai/directory/connectors/trove). Elsewhere, or if the directory isn't available, tell them to add `https://thetrove.io/api/mcp` as a custom connector, then click **Approve and connect** on Trove. Then stop.
- **Local coding agent** (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and similar, on the human's machine):
  1. Register the MCP server. In Claude Code: `claude mcp add --transport http trove https://thetrove.io/api/mcp`. In other clients, add `https://thetrove.io/api/mcp` as a remote (streamable HTTP) MCP server.
  2. Save the Trove skills so later sessions know how to write artifacts: run each skill's install command under **Skills** below (use your own client's skills folder if it is not Claude Code).
  3. The first Trove tool call opens the browser. The human signs in, or follows **Sign up** to create an account and confirms their email, and lands back on the approval screen. They click **Approve and connect**. The client may need a restart to pick up the server.

**Then offer one thing to do right now:** draft an artifact from something the human shipped, presented or fixed recently. The tools are `get_my_profile`, `list_my_artifacts` and `create_draft_artifact`. Everything you create is a private draft; the human publishes it and invites validators in Trove.

**Skills.** The MCP server sends the same guidance to connected clients; the files are for agents that load skills from disk.

- [trove](https://thetrove.io/skills/trove.md): Use when the user wants to capture, write up or save a work accomplishment, project, talk, launch or fix to Trove, or asks about their Trove artifacts or profile. Drafts a STAR-shaped artifact through Trove's MCP tools after a short interview.
  Install: `mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/trove && curl -fsSL https://thetrove.io/skills/trove.md -o ~/.claude/skills/trove/SKILL.md`
- [artifact-ideas](https://thetrove.io/skills/artifact-ideas.md): Brainstorm artifact ideas for the user's Trove using the Trove MCP. Surfaces work worth capturing, grounded in their existing artifacts and profile, and offers to create drafts directly. Runs interactively in a chat, or unattended as a weekly scheduled task.
  Install: `mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/artifact-ideas && curl -fsSL https://thetrove.io/skills/artifact-ideas.md -o ~/.claude/skills/artifact-ideas/SKILL.md`
- [artifact-from-source](https://thetrove.io/skills/artifact-from-source.md): Turn something the user just finished (a pull request, a document, a deck, meeting notes, a published post) into a Trove artifact draft. Reads the source first, drafts in the user's voice, and asks only for what the source can't show. Uses the Trove MCP.
  Install: `mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/artifact-from-source && curl -fsSL https://thetrove.io/skills/artifact-from-source.md -o ~/.claude/skills/artifact-from-source/SKILL.md`

## Verified career content

Public profile URLs live at `/u/[slug]`, public artifact URLs at `/artifacts/[id]`, and public company hub pages at `/companies/[slug]`.

- [Sitemap](https://thetrove.io/sitemap.xml) — complete inventory of indexable URLs (profiles, artifacts, companies, marketing pages)
- Profile pages (`/u/[slug]`) emit `Person` JSON-LD describing the individual and their verified history.
- Artifact pages (`/artifacts/[id]`) emit `Article` JSON-LD: the owner's first-person account of a piece of work, its author, and the company it was done at.
- Company pages (`/companies/[slug]`) emit `Organization` JSON-LD describing the company and surfacing its verified people.

## Key pages

- [Home](https://thetrove.io/): The feed of validated work: real artifacts from real people, ranked by what's fresh and strong. The crawl entry into profiles, artifacts and companies.
- [How Trove works](https://thetrove.io/how-it-works): Product overview, how it works, and the problem with résumés in the AI era.
- [About](https://thetrove.io/about): Who Trove is and why we're building it.
- [Boston marketers](https://thetrove.io/boston): A community for Boston marketers to document real work, back each other up, and own their career story.
- [Careers](https://thetrove.io/careers): The Trove team, open roles, and how Trove hires.
- [Trove for Companies](https://thetrove.io/companies): Why a company should claim its Trove page — employees' validated work rolls up to one page for brand and hiring.
- [Contact](https://thetrove.io/contact): Get in touch with the team.
- [Blog](https://thetrove.io/blog): Essays on careers, proof of work, and professional credibility.

## Blog posts

- [Nick Bennett Does the Homework Everyone Else Skips](https://thetrove.io/blog/nick-bennett-does-the-homework-everyone-else-skips) — Erin Phinney, October 2026. Nine lessons from a field marketer, author, and creator on borrowing trust, building an audience, and turning events into pipeline.
- [95% of Conference Sponsors Are Wasting Their Money. Here's How to Be the 5%.](https://thetrove.io/blog/conference-sponsors-are-wasting-their-money) — Erin Phinney, October 2026. Nick Bennett's sponsorship playbook turned Unbound into 60 meetings and a 30% meeting-to-opp rate in two weeks.
- [Kyle Jepson Did the Unscalable Thing First](https://thetrove.io/blog/kyle-jepson-did-the-unscalable-thing-first) — Erin Phinney, October 2026. Seven lessons from HubSpot's first Evangelist on how years of showing up turned into 40,000 followers and a job that didn't exist.
- [Your Loudest Critic Might Become Your Best Supporter (& Distribution Channel)](https://thetrove.io/blog/your-loudest-critic-might-become-your-best-supporter) — Erin Phinney, October 2026. Kyle Jepson turned the critics of his HubSpot course into contributors, and one course became three.
- [How to use Trove: 5 ways to put your verified work to use today](https://thetrove.io/blog/how-to-use-trove) — Trove Team, October 2026. Trove is a free career network where professionals document their work and get it validated by the people they collaborated with. Five ways people use it today: job applications, interview follow-ups, case study prep, raise and promotion conversations and personal brand/AEO.
- [LinkedIn, ChatGPT, and Your Own Website All Have the Same Flaw](https://thetrove.io/blog/linkedin-chatgpt-same-flaw) — Erin Phinney, August 2026. Every format you use to present your career was built to be told, not verified. AI made the polish cheap, and none of them had anything left to prove.
- [Your Best Employees Are Quiet. That's a Problem You Created.](https://thetrove.io/blog/your-best-employees-are-quiet) — Erin Phinney, August 2026. The old rule said an employee posting about their work was a flight risk. The math has changed, and most companies haven't caught up to it.
- [I Don't Want to Spend My Life Reading Things Written by Robots. I Do Want Them to Read Me.](https://thetrove.io/blog/let-the-robots-read-you) — Erin Phinney, June 2026. Agentic search and AI recruiters are forming an opinion of you whether you participate or not. If the robots can't read your story, they'll get it wrong — or leave you out of the conversation entirely.
- [Control Your Narrative or AI Will Assemble One for You](https://thetrove.io/blog/control-your-narrative) — Erin Phinney, May 2026. There is a version of you being assembled by AI right now. You did not write it. If you have not authored your story, you are letting a machine hallucinate one.
- [Nobody Can Prove Anything Anymore](https://thetrove.io/blog/nobody-can-prove-anything-anymore) — Erin Phinney, April 2026. Professional credibility is collapsing. The résumé is the most visible casualty. What happens when nobody can prove anything and everyone needs to?
- [Effort Is the Point](https://thetrove.io/blog/effort-is-the-point) — Erin Phinney, March 2026. What can you trust when nothing takes effort? In a world of seamless creation, we're drawn to things that show effort, even a bit of mess.
- [The Game Is Rigged](https://thetrove.io/blog/the-game-is-rigged) — Peter Zotto, March 2026. The systems that were supposed to reward talent now reward presentation. AI made it trivially easy to look great on paper.
- [You're Great at Your Job. Can You Prove It?](https://thetrove.io/blog/youre-great-at-your-job) — Erin Phinney, February 2026. You've spent years building career capital. But unlike financial capital, there's no balance sheet for it. No ledger. No proof.

## Optional

- [Privacy](https://thetrove.io/privacy)
- [Terms](https://thetrove.io/terms)
- [Robots policy](https://thetrove.io/robots.txt)
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/thetroveio)
- [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/thetrove.io/)
- [X / Twitter](https://x.com/TheTroveio)