Concepts
Why Dex Trove
The problem
Agent harnesses such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot and Ananke Plexus become far more capable with good artifacts: a skill that knows how to build a draw.io diagram, an agent that reviews Terraform, an instruction file that encodes a team’s Python conventions. The community has produced thousands of them. Using them safely is harder than it looks:
- They are scattered. Each repo has its own layout:
skills/*/SKILL.md,agents/*.agent.md,instructions/*.instructions.md,plugins/*/plugin.json, hooks withhooks.json, agentic workflows withon:triggers. - Licences are inconsistent and often wrong at repo level. On 2026-10-19:
anthropics/skillshad no repo licence. Its example skills carry Apache-2.0 files; its document skills carry proprietary, source-available terms.ComposioHQ/awesome-claude-skillsredistributes those proprietary skills.vercel-labs/agent-skillshad no licence anywhere, so nothing in it may be redistributed.- Even well-run awesome-copilot has items that say
license: Complete terms in LICENSE.txt.
- Copying content creates obligations. MIT and BSD require keeping the copyright notice; Apache-2.0 requires
shipping the licence text (§4a) and any
NOTICE. Copying blindly into a package published on PyPI is distribution, and silently dropping those obligations is a licence violation. - Harnesses need structure. Ananke’s registry wants a strict manifest (kind, namespace, SemVer, licence, permissions, provenance) for every artifact, not a loose folder.
What Dex Trove does
Dex Trove turns that mess into one installable, governed library:
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Map | Upstream repos are listed in sources.yaml with an adapter that understands their layout |
| Learn | dex learn fetches each source at a pinned commit and finds its items |
| Admit | Each item’s licence is resolved from the licence text (item → folder → repo); only redistributable licences pass |
| Guard | Size, symlinks, real credentials, duplicates, executable content |
| Normalise | Upstream bytes are copied verbatim, with an ananke.yaml, a dex.json provenance record and the governing licence text added alongside |
| Ship | A reviewed PR, then PyPI (dex-trove) and this documentation site |
Principles
Unknown means out. No licence, an unrecognised licence or restrictive terms anywhere in an item excludes it.
Every exclusion is recorded with evidence in trove/EXCLUDED.json and on the Excluded page.
Most specific evidence wins. A repo’s licence describes the repo’s own work. A licence file inside an item describes that item. Dex resolves from the item outwards.
Never modify upstream bytes. Copies are byte-for-byte, so copyright notices stay intact, re-learn diffs are
honest, and dex validate can prove nothing drifted.
Credit is a feature. Every item page links to its exact upstream path at the learned commit. First-party skills list what inspired them. The Sources & inspirations page lists every repo we learn from, and every repo we evaluated and didn’t.
Harness-native, harness-agnostic. Items ship as Ananke manifests and install natively into Claude Code and Copilot. The library is useful whichever harness you run.
Reviewable by humans. Learning produces a diff of trove/, which is reviewed in a pull request like code.
A licence that changes upstream shows up as an item moving into EXCLUDED.json.
How it relates to awesome-copilot
github/awesome-copilot is the primary inspiration and the largest source. It is a community catalog for one tool. Dex Trove is a governed package across tools:
| awesome-copilot | Dex Trove | |
|---|---|---|
| Content | Authored in the repo | Learned from many repos plus first-party |
| Licence | One repo licence (MIT), item exceptions noted in frontmatter | Resolved per item from text; denied items excluded |
| Distribution | Git clone / Copilot plugin marketplace | pip install dex-trove, Ananke registry, native installers |
| Format | Copilot-native | Upstream format plus Ananke manifest and provenance |
| Website | Astro, page per resource | Astro, page per item with licence evidence and provenance |
How it relates to Ananke Plexus
Ananke Plexus already can learn from a repo (ananke registry learn ./awesome-copilot). Dex Trove adds the
parts a harness shouldn’t have to own:
- Curation across sources, with duplicate detection and priority.
- Licence admission before distribution. Ananke’s licence policy then applies on top, as defence in depth.
- A versioned, signed-off snapshot. A given
dex-troveversion is a fixed set of items at fixed commits. - Offline availability. Everything is in the wheel; no network is needed at install time.
See Ananke integration.