Index of copyrighted books the founder owns as digital files, stored OUTSIDE the git-tracked vault to avoid committing copyrighted binaries. Each entry points to the local-only file path. Vault assessment notes for these books live in
06-reference/and usesource_fidelity: primary-sourcesince the underlying text was read directly.
Why this index exists
- The vault
~/rdco-vault/is a git-tracked repo. Copyrighted books should never land in the working tree (clone leakage, backup risk, distribution risk). - Founder still wants Ray to read primary sources when available, so a separate, local-only library is required.
- This index gives Ray a way to know what owned books exist without inspecting the filesystem on every read.
Storage convention
- Path:
~/Documents/library/books/ - Filename:
<author-lastname>-<year>-<title-slug>.<ext> - Format: PDF preferred. EPUB acceptable. No DRMed formats.
- Provenance: every file should have founder-owned receipt or in-product purchase trail. Library Genesis / Z-Library / scraped PDFs are NOT acceptable for this directory.
Owned books
| Author | Year | Title | Format | Local path | Vault assessment note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beck, Kent | 2002 | Test-Driven Development: By Example | ~/Documents/library/books/beck-2002-test-driven-development-by-example.pdf |
[[../06-reference/2026-05-05-beck-tdd-by-example]] |
How Ray uses this index
When the founder asks Ray to read or assess a book:
- Check this index first. If owned, read the local PDF directly and use
source_fidelity: primary-sourcein the assessment note frontmatter. - If not owned, build the assessment from public sources (Wikipedia, author talks, blog posts, secondary summaries) and use
source_fidelity: reconstructed-from-webin the frontmatter. - Per copyright discipline (CLAUDE.md mandatory_copyright_requirements + the no-derivative-summaries rule): no >15-word direct quotes, no chapter-by-chapter reproduction, no displacive long-form summaries. The assessment note should be SHORTER and DENSER than the source, not a substitute for it.
- When upgrading a note from
reconstructed-from-webtoprimary-source, preserve the public-source citations (they show due diligence) but rewrite the body to reflect direct primary-source reading.
Connection to the bookstore-for-agents concept
This index is a 1-person prototype of the bookstore-for-agents wedge - the founder owns a PDF, Ray ingests it, and the vault gets a primary-source assessment. At scale, this is exactly what an agent-native bookstore primitive looks like (founder-owned credentials → publisher API → agent reads → vault note). See [[../01-projects/bookstore-for-agents/2026-05-05-concept-seed]].
Maintenance
- Add a row when a new book lands in
~/Documents/library/books/. - Remove a row only if the file is deleted (and update the vault assessment note's
source_fidelityif downgrading). - Don't add scrape-only or pirated content; this index is for owned-license content only.