User Guide

01Getting Started

TrovoPilot uses your Google account for sign-in. Tap Sign In on the landing page and you'll be redirected to Google's login screen. TrovoPilot requests only your name, email address, and profile photo — it never sees or stores your Google password.

After you authorize, a secure session is created on your device. Sessions last 7 days before requiring a fresh sign-in. Your session token is encrypted and stored in a browser cookie — no one else can read it.

On first login you'll see a brief onboarding flow that asks where you sell — eBay, Facebook Marketplace, local pickup, or other channels. This sets your default sell channels so TrovoPilot can tailor profit calculations and listing suggestions to your workflow. You can change these later in Settings.

After onboarding you'll land on the auction dashboard, which will be empty. From there you can add your first auction, scout its lots, or start a field scan. Most features are reachable from the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, with the rest under the More menu.

02Managing Auctions

The auction dashboard is your home base. It shows all your tracked auctions with filter tabs for Active, Closed, and All. Each auction card shows attention indicators — a red border when you've been outbid on any lot, and a yellow border when the auction is closing soon.

To add an auction, Paste a HiBid auction or catalog URLinto the import field on the dashboard — TrovoPilot fetches the auction details and its open lots automatically. For other platforms, or to add a single lot, import the lot directly (see Importing Lots) or add the auction manually.

Once an auction is added, tap it to see its detail page. Lots are grouped by status so you can see what you're winning, what you've been outbid on, and what's still open. Use the Refresh button to pull the latest bid data from the auction platform. You can also Clone an auction to quickly create a new entry with the same auction house details.

03Scouting Lots

Scouting lets AI analyze an entire auction catalog so you can focus your research on the lots most likely to be profitable. Instead of scrolling through hundreds of lots manually, scouting gives each lot a profit score, a category classification, and a tier ranking.

The most common way to scout is right inside an imported auction: open the auction, switch to Select mode, pick the untriaged lots you want, and Run Speed Scout. TrovoPilot analyzes them so you can promote the best lots for a full appraisal. A standalone Scout page is also available (open it directly or press 5), where you Enter an auction URL to scout an entire catalog at once and pick individual lots or use Select All. Either way you choose your AI provider — Gemini is faster and cheaper for batch triage, while Claude offers more nuanced analysis. Claude scouting is available on paid plans with your own Anthropic API key.

After analysis completes, results are sorted into three tiers: Recommended(high profit potential — research these first), Maybe (worth a second look if you have time), and Skip(low margin or poor fit for resale). Each lot also gets a category tag (electronics, tools, collectibles, etc.) and a profit score from 1 to 10. Mislabel badges flag lots where the AI detects a potential discrepancy between the auction description and the photos — for example, a listing described as “brand new” with photos showing visible wear.

From the results page, you can sort and filter by tier, category, or profit score, then add selected lots directly to your watchlist for bid tracking.

04AI Evaluation

Evaluation is a deeper, per-item AI appraisal. While scouting gives a quick triage across many lots, evaluation focuses on a single item with a detailed resale estimate, comparable sold listings, and a purchase recommendation.

You can Run an evaluationfrom any lot detail page or from field scan results — there is no standalone evaluation page. Full evaluations run on Gemini, which analyzes the item's photos and description. Each evaluation shows its estimated cost. Results include an estimated resale value range, a confidence level (high, medium, or low), and a purchase advice level ranging from strong buy down to pass.

Evaluations surface comparable sold listings from saved market evidence and TrovoPilot's local sold-price catalog, with eBay active listings as a fallback, giving you real market data alongside the AI's estimate. You can Verify or Rejectindividual evidence items if the AI's comparables aren't relevant. This feedback helps you keep a clean record of which comparisons were actually useful.

For bulk workflows, you can run Batch evaluations on multiple lots at once. Select watched, won, or picked-up lots that are ready for a full appraisal, and TrovoPilot evaluates them one by one with a progress indicator. You can abort a batch at any time — already-completed evaluations are kept.

05Bid Tracking and Snipe View

Once you've placed bids on an auction platform, TrovoPilot monitors them automatically. Bid data refreshes about every 5 minutes while the app is visible in your browser, and speeds up to about once a minute when a lot is closing soon. You can also pull the latest bid data on demand with the Recheck button. When you switch to another tab or lock your phone, polling pauses to save battery and resumes when you come back.

If someone outbids you, an outbid alertappears at the top of the auction page. Lot cards show your current bid position and how far you are from the leading bid. Closing countdowns display next to each lot — on the auction page a lot turns yellow within a day of closing and red within the hour; on the Snipe page the timer turns yellow under an hour and red under 15 minutes.

The Snipepage collects lots from all your active auctions and sorts them by close time. This is designed for the final minutes of bidding — you see everything that's closing soonest at the top, across all auctions, with a single shared countdown timer. You can also enable push notifications to get alerts for outbids and closing lots even when you're not in the app.

06Field Scanning

Field scanning is built for situations where you're physically looking at items — auction preview events, garage sales, estate sales, thrift stores, or anywhere you spot something worth researching. Open the Scan page and use your phone's camera to capture a photo of the item.

Add the source type (preview, garage sale, estate sale, thrift, or other), optional notes, and the scan captures your GPS location automatically. You can then Run an AI evaluation directly from the scan result to get a quick resale estimate on the spot.

If you don't have internet (common at auction preview sites and rural estate sales), scans are saved to an offline queueon your device. When connectivity returns, queued scans upload automatically in the background. You'll see a pending count badge on the navigation bar until everything has synced.

Your scan history is accessible with filter tabs for Needs Action, Bought, Needs Listing, Listed, Passed, and All, plus a date-range filter (Today, This Week, This Month, All). You can also share items into TrovoPilot from other apps using your device's share menu.

07Keyword Search

The Searchpage lets you find lots across online auctions by keyword. Type what you're looking for — a brand, a product type, a category — and TrovoPilot searches across auction catalogs near you.

You can narrow results with geographic filters: state, zip code, and radius (how far from that zip code to search). Auction status filters let you focus on open auctions, see all auctions, or review closed and closing ones.

Searches are saved automatically. Your recent searches appear as quick chips below the search bar so you can re-run a frequent search with a single tap. Up to 20 recent searches are stored per account. You can also enable notificationson a saved search — TrovoPilot checks periodically (about every 15 minutes) and sends a push notification when new matching sold-price results appear.

08Pickup and Profit Tracking

After you've won lots at auction, the Pickup page helps you manage everything from collection to sale. Won lots are grouped by auction with links to Google Maps directions for each pickup location.

Switch to Checklist modeto go through your lots one by one at the pickup site. This is a simple inspection view designed for use on your phone while you're loading items into your car. You can also print the checklist for a paper reference.

If a lot contains multiple items, you can Split it into individual pieces for separate tracking. Each sub-lot carries a proportional share of the original cost.

Lots move through a status lifecycle: won, picked up, listed, sold, and shipped. When you Mark as sold, you record the sale price and platform (eBay, local sale, etc.). TrovoPilot calculates your profit after subtracting the hammer price, buyer's premium, sales tax, and optional eBay fees. Per-auction cost breakdowns show exactly where your money went.

If you've imported an invoice for the auction (see Purchases and Invoices), pickup totals include the invoice line items so you can see the full cost picture — hammer price, premium, tax, and any additional fees — all in one place.

09Analytics and Stats

The analytics dashboard gives you a data-driven view of your auction activity across eight tabs. Use the date range filter at the top to focus on a specific time period, and watch the trend indicators to see how your metrics are changing over time.

• Auctions— per-auction cost breakdown with hammer prices, buyer's premiums, and totals. Costs are calculated from two sources: auction bid data and imported invoice data, giving you the most accurate picture possible.
• Sparklines— bid velocity charts showing bidding activity over time for each lot. Hot, steady, and quiet indicators help you gauge competition.
• Categories— performance by item category (electronics, tools, collectibles, etc.) based on evaluation and scout data.
• Profit— estimated vs. realized profit comparison. See how your AI estimates stack up against actual sale prices.
• Scout— scouting tier stats, mislabel detection rates, and provider usage breakdown.
• Accuracy— AI provider accuracy tracking with side-by-side comparison. See how well each provider's estimates match real outcomes, broken down by category, price range, and time period. Use this data to decide which provider to trust for different item types.
• Trends— profit and spend trends over time.
• Aging— how long listed items have been sitting in inventory, to flag slow-moving stock.

At the top of the dashboard, an aggregate stats bar shows your totals at a glance: total lots tracked, lots won, total spent, total profit, overall ROI percentage, and win rate. Use these numbers to understand which categories, auction houses, and strategies are working best for you.

10Purchases and Invoices

The Purchases page tracks everything you buy at auction, whether you won it through an online auction or purchased it elsewhere. Each purchase record includes the auction house, purchase date, total amount, and a breakdown of individual items.

To record a purchase, fill in the purchase form with the auction details and add line items for each lot or item you bought. You can manually enter item details, or use AI invoice parsing to import them automatically. Take a photo of your auction invoice (or upload a screenshot), and Gemini Vision extracts the line items, prices, premiums, and tax amounts into structured data. Review the extracted data, make any corrections, and save.

Purchase items can be linked to watched lots, so cost data flows through to your profit calculations and pickup totals. This is the most accurate way to track costs, since invoice data reflects what you actually paid rather than what the auction site displayed.

11Selling and Inventory

The Inventory page is your resale pipeline. It collects all items that are ready to sell, currently listed, or already sold, and tracks profitability per item and per sell channel.

Configure your sell channels in Settings (eBay, Mercari, Facebook Marketplace, Whatnot, Etsy, Booth / Mall, Consignment, Flea Market, Direct Sale, or Other). When you List an item, select which channel you're selling on and TrovoPilot applies the appropriate fee structure to calculate net profit. Per-channel profitability lets you see which platforms work best for different item types.

Items that have been in inventory for a while display aging indicators so you can identify slow-moving stock. Use these to decide when to reprice, relist on a different channel, or cut losses on items that aren't moving.

12Listing an item on eBay

Once you've scanned and appraised an item, you can turn it into a live eBay listing without leaving TrovoPilot. From your Scan History, choose List on eBayon an appraised item. TrovoPilot generates a complete draft — title, description, item specifics, a suggested category, and a price drawn from comparable sold data.

Review and edit the draft, then choose Publish to eBay. The listing goes live on your connected eBay account, and TrovoPilot links you straight to it on eBay. You always see and approve the draft before it is published.

Requirements: a connected eBay account, set up under Settings → eBay connection, with payment, return, and shipping (fulfillment) business policies. If a business policy is missing, TrovoPilot tells you which one to set up in your eBay Seller Hub when you go to publish. This is distinct from choosing a sell channel for profit tracking — here TrovoPilot builds the actual eBay listing from your scanned item, which you review and approve before it publishes live to your eBay account.

13Auction Houses

TrovoPilot builds auction house profiles as you interact with different auctioneers. Each profile stores the auction house name, location, buyer's premium rate, and any notes you want to keep. Profiles are created automatically when you import auctions, or you can add them manually in Settings.

Over time, profiles accumulate history — how many auctions you've tracked with each house, your win rate, average lot cost, and total spend. This helps you understand which auction houses consistently offer good deals and which ones tend to run higher.

14Plans and Pricing

TrovoPilot offers four tiers to match your usage level:

• Free— unlimited auction search, 15 evaluations per month, 1 scout per month, 1 import per month, and up to 5 active watchlist lots. Great for trying out the platform before committing.
• Starter($19.99/mo or $199.90/yr) — 300 evaluations/mo, 50 scouts/mo, unlimited imports and watchlist lots. Claude scouting (with your own Anthropic API key), the resale pipeline, and full analytics.
• Pro($49.99/mo or $499.90/yr) — 1,200 evaluations/mo, 250 scouts/mo, everything in Starter, plus batch evaluation, saved search notifications, data export, and priority support.
• Ultimate($129.99/mo or $1,299.90/yr) — 5,000 evaluations/mo, unlimited scouts, everything in Pro.

If you exceed a free tier limit, TrovoPilot shows you which tier unlocks the feature you need.

15Notifications

TrovoPilot sends push notifications to keep you informed even when you're not in the app. Enable notifications from Settings or when prompted during key moments (like placing your first bid).

• Outbid alerts — a push notification (within a few minutes) when someone outbids you on a tracked lot.
• Closing-soon alerts — a heads-up when a tracked lot is about to close.
• Pickup reminders — don't forget to pick up your winnings. Reminders trigger based on the auction's pickup schedule.
• Saved search alerts — get notified when new sold-price matches appear for one of your saved searches. Toggle notifications per search from the Search page.

You can fine-tune which notification types you receive in Settings under Notification Preferences. Notifications work on both desktop browsers and mobile devices via the installed PWA.

16Offline Mode

TrovoPilot is a Progressive Web App (PWA). Install it on your phone from your browser's menu (Add to Home Screen) and it behaves like a native app — including offline support.

When you lose connectivity, TrovoPilot continues to work with cached data. You can browse your auctions, lots, and evaluations from the last time they loaded. Actions you take while offline (field scans, notes, status changes) are queued in a mutation queue and automatically sync when your connection returns. A banner at the top of the screen indicates when you're in offline mode.

17Notes

Add free-text notes to lots, auctions, and purchases. Notes are useful for recording condition details you noticed at preview, questions to research later, or reminders about how you plan to sell an item.

Notes are visible on the lot detail page, in the pickup checklist, and on inventory cards. You can edit or delete notes at any time. Lot cards throughout the app show a notes indicator so you can tell at a glance which items have annotations.

18Keyboard Shortcuts

On desktop, TrovoPilot supports keyboard shortcuts for faster navigation. Press ? at any time to open the shortcuts help overlay.

• 1–8 — jump to Appraise, Auctions, Prices, List, Catalog, Pickups, Purchases, or Stats.
• g i— go to Inventory. g s— go to Settings.
• j / k— move down/up through lot cards or list items.
• Enter— open the selected card's detail page.
• e— run an evaluation on the selected or currently viewed lot.
• w— toggle the selected lot's watchlist status.
• n— open or focus the notes field.
• Backspace / [ — go back from a detail page.
• Esc— close any open modal or the help overlay.

19Sharing

Share AI evaluations with others using share links. From any evaluation result, tap the Sharebutton to generate a unique URL. Anyone with the link can view the evaluation — they don't need a TrovoPilot account. The public evaluation page shows the AI analysis, estimated value range, and comparable sold listings.

You can Revoke a share link at any time, which immediately makes the public page inaccessible. Share links are useful for sending evaluation results to buying partners, showing friends what you found at an auction, or posting to social media.

20Referrals

TrovoPilot has a double-sided referral system. Every account gets a unique 8-character referral code, visible in Settings. Share your code with other auction buyers and both of you benefit:

• The person you referred (the referee) gets 25% off their first month of any paid plan.
• You (the referrer) get one month free when they subscribe.

Referral codes must be used within 30 days of the new user's signup. You can track how many people have used your code and the status of your rewards in Settings.

21Importing Lots

TrovoPilot can import a single lot from most auction pages. To import a lot, Paste a lot URL into the import field. TrovoPilot fetches the page, tags the platform it recognizes, and uses AI to extract the lot details.

• HiBid auctions— paste a HiBid catalog or auction URL to import the whole auction and its open lots directly from HiBid. Fastest and most complete.
• Other auction platforms (AuctionZip, EstateSales.NET, MaxSold, and more) — TrovoPilot fetches the page content and uses AI (Gemini) to extract lot title, description, current bid, closing time, auction house, location, buyer's premium, and photos.
• Other URLs — generic extraction works on any page with Open Graph tags or structured lot data.

You can also Import by photo. Take a screenshot of a lot listing on another app and upload it. Gemini Vision reads the image and extracts the structured lot data — useful when a direct URL isn't available or the platform requires a login to view listings.

22Settings

The Settings page lets you configure TrovoPilot to match your workflow.

• Sell Channels — add, edit, or remove the platforms where you sell (eBay, Mercari, Facebook Marketplace, Whatnot, Etsy, Booth / Mall, Consignment, Flea Market, Direct Sale, or Other). Fee structures are applied automatically for profit calculations.
• AI Provider Defaults — choose your default provider (Gemini or Claude). The default applies to scouting; full evaluations always run on Gemini.
• API Keys— manage your own API keys for Gemini and Claude if you want to use your own quotas instead of TrovoPilot's shared pool.
• Display Preferences — switch between dark mode, light mode, or system default. The theme applies across all pages instantly.
• Notification Preferences — toggle outbid alerts, closing-soon alerts, pickup reminders, and saved search notifications.
• Data Export— download all your data in CSV (items and P/L records) or JSON (full data dump). Useful for spreadsheet analysis or migrating to another tool.
• Account Deletion — schedule deletion of your account and all associated data. Deletion has a 30-day grace period during which you can cancel it from Settings; after that, your data is permanently removed. You'll be prompted to export your data first.