Track changes to a Wikipedia article over time

Goal

Use Refract to analyze the full revision history of a Wikipedia page and understand what changed, when, and what kind of change it was.

The analysis is deterministic, and its output is reproducible byte for byte.

Steps

1. Run your first analysis

Zero install:

npx @refract-org/cli analyze "Earth" --depth detailed

Or with a local install:

bun add @refract-org/cli
refract analyze "Earth" --depth detailed -c

The -c flag enables caching so subsequent runs skip already-fetched revisions. This is essential for large pages or repeated analysis.

2. Read the output

refract analyze prints one JSON event per line to stdout. Each event represents a single observed change at a revision boundary. For example:

{
  "eventId": "a3f5c2e1b7d409fa",
  "eventType": "section_reorganized",
  "fromRevisionId": 1280110001,
  "toRevisionId": 1280110100,
  "section": "Geology",
  "before": "",
  "after": "== Geology ==\nEarth's crust consists of tectonic plates...",
  "timestamp": "2024-11-25T12:00:00Z",
  "layer": "observed",
  "deterministicFacts": [
    {
      "fact": "Section Geology added with 3 paragraphs",
      "provenance": {
        "analyzer": "section-differ",
        "version": "0.5.1",
        "inputHashes": []
      }
    }
  ]
}

Key fields to read:

eventType: what kind of change (sentence, citation, template, revert, section, etc.)
section: where in the page the change happened
before / after: the text before and after the change
deterministicFacts: why the engine produced this event — always mechanical
layer: "observed" means directly extracted from the diff; other layers ("policy_coded", "model_interpretation") are set by downstream consumers

3. Scope to a specific revision range

Large pages can produce thousands of events. Narrow the range with --from and --to:

refract analyze "Earth" --from 1250000000 --to 1260000000 --depth detailed

Or filter by time with --since:

refract analyze "Earth" --since 2024-01-01 --depth detailed

4. View results in a browser

refract explore "Earth"

Opens a local web server (default port 8899) with an interactive timeline, evidence table, and diff viewer. Press Ctrl+C to stop.

5. Export structured output

# Line-delimited JSON for tools
refract export "Earth" --format ndjson > earth-events.jsonl

# CSV for spreadsheets
refract export "Earth" --format csv > earth-events.csv

# Bundle with a SHA-256 hash of its contents
refract export "Earth" --bundle > earth-bundle.json

6. Track a specific claim

refract claim "Earth" --text "Earth is the third planet from the Sun" -c

This shows every revision where that sentence was added, modified, removed, or reintroduced — the full lifecycle of a claim.

Understanding what you see

Citation events (citation_added, citation_removed, citation_replaced) trace source churn. A section with frequent citation turnover may indicate an actively contested topic. A citation that survives many revisions without change is a high-stability source.

Revert events (revert_detected) mark edits that were undone — either by the same editor ("self-revert") or by another editor. Clusters of revert events in a short time window often indicate edit-warring.

Template events (template_added, template_removed) reveal policy tagging. Templates like {{citation needed}} or {{NPOV}} are Wikipedia's dispute signals. Refract detects these mechanically from wikitext.

Section events (section_reorganized, lead_promotion) track structural reorganization. When material moves from body to lead, the framing of the page has changed — Refract flags this as a change in editorial emphasis.

Troubleshooting

Rate limits: Wikipedia's API limits request frequency. Use -c to cache revisions and avoid re-fetching on repeat runs.
Large pages: Pages with thousands of revisions produce many events. Use --from / --to or --since to scope to a date range.

Other wikis: Point --api to any MediaWiki instance:

refract analyze "Erde" --api https://de.wikipedia.org/w/api.php

Too much output: Pipe to a file instead of stdout, or use refract export for structured formats.