Tutorial: Track changes on a Wikipedia page

Goal

Use Refract to analyze the revision history of a Wikipedia page and see what changed.

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

2. View results

Events print to stdout. For structured export or an HTML report:

refract export "Earth" --format html > earth-report.html

3. Understand the events

4. Visualize

refract visualize "Earth" --format mermaid

To see all event types (not just claim events):

refract visualize "Earth" --format mermaid --all

Next steps

Example output

refract analyze produces a stream of events. Here are two example events from the Earth page:

{
  "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": "0.3.1",
        "inputHashes": []
      }
    }
  ]
}

{
  "eventId": "8e12b4f1a6d3c097",
  "eventType": "citation_added",
  "fromRevisionId": 1280110100,
  "toRevisionId": 1280110200,
  "section": "Atmosphere",
  "before": "",
  "after": "<ref>{{cite web |title=Earth Fact Sheet |url=...}}</ref>",
  "timestamp": "2024-11-25T14:00:00Z",
  "layer": "observed",
  "deterministicFacts": [
    {
      "fact": "Citation added in section Atmosphere",
      "provenance": {
        "analyzer": "citation-tracker",
        "version": "0.3.1",
        "inputHashes": []
      }
    }
  ]
}

Troubleshooting