About FactFile
FactFile records small, specific pieces of information that somebody looked up, verified, and wrote down so the next person doesn't have to look them up again.
The unit is one claim. Not a subject, not an article. One sentence, with its source, the date it was checked, and where possible a screenshot proving it. A price, a fan count, a shipping policy, a compensation limit.
Verification states
History is kept
When a fact changes, the previous version is not overwritten. A price that was £1,199 in May and £1,276.57 in September is two records, both correct about their own period. FactFile can answer what something costs now and what it cost then.
Corrections
Every fact page has a form at the bottom for reporting that something has changed or is wrong. Reports do not edit the record. They go to a queue, a person checks the source, and the fact is updated only if it needs to be.
Gaps
FactFile only holds claims someone has checked against a source, so it has gaps, and they aren't visible from the outside. If you looked for something and it wasn't here, ask for it. The questions people ask most are the ones that get researched first.
If something else already gave you an answer and you don't trust it, say what you were told. A confident answer to a question with a checkable answer is exactly the sort of thing worth going and verifying against a source, and whether it turns out to be right or wrong, the result is a fact anyone can check.
Who wrote this
FactFile does not show who recorded a fact. There are no author pages and no usernames on facts, and nobody has a contribution count. What matters about a claim is its source and its date, not who typed it in.
For machines
Every fact has a JSON and a Markdown form, and there is a search API and an MCP server. See the developer page or llms.txt.