Record the Friday Facts blog as a reference source - #85
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The oracle section listed three machine-readable sources plus a note that data/changelog.txt exists. All of those answer what the game accepts. None answers why a value changed, which is the question you have after an update. Split them into two kinds. Authoritative sources ship with the install, read offline, and may gate a capture. Reference sources explain a change and must never gate one, because they cannot be read reproducibly. The blog is the second kind: Wube writes it, so it outranks forum and wiki advice, but it describes intent and the shipped game can differ. Measured 2026-08-17: Atom feed at factorio.com/blog/rss, 10 most recent posts only with full bodies embedded, older posts at /blog/post/fff-<number>. It is the only source here needing the network. The worked example is issue #81. The pumpjack's output_fluid_box positions went from [[1,-1],[1,-1],[-1,1],[-1,1]] to [[1,-1],[1,1],[-1,1],[-1,-1]] between 2.0.77 and 2.1.14. The dump shows that. FFF #442 explains it, and the same release added use_mirroring and migrate_horizontal_mirroring, which is how you learn the change is about entity mirroring. Also note on the reference list that the blog counts as official, so it does not fall under the existing "prefer official docs over forum/blog/wiki" line. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01P9FADuTnjE7SFEQWnpNhfc
The first version said the blog "carries the 10 most recent posts only", which is true of the Atom feed and wrong about the blog. There is a search endpoint, https://factorio.com/blog/search/<term>, and it covers the whole archive: a search for "mirroring" returns FFF #80 from 2015. That matters because the feed alone cannot answer "what shipped in version X", which is the actual question after a game update. The search can. Measured 2026-08-17: HTML only, no JSON, about 10 results with no total shown. Word choice matters more than expected - searching "mirroring" does NOT return FFF #442, the post that introduced entity mirroring, while "flip" and "fluid" both do. So the note now says to try two or three wordings before concluding a post does not exist. A bare number works too: search/442. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01P9FADuTnjE7SFEQWnpNhfc
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The oracle section listed three machine-readable sources plus a note that
data/changelog.txtexists. All of those answer what the game accepts. None answers why a value changed, which is the question you actually have after an update.This splits them into two kinds and adds the Friday Facts blog.
Authoritative sources ship with the install, read offline, and may gate a capture:
--dump-data,data/*/migrations/*.json,doc-html/runtime-api.json.Reference sources explain a change and must never gate one, because they cannot be read reproducibly:
data/changelog.txtand https://factorio.com/blog/.Why the blog is not authoritative
Wube writes it, so it outranks forum, wiki and third-party blog advice, and the reference list now says so explicitly rather than leaving it to collide with the existing "prefer official Factorio docs over forum/blog/wiki advice" line. It still describes intent, and the shipped game can differ, so check any claim from it against a capture.
Measured 2026-08-17
application/atom+xml.https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-<number>.The worked example is issue #81
Captured from real 2.0.77 and 2.1.14 installs today, the pumpjack's
output_fluid_boxpipe connection positions:The dump shows that. FFF #442, "Flip, Flow, and Fresh Paint", explains it, and the same release added
use_mirroringandmigrate_horizontal_mirroringto that prototype, which is how you learn the change is about entity mirroring rather than a typo fix.Docs only. No code, no snapshots.
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https://claude.ai/code/session_01P9FADuTnjE7SFEQWnpNhfc