Part of Stem. This page defines the fact record, the shape of everything the index knows about a resource beyond its blobs.

A fact is a key and value about a node, marked as read from a signed blob or computed by the peer.

Fields

field	type	required	meaning
`node`	node reference	yes	The resource the fact is about.
`key`	string	yes	The fact name, such as `title`, `heads`, `childCount`, `commentCount`.
`value`	any	yes	The value.
`provenance`	one of `signed`, `derived`	yes	Asserted by an authorized signer, or computed by this peer.
`source`	CID	no	The blob the fact was read from, when `signed`.

Rules

Signed facts come from the state (document attributes, snapshot fields) and from Node fields (parent, name, heads, version). Derived facts come from counting and joining: child count, comment count, last activity, backlink count, whether a document is a collection. The API returns both but never mixes them: a query may ask for signed facts only, and listings label derived ones. Facts are rebuilt by reindex and are never exchanged between peers as truth; a peer that wants another peer's derived facts treats them as that peer's opinion. The board's question "should indexed metadata be authoritative or peer-derived" is answered: both, kept distinct.

Today (HM24)

document_attributes holds CRDT-resolved attributes, and listings compute counts from other tables with no marker of which is which.

Example

{
  "node": {"space": {"/": {"bytes": "7QEE...Starlight"}}, "node": "bafyreiujzdegxdncf32epf3dhodzdocis2jhtlgmxgedn73u55xtplpft7"},
  "key": "commentCount",
  "value": 12,
  "provenance": "derived"
}

Fields

Rules

Today (HM24)

Example

See also