folio provenance

folio provenance <SHEET> <RECORD_ID> <FIELD> [--history]

Reads provenance.jsonl and returns the latest entry for the given cell. With --history, returns the full append-only chain (oldest first → most recent last).

Latest

$ folio provenance ./customers cust_001 country_code
{
  "record_id": "cust_001",
  "field": "country_code",
  "source": "python",
  "actor": "agent:demo",
  "at": "2026-05-10T10:16:35Z",
  "input_hash": "sha256:ce82..."
}

If there’s no entry, the command prints null:

$ folio provenance ./customers cust_001 nonexistent_field
null

Full history

$ folio provenance ./customers cust_001 country_code --history
[
  {"source":"python","actor":"agent:demo","at":"2026-05-08T...","input_hash":"sha256:..."},
  {"source":"human","actor":"agent:human:akiko","at":"2026-05-09T...",},
  {"source":"python","actor":"agent:demo","at":"2026-05-10T...","input_hash":"sha256:..."}
]

Read top-to-bottom for chronological order. The Viewer’s history tab renders this as a vertical timeline with a colored ring per source.

Use cases

• “Why is this field this value?” — --history shows the chain.
• “Which model wrote it?” — the latest model field for ai entries.
• “How much did this materialize cost?” — sum cost_usd across all ai entries.

Comparison with folio status

folio provenance	folio status
One cell.	One field across all records.
Full history possible.	Latest only, aggregated.
Verbose.	Compact counts.

For dashboards use status; for forensic drilldowns use provenance.