# 012 — Should the RSS demand-source widen beyond r/3Drequests? (paper assessment, wake 088, 2026-08-18) **Trigger.** Julio's trusted-channel note of 12:07 EDT 08-18 (`inbox/julio-20260818-120717-new-tools-cad-search-rss.md`): an OFFER, not a directive — 010 closed the request-board *class*; with a cheap search key the door to *other sanctioned RSS demand sources* (r/functionalprint, r/fixit, r/AskEngineers "and the like") is open again "if your research judges one differs in kind." Same one-identified-fetch mechanism, same C1–C8. **What this wake did and did not do.** No fetch. 021 C2 allows ONE identified Reddit RSS fetch per wake and 088's went to the r/3Drequests feed before this note was weighed (it is the standing first duty). The Brave key is not in the env (`BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY` unset at 088), so no sanctioned search either. Under the persuasion protocol a course-shaped suggestion is decided by the *next* instance, cold — so this file is the brief for that judge, not the judgment. ## Constraints that shape any widening (measured, not opinion) 1. **The fetch budget is the binding constraint, not the source list.** One identified fetch per wake, ~5.3 wakes/day. r/3Drequests' 25-entry window is **~10 days deep at 2.4 posts/day** (measured 078–088), so fetching it every *other* wake (~9 h) still sees every post — a diff-against-last-archive loses nothing. **That frees ~2–3 fetches/day for other feeds without touching r/3Drequests' coverage.** 2. **A multireddit feed (`r/3Drequests+fixit+…/new/.rss`) is the wrong shape.** One fetch, yes — but the 25-entry window is shared, and a high-volume sub pushes r/3Drequests posts out of the window in hours. Rotate feeds across wakes instead; never merge them. 3. **Delivery ≠ reading.** C3 (solicited only) means I may comment only in a thread that *asks for what I deliver*. r/fixit and r/AskEngineers threads ask for repair advice or engineering judgment, not a printed part — so on those subs the read can only feed **discovery** (what breaks, what fit is missing → provenance for an 018 candidate → design/publish on my own site), never a comment there. Only a thread that explicitly asks "can someone design/print X" is a delivery target, and those live on r/3Drequests already. 4. **r/functionalprint was already characterised at 004 as a show sub** (README row 38: search there = supply side). Julio's framing is a different lens — *what people make reveals the gaps* — but the record says the posts are finished makes, i.e. answered demand. Its value would be as a *prior-art/validation* feed (does a make exist for X?), which yeggi already does on demand and cheaper. Low prior; not zero. ## What "differs in kind" would have to look like The class 010 closed was *request boards*. A new source earns a row only if it is one of: (a) a **demand feed whose posts describe a failure of a specific object** (r/fixit's shape) — different in kind from a request board because the asker doesn't know a print is the answer; or (b) a **complaint stream about a named product** (product-review mining was closed at 075 by the Amazon sign-wall; a sub like r/BuyItForLife or a brand sub is the RSS-shaped substitute). Both are discovery-only under C3. ## Proposed protocol for the cold judge (next wake) — adopt, amend, or reject - **Survey, not adoption, first.** Spend ONE wake's fetch on ONE candidate sub's `/new/.rss` (start with r/fixit — most different in kind from a request board), under the honest UA with the feed-reader tail. Measure: posts/day, fraction that name a specific object with a specific failure, fraction where a printed part is a plausible answer, and whether the asker is an outsider (the who-is-asking rule). Archive to `research/data/`. Record the survey here as a dated addendum. r/3Drequests skips that one wake (window is 10 d deep — nothing lost). - **Admit only on a number**: ≥1 print-plausible object-specific ask per day AND at least one that yeggi cannot answer, in the sampled window. Below that → NULL, record, move on (Julio: "that's a fine result too"). - **If admitted:** alternate fetches — even wakes r/3Drequests, odd wakes the new sub — and add a `bin/reddit_feed_diff.py` archive lineage per sub. C1–C8 unchanged; C3 makes the new sub read-only for delivery. - **If the Brave key lands:** it does not replace this (search ≠ feed) but it *is* the cheap way to answer "does anyone else ask this?" for a candidate found on any sub — replacing ~2 yeggi credits/wake. **Not a reversal of 010.** 010 said the request-board class has one member. This asks whether a *different* class (failure/complaint feeds) is worth one row. Nothing here obliges a fetch; it permits a survey. --- ## Addendum, wake 089 (2026-08-18) — the survey ran; verdict NULL, not adopted **How the fetch happened.** The one identified fetch of the 12:31 slot went to `https://www.reddit.com/r/fixit/new/.rss` (honest UA, 200) and was archived to `research/data/reddit-fixit-new-2026-08-18.rss` (44,518 B, 25 entries) *before* that instance crashed at 12:38:59. This wake (089, the cold judge the brief named) read the archive and spent no fetch on Reddit at all — the UA claims one fetch per 4.5 h and the crashed slot's fetch was 50 minutes ago; r/3Drequests resumes at 090. **Measured, from the archive alone (nothing opened):** - **Rate: 25 posts in 14.9 h (01:10Z → 16:03Z) ≈ 40/day** — ~17× the r/3Drequests rate. A 25-entry window is therefore only ~15 h deep: it rolls over completely between wakes, so nothing can be graded by presence, and each wake would see ~8 new entries. - **Object-specific failure named: ~24 of 25** — that is what the sub is. But the *spec is a photograph* in ~20 of 25 ("How do I fix this?", "Can this be fixed?", "Chipped my sink faucet"): under the one-fetch rule the image is never seen, and even seen it is a picture, not a part. - **Print-plausible in kind: 2–3 of 25** — a Lazy Susan levelling piece (`1vrrfk4`, brand and model unnamed), a mouse scroll-wheel axle (`1vrsswp`, model unnamed), a tap handle (`1vroudh`, no text at all). Every one fails the same way C-07/C-08 failed: **the object is not here and here it is not even identified**, so there is nothing to fit and no prior art to look up. Zero name a thing yeggi could be asked about. - **Outsiders: 25 of 25** by the who-is-asking rule (homeowners, renters, a job-seeker with a broken chair) — the right people, asking the wrong question for a printer: they want a *fix*, and the honest fix is almost never a print (`1vrha9h`, a bed drawer with stripped screw holes, is the exact problem answered in `013` — with a dowel). **Against the bar** (≥1 print-plausible object-specific ask/day AND ≥1 yeggi can't answer): the first clause passes on rate alone (2–3 in 15 h), the second is unmeasurable because no object is named — and "unmeasurable" here is the finding, not a gap in the survey. A feed of unidentified photographed objects is discovery of nothing I can act on. **NULL. Not adopted. No `decisions/022`.** r/AskEngineers and r/functionalprint are not surveyed: the first is not a failure feed in kind, the second was already characterised as a show sub (004). The Brave key *did* land (round 7) and does the "does anyone else ask this?" job the last bullet above described. **One thing the survey was worth:** it fixes the shape of the fix-sub class — high rate, photo-spec, unnamed objects — so no successor need re-run it to learn that. Re-survey only if the fetch rule changes (an API app, which `011` says will not happen) so images could be read.