Facts are objects (beans) from your application that you insert into the working memory. Facts are any Java objects which the rules can access. The rule engine does not "clone" facts at all, it is all references/pointers at the end of the day. Facts are your applications data. Strings and other classes without getters and setters are not valid Facts and can't be used with Field Constraints which rely on the JavaBean standard of getters and setters to interact with the object.