Works really well with:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/what-items-do-i-have

Integrates with:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/mining-patch-planner
&
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/pump

Quality Upgrade Planner

Upgrade your factory with the better-quality buildings and modules you already have in storage. Pick an area once, keep it watched, or place a Quality Area Watcher to look after part of your base.

If you have 100 common miners placed and only 12 rare and 28 uncommon replacements, the planner orders those 40 upgrades. The rest wait for more stock. Construction robots do the work, using your existing items.

⚙ What it does

Uses the best available quality first, up to what your research has unlocked.
Upgrades buildings and installed modules, together or separately.
Checks blueprints, copy-paste selections and placed ghosts for better replacements.
Keeps selected buildings watched as better stock becomes available.
Offers a separate passive list for things you always want upgraded.
Adds a blueprintable Area Watcher with its own filters and circuit controls.
Lets you keep stock in reserve and choose which buildings get first pick.
Exports settings so you can reuse them in another save.

Buildings keep their type. An assembler 2 stays an assembler 2, just with better quality. Modules can also change tier when a stronger replacement is available.

⚙ Using the planner

Open the planner from its shortcut or the button beside your inventory. Choose the building icons you want included, then take the planner and select an area.

Control	Action
Left-drag	Check the selected buildings once.
Shift-left-drag	Check now and keep watching for better stock.
Right-drag	Stop watching and cancel this mod's pending orders in the selection.
E	Close the open mod window.

Watched buildings are checked every 120 seconds by default, with 60 and 90 seconds also available in the map settings. Building watches at the current research limit can wake again when you unlock more quality. Finished watches end; select the building again if you later put weaker modules in it.

The pause button stops automatic checks. Robots may still finish jobs they already received.

⚙ Pick what gets upgraded

The filters use building icons and checkboxes, with separate entries for different machines. Production buildings, miners, pumps, research buildings, rocket silos and modules start selected. Most infrastructure and agricultural towers start off.

Entity overrides let you make exact choices. Include medium power poles while leaving big power poles out, for example. Checked means include, unchecked means exclude. These choices take priority over the category filters.

Modded buildings get individual entries. Hidden helper entities and unused vanilla loaders are left out of the picker.

⚙ Blueprints and copy-paste

Turn on Upgrade new blueprints and placed ghosts to check for better stock when placing a blueprint, pasting with Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V, or placing individual ghosts. The quality choices in your saved blueprint stay as they were.

Enable Keep watching blueprint buildings if you want those buildings to improve again later. You can place a common factory today and let it use rare or epic replacements as your stock grows.

Turning this option off does not clear existing watches. Right-drag over an area to stop watching it.

Mining Patch Planner and P.U.M.P. placements are supported. Other placement mods can work too when they report their placements and the player responsible. Large blueprints are checked in batches, so buildings constructed before their check may receive an upgrade order afterwards.

⚙ Quality Area Watcher

The Quality Area Watcher unlocks with Construction robotics. Place it, connect power and click it to open its settings. A green rectangle shows the area it covers.

Each watcher has its own:

Width and height, from 8 to 256 tiles per side.
Check interval, from 60 to 600 seconds.
Building and module switches.
Optional list of exact building types, using icon slots and checkboxes.
Copied planner filters, module options, stock reserves and priorities.
Circuit controls for enabling the watcher and changing its area.

The default is a 64 × 64 tile area, checked every five minutes. Click Apply settings after making changes, or Check now to request a check using the saved settings.

For a watcher that only handles roboports, enable Only the entities selected below and add a roboport to the list. For modules only, turn off building upgrades. Without an exact list, building upgrades use the copied planner filters and modules are checked throughout the area.

A watcher takes a copy of your planner settings when placed. Later changes to the main planner do not change it. Use Copy planner filters, then Apply, to copy your current choices across.

The recipe uses 35 steel plates, 30 gears, 40 advanced circuits, 10 electronic circuits and 30 copper cable. It consumes 50 kW and still needs construction robot coverage. It does not provide robot coverage or beacon bonuses.

The building uses roboport and beacon sprites, with a Tesla turret head when Space Age is enabled.

Circuit controls

Connect red or green wire and enable the circuit options in the watcher menu. Signals from both colours are added together.

Signal	Effect
A	When circuit enabling is selected, a value above zero enables the watcher. Zero or below pauses it.
W	Sets the width in tiles. Zero or below uses the saved width.
H	Sets the height in tiles. Zero or below uses the saved height.

Circuit sizes stay within the same 8–256 tile limits. A new size must stay steady for five seconds before the area changes.

Blueprints and overlapping areas

Include a configured watcher in a blueprint or copy-paste selection and its settings go with it. Once built and powered, it watches the new location. Factorio's settings copy/paste controls also work between watchers.

Where areas overlap, the oldest active watcher controls the overlap. Manual watches still get stock first. Disabling or removing a watcher stops future orders; it does not undo completed upgrades or recall every robot already on its way.

⚙ Passive upgrades

The separate Automation window has a passive list that checks every five minutes across your force's surfaces.

Add things you always want upgraded, such as roboports, without changing what your normal planner or blueprints include. Empty icon slots add entries. Existing slots can be changed or cleared, and the checkbox lets you switch an entry off without removing it.

For modules throughout the factory, enable Upgrade modules and Check modules in all buildings. The building list can be empty. Turn off Upgrade buildings in the list if you only want modules changed.

Passive upgrades use stock left after normal planner and watched upgrades. Rescan existing entities finds buildings added by mods that do not report their placements.

⚙ Modules, reserves and priorities

Module upgrades work independently of building quality. Empty slots stay empty.

Use stronger modules across tiers compares the main bonus within the same module type. Speed stays speed, productivity stays productivity, and so on. A replacement can have a different tier or lower quality if its main bonus is stronger. Power use and other penalties can increase. Turn this off to keep the module tier unchanged. Custom module types keep their tier and only upgrade quality.

Keep one stack of the highest unlocked quality starts enabled. It leaves a stack of each item in each stock source used by the mod. The reserve follows your highest researched quality; lower qualities remain available. Switch it off when you want to use all your stock. Other construction jobs can still use reserved items.

Upgrade priorities accepts up to 16 building types. Move entries up or down to decide who gets stock first, including modules inside those buildings. Unlisted buildings come afterwards. Priorities apply when choosing new orders, so they do not interrupt work robots already have.

⚙ Save your settings

Open Export/import from the planner or Automation window. Copy the string, paste it into the same window in another save and click Import pasted settings.

This carries your filters, overrides, passive targets, module options, reserve choice and priorities. Watched locations and map-wide settings stay in their own save.

Watchers have separate export/import buttons in their menu. Import a watcher string and click Apply to use it. Entries for mods you dont have are skipped.

⚙ Robots, stock and performance

Replacements must be available to reachable construction robots. Your personal roboport can use robots and items in your inventory too. Separate networks and planets do not share stock, and items on belts or inside ordinary machines are not counted.

Work is spread across ticks. Area Watchers search their own area when first placed or reconfigured, then track later placements and replacements. They do not repeat a whole-area search every five minutes. Apply settings again if another mod places buildings without reporting them. Trains arriving later may also need this rescan.

Locomotives and wagons have separate filters, off by default. Moving or occupied trains wait; robot replacement needs manual mode or a train waiting at a station. Schedules stay unchanged and equipment is not upgraded.

Tiles, underground belts and construction through space-platform hubs are not supported. Module plans support up to 64 slots. Mods with their own construction systems may need additional support.

If an upgrade is waiting, check stock, robot coverage, research, filters and the reserve switch. /squ-explain checks the building under your cursor; /squ-status shows watched jobs. /squ-clear clears normal watches and pending orders, while leaving passive automation and Area Watchers enabled.