Epiktistes

Epiktistes is my home in the Fediverse. It is an instance of Ktistec, a single-user ActivityPub server like Mastodon, but with fewer users and fewer commits. Here's my introduction (last updated early-2025).

I wrote a series of posts about optimizing the performance of the Ktistec server, its build time, and its executable size: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.

Some things I regularly write about, organized by hashtag:

I also wrote some #pointfreeverse.

ugh, i just spent an unfortunate amount of time obsessing about focal points...

Release v3.1.3 of Ktistec

There are two big features in release v3.1.3 of Ktistec: auto-approve followers and a new image viewer.

Auto-approve followers is conceptually simple ("the server automatically sends an Accept activity when it receives a Follow activity") but it required extensive changes to some of the oldest code in the codebase: the inboxes and outboxes controllers. I refactored inbox and outbox side-effect processing into independent services, which made it possible to support side-effects like auto-approve follow (and also auto-follow back), without having to go through the controllers.

A more significant change for me personally was replacing the lightGallery image gallery (an external dependency) with my own implementation. It's not as slick, and not as full of features—I wrote it in two days—but it is fully free software, and that's important to me.

Added

  • Add admin page for managing OAuth access tokens.
  • Add support for auto-approve followers. (fixes #26)
  • Add support for auto-follow back.

Fixed

  • Prevent triggering actor refresh when user is anonymous.

Changed

  • Replace "lightgallery" dependency with custom image viewer.
  • Set OAuth access token expiry to 30 days (previously expired after 24 hours).
  • Refactor inbox and outbox processing into dedicated processor services.

The OAuth changes set the groundwork for better support of the Mastodon API and the Fediverse clients that depend on it. Stay tuned!

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang

I really don't like iOS 26. It's not so much the liquid glass look—I've disabled most of the effects. It's that almost everything else I use seems to take an additional step. For example, to get rid of a tab in Safari, I now have to 1) tap the little dots (⋯), 2) tap item "All Tabs", 3) dismiss the tab.

#ios26

terrorform: episode of Red Dwarf or open-source infrastructure as code tool?

I’m exploring features for navigating and reading large threads. A “large thread” is a thread with more than 250 replies. I personally can’t easily consume all of that, and quite a number of replies are uninformative in any case (they are simple statements of agreement or dismissal).

Some things I’m trying:

  • Highlighting replies by the original poster—the assumption is that, if I'm interested in the thread, I'm interested in what the original poster had to add.
  • Highlighting replies with a larger than average number of replies, in turn—the assumption being, they must have added something meaningful to the thread.
  • Maybe longer replies are more interesting? Highlight them?

By way of replies to this post, I am definitely interested in others' thoughts on good heuristics.

#ktistec

A small pumpkin with a smiling face lit up from the inside by a tea candle on a windowsill.

ActivityPumpkin

Release v3.1.2 of Ktistec

I'm working on federation issues.

👻 Release v3.1.2 of Ktistec improves support for Lemmy and community servers like it that distribute content by wrapping it in Announce activities (FEP-1b12: Group federation support). Ktistec also supports the audience property, although support for that was removed from Lemmy earlier this year.

🎃 This release also adds support for delivering to shared inboxes, which are widely supported by other ActivityPub servers. Despite being federated, the Fediverse is not highly distributed, and this optimization can reduce outbound delivery traffic by 10-20x.

Added

  • Support for the Dislike activity.
  • Support for the audience property on activities and objects.
  • Support for delivery to shared inboxes.
  • Support for full-width hash signs in hashtags (e.g. #日本語) commonly used in Japanese and other Asian languages.

Fixed

  • Strip HTML from object summaries rather than escaping it.
  • Properly unwrap Lemmy-style Announce activities.

Changed

  • Destroy discarded drafts instead of deleting them.

Enjoy!

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang

i'm too lazy to read a thread with 420+ replies so i'm building a little tool using the #ktistec API that will summarize that thread for me.

time to just read the thread: probably 15 minutes. time to build the little tool: well i started on it an hour ago and...

#LazinessIsAVirtue

i added better support for delivering to shared inboxes in #ktistec. kind of lame, but this post is how i'm testing it...

I’m setting up the ActivityPub Fuzzer. What’s not clear to me is whether or not this thing can run over localhost on two different ports or whether a proxy is required.

#activitypub