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

Annoyingly, it seems like the ActivityPub Fuzzer wants to run over HTTPS, and there's no obvious way to persuade it to run on, for example, localhost, port 3000 with plain old HTTP. The supported use case seems to be fuzzer on public URL ↔︎ server on public URL, which is more trouble than it's worth, right now.

#activitypub

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

Vacations are wonderful. It is a privilege to be able to travel without worry. It's also wonderful to be home, and to have the time to work on projects I care about. With those thoughts in mind, I present release v3.1.1 of Ktistec, an ActivityPub server written in the Crystal programming language!

This release is a mixed bag of small features and improvements:

Added

• Auto-link URLs in posts. (fixes #24)
• Support searching by actor username. (fixes #102)
• Support hourly granularity in metrics charts.

Fixed

• Mark actor as down if refresh fails.
• Remove draft posts from the everything collection.
• Ignore charts with no points in the date range.
• Ensure HTTP::Client instances are closed.

I added support for multiple users at the beginning of the month. I'm very interested in feedback on how that's working out for anyone using it.

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang

This release of Ktistec merges the main_3.x branch into the main branch.

Managing two branches, and two releases, was a lot of work. And sometimes changes were lost in the shuffle, like:

Added

• Add a small banner to highlight "offline" status.
• Support YAML MCP prompts and hot-reloading.

I have about a dozen more features and fixes that are ready for the next release, but to keep things simple, I'm doing the merge first, in its own commit.

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang

I'm trying to decide how much of "quote posts" I want to support in Ktistec. On one hand, it's not trivial functionality, and I really do question how much extra value someone's comments on someone else's post will add to the Fediverse. On the other hand, I dunno... assuming Mastodon limits abuse by enforcing quoting rules, Ktistec could probably just follow along and display quoted posts. Is there any value in just that?

#ktistec #activitypub #fediverse

Release v2.4.16 of Ktistec... because I forgot to include some critical code in v2.4.15... namely, the menu.

Changed

• Reorganize the admin menu.

If you're not planning on adding additional users, you don't need to update!

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang

Experimental support for multiple users landed with Ktistec release v2.4.15. "Experimental" means that it works for me, but hasn't seen enough testing for me to call it "ready for production". With that said, it's unlikely you'll lose your data.

There are lots of intentional design decisions that fit my vision for Ktistec but may surprise you. Here they are:

Every user is an administrator. That doesn't mean users have access to each other's posts and data, but it does mean all users have access to the shared parts of the site—they can change the site description, for example—and they can add new users. So only add people you trust.

If you want to add another user, create an account for them and give them their username and password.  There is no self-registration. There are no invitations.

Beyond adding a user, there is no support for user management. You can't even boot a user from your site. Users can delete themselves, however.

There is no support for content moderation. Only add people you trust.

TL;DR Multi-user support in Ktistec is suitable for small teams, families (biological or chosen), and your personal avatars. There are better tools for online communities.

Here's the full set of changes:

Added

• Add support for multiple user accounts.

Fixed

• Hide attachments behind the summary. (fixes #125)
• Mark actors as up after refreshing their profile.

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang

With the addition of the @ktistec account, Ktistec (the server) now supports multiple users.

I still have a few rough edges to fix, but there's a good chance official multi-user support will be included in the next release.

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang