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

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

The biggest changes in release v2.4.12 of Ktistec are the UI/UX enhancements. The mobile profile, in particular, felt like an afterthought—which it was. The changes make the mobile experience much more pleasant and ergonomic. All of the credit for this work goes to @jayvii.

This release also now refuses to deserialize and use embedded ActivityPub objects from hosts other than the host of the embedding object. While I haven't encountered any problems with the previous implementation in practice, this fix closes a gap that could be exploited by a bad actor to spoof or change content.

Added

• Add follow request status to the actor panel.
• Compute and cache monthly active accounts.

Changed

• (Internal) Only consider properties with changed values as "changed".
• (Internal) Only deserialize embedded ActivityPub objects if hosts match.

Fixed

• Remove line breaks in Turbo Stream output.

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang

Ktistec is taking steps toward supporting multiple users. The first (small) step removes the actor panel from the unauthenticated home page and replaces it with a site description. You can see this in action at epiktistes.com. The site description is managed on the settings page using the same rich text editor used to edit posts. See the README for more information.

Other changes in this release:

Added

• Support a "site description" on the unauthenticated home page.
• Support autofocus on onboarding and authentication forms.
• Add trix_editor view helper.

Changed

• Remove accounts from unauthenticated home page.
• Persist timeline filters in session.

Fixed

• Exclude abstract classes from all_types output. (fixes #104)
• Work around bug in at_beginning_of_week. (see crystal-lang/crystal#16112)

Other

• Disable streaming updates on pages other than the first. (fixes #118)
• Pin Crystal version at 1.16.3 in Docker build. (see libxml_ext#1)

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang