.. . .. ..
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., . . . . .. . .. . .
. . . .. .. .... . . . . .. ..
. .. ... . . . . . .. . .
. . . .. . .. ...' .. . . . . .
. . . . . __ . .__ _ __ ,; .'. . . ....
. . . / /____ ___ /./_(_) /__ .' .. . . . .
.. ... . . . /.__/ _ \/ _ \/ __/./ '_/. . .. . . .
.' ... . \__/\___/\___/\__/_/_/\_\ . . . .
. . . . . . ... ... . . ..
.. .. . . .... .. . . .. . . . . . ... ....' .
... . . . .. . ... ... . .. .. .,.. .....
. .. ...... . .''. . .. . . . ...
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. .... '... ... . . .. . ... . '. ' ...
# localhost.localdomain:8443
Welcome, fedinaut! localhost.localdomain:8443 is an instance of tootik, a federated nanoblogging service.
────
📻 My feed
📞 Mentions
⚡️ Followed users
😈 My profile
📡 Local feed
🏕️ Communities
🔥 Hashtags
🔭 View profile
🔎 Search posts
📣 New post
⚙️ Settings
📊 Status
🛟 Help
tootik is a federated, text-based social network. A tootik user can interact with others on the same instance, users on other tootik instances, Mastodon users, Lemmy users and users of other ActivityPub-compatible servers. Unlike other social networks, tootik doesn't have a browser-based interface or an app: instead, its minimalistic, text-based interface is served over Gemini:
Gemini ActivityPub (HTTPS)
→ ⇄
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┌─────────────────────────┐
┃ Bob's Gemini client ┣━━━┫ tootik instance ┠─┬─┤ Another tootik instance │
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ │ └─────────────────────────┘
┃2024-01-01 alice ┃ ┃$ ./tootik ... ┃ │ ┌────────────────┐
┃> Hi @bob and @carol! ┃ ┗━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ ├─┤ Something else │
┃... ┃ ┃ │ └────────────────┘
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ ┃ │ ┌───────────────────┐
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┓ └─┤ Mastodon instance ├─┐
┃ Alice's Gemini client ┃ └───────────────────┘ │
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ ┌──────────────────┴────┐
┃2024-01-01 bob ┃ │ Carol's web browser │
┃> Hi @alice! ┃ ├───────────────────────┤
┃... ┃ │╔═╗ alice │
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ │╚═╝ 17h ago│
│Hi @bob and @carol! │
│ │
│ ╔═╗ bob │
│ ╚═╝ 16h ago│
│ Hi @alice! │
├───────────────────────┤
│┌────────────┐┌───────┐│
││ Hola ││Publish││
│└────────────┘└───────┘│
└───────────────────────┘
This makes tootik lightweight, private and accessible:
- Its UI supports Gemini, Gopher, Finger and Guppy: there's a wide variety of clients to choose from and some work great on old devices.
- Rich content is reduced to plain text and links: it's a fast, low-bandwidth UI suitable for screen readers.
- Anonymity: you authenticate using a TLS client certificate and don't have to share your email address or real name.
- No promoted content, tracking or analytics: social networking, with the slow and non-commercial vibe of the small internet.
- It's a single static executable, making it easy to set up your own instance instead of joining an existing one.
- All instance data is stored in a single file, a sqlite database that is easy to backup and restore.
- It's lightweight: a <=$5/mo VPS or a SBC is more than enough for a small instance.
- It implements the subset of ActivityPub required for its feature set but not more, to stay small, reliable and maintainable.
- It's written in two languages (Go and SQL), making the codebase suitable for educational purposes and easy to hack on.
- It's permissively-licensed.
- Good compatibility with various fediverse servers
- Text posts, with 3 privacy levels
- Public
- To followers
- To mentioned users
- Sharing of public posts
- Users can follow each other to see non-public posts
- With support for Mastodon's follower synchronization mechanism, aka FEP-8fcf
- Multi-choice polls
- Lemmy-style communities
- Follow to join
- Mention community in a public post to start thread
- Community sends posts and replies to all members
- Full-text search within posts
- Upload of posts and user avatars, over Titan
- Account migration, in both directions
You can join an existing instance or set up your own.
go generate ./migrations
Then:
go build ./cmd/tootik -tags fts5
or, to build a static executable:
go build -tags netgo,sqlite_omit_load_extension,fts5 -ldflags "-linkmode external -extldflags -static" ./cmd/tootik
┏━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ notes ┃ ┃ shares ┃ ┃ persons ┃ ┃ follows ┃
┣━━━━━━━┫ ┣━━━━━━━━┫ ┣━━━━━━━━━┫ ┣━━━━━━━━━┫
┃object ┃ ┃note ┃ ┃actor ┃ ┃follower ┃
┃author ┃ ┃by ┃ ┃... ┃ ┃followed ┃
┃... ┃ ┃... ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃... ┃
┗━━━━━━━┛ ┗━━━━━━━━┛ ┗━━━━━━━━━┛ ┗━━━━━━━━━┛
Most user-visible data is stored in 4 tables in tootik's database:
notes, which contains Object objects that represent postsshares, which records "user A shared post B" relationshipspersons, which contains Actor objects that represent usersfollows, which records "user A follows user B" relationships
notes.author, shares.by, follows.follower and follows.followed point to a row in persons.
shares.note points to a row in notes.
┌───────┐ ┌────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┏━━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━━━━┓
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ ┃ outbox ┃ ┃ inbox ┃
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ┣━━━━━━━━┫ ┣━━━━━━━━┫
│object │ │note │ │actor │ │follower │ ┃activity┃ ┃activity┃
│author │ │by │ │... │ │followed │ ┃sender ┃ ┃sender ┃
│... │ │... │ │ │ │... │ ┃... ┃ ┃... ┃
└───────┘ └────────┘ └─────────┘ └─────────┘ ┗━━━━━━━━┛ ┗━━━━━━━━┛
Federation happens through two tables, inbox and outbox. Both contain Activity objects that represent actions performed by the users in persons.
inbox contains activities by users on other servers, while outbox contains activities of local users.
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ gemini.Listener ┃
┗━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┛
┏━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ front.Handler ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┛
┌───────┐ ┌────────┐ ┌────┸────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌────────┐ ┌────────┐
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ │ outbox │ │ inbox │
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├────────┤ ├────────┤
│object │ │note │ │actor │ │follower │ │activity│ │activity│
│author │ │by │ │... │ │followed │ │sender │ │sender │
│... │ │... │ │ │ │... │ │... │ │... │
└───────┘ └────────┘ └────┰────┘ └─────────┘ └────────┘ └────────┘
┃
┏━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━┓
┃ fed.Resolver ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
gemini.Listener is a Gemini server that handles requests using Handler. It adds rows to persons during new user registration and changes rows when users change properties like their display name.
Resolver is responsible for fetching Actors that represents users of other servers, using user@domain pairs and WebFinger. The fetched objects are cached in persons.
┌─────────────────┐
│ gemini.Listener │
└────────┬────────┘
┌────────┴─────────┐
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┥ front.Handler │
┃ └┰────────┬───────┰┘
┌───┸───┐ ┌──────┸─┐ ┌────┴────┐ ┌┸────────┐ ┌────────┐ ┌────────┐
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ │ outbox │ │ inbox │
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├────────┤ ├────────┤
│object │ │note │ │actor │ │follower │ │activity│ │activity│
│author │ │by │ │... │ │followed │ │sender │ │sender │
│... │ │... │ │ │ │... │ │... │ │... │
└───────┘ └────────┘ └────┬────┘ └─────────┘ └────────┘ └────────┘
│
┌───────┴──────┐
│ fed.Resolver │
└──────────────┘
In addition, Gemini requests can:
- Add rows to
notes(new post) - Change rows in
notes(post editing) - Add rows to
shares(user shares a post) - Remove rows from
shares(user no longer shares a post) - Add rows to
follows(user A followed user B) - Remove rows from
follows(user A unfollowed user B) - ...
┌─────────────────┐
│ gemini.Listener │
└────────┬────────┘
┌────────┴─────────┐
┌───────────┤ front.Handler ┝━━━━━━━━━━━┓
│ └┬────────┬───────┬┘ ┃
┌───┴───┐ ┌──────┴─┐ ┌────┴────┐ ┌┴────────┐ ┌─┸──────┐ ┌────────┐
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ │ outbox │ │ inbox │
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├────────┤ ├────────┤
│object │ │note │ │actor │ │follower │ │activity│ │activity│
│author │ │by │ │... │ │followed │ │sender │ │sender │
│... │ │... │ │ │ │... │ │... │ │... │
└───────┘ └────────┘ └────┬────┘ └───────┰─┘ └┰───────┘ └────────┘
│ ┏┻━━━━┻━━━━━┓
┌───────┴──────┐ ┃ fed.Queue ┃
│ fed.Resolver │ ┗━━━━━━━━━━━┛
└──────────────┘
User actions like post creation or deletion are recorded as Activity objects written to outbox.
fed.Queue polls outbox and delivers these activities to followers on other servers. It uses the deliveries table to track delivery progress and retry failed deliveries.
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┌─────────────────┐ ┃ outbox.Mover ┃
│ gemini.Listener │ ┃ outbox.Poller ┃
└────────┬────────┘ ┃ fed.Syncer ┃
┌────────┴─────────┐ ┗━━━┳━━━━━┳━━━━━┛
┌───────────┤ front.Handler ├──────╂────┐┃
│ └┬────────┬───────┬┘ ┃ │┃
┌───┴───┐ ┌──────┴─┐ ┌────┴────┐ ┌┴───────┸┐ ┌─┴┸─────┐ ┌────────┐
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ │ outbox │ │ inbox │
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├────────┤ ├────────┤
│object │ │note │ │actor │ │follower │ │activity│ │activity│
│author │ │by │ │... │ │followed │ │sender │ │sender │
│... │ │... │ │ │ │... │ │... │ │... │
└───────┘ └────────┘ └────┬────┘ └───────┬─┘ └┬───────┘ └────────┘
│ ┌┴────┴─────┐
┌───────┴──────┐ │ fed.Queue │
│ fed.Resolver │ └───────────┘
└──────────────┘
tootik may perform automatic actions in the name of the user:
- Follow the new account and unfollow the old one, if a followed user moved their account
- Update poll results for polls published by the user, and send the new results to followers
- Handle disagreement between
followsrows for this user and what other servers know
┌───────────────┐
┌─────────────────┐ │ outbox.Mover │
│ gemini.Listener │ │ outbox.Poller │
└────────┬────────┘ │ fed.Syncer │
┌────────┴─────────┐ └───┬─────┬─────┘ ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┌───────────┤ front.Handler ├──────┼────┐│ ┏━━┫ fed.Listener ┣━━━━━━┓
│ └┬────────┬───────┬┘ │ ││ ┃ ┗━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┛ ┃
┌───┴───┐ ┌──────┴─┐ ┌────┴────┐ ┌┴───────┴┐ ┌─┴┴────┸┐ ┌─────┸──┐ ┃
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ │ outbox │ │ inbox │ ┃
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├────────┤ ├────────┤ ┃
│object │ │note │ │actor │ │follower │ │activity│ │activity│ ┃
│author │ │by │ │... │ │followed │ │sender │ │sender │ ┃
│... │ │... │ │ │ │... │ │... │ │... │ ┃
└───────┘ └────────┘ └────┬────┘ └───────┬─┘ └┬───────┘ └────────┘ ┃
│ ┌┴────┴─────┐ ┃
┌───────┴──────┐ │ fed.Queue │ ┃
│ fed.Resolver │ └───────────┘ ┃
└───────┰──────┘ ┃
┃ ┃
┃ ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Requests from other servers are handled by fed.Listener, a HTTP server.
It extracts the signature and key ID from a request using httpsig.Extract, uses Resolver to fetch the public key if needed, validates the request using Verify and inserts the received Activity object into inbox.
In addition, fed.Listener allows other servers to fetch public activity (like public posts) from outbox, so they can fetch some past activity by a newly-followed user.
┌───────────────┐
┌─────────────────┐ │ outbox.Mover │
│ gemini.Listener │ │ outbox.Poller │
└────────┬────────┘ │ fed.Syncer │
┌────────┴─────────┐ └───┬─────┬─────┘ ┌──────────────┐
┌───────────┤ front.Handler ├──────┼────┐│ ┌──┤ fed.Listener ├──────┐
│ └┬────────┬───────┬┘ │ ││ │ └─────┬────────┘ │
┌───┴───┐ ┌──────┴─┐ ┌────┴────┐ ┌┴───────┴┐ ┌─┴┴────┴┐ ┌─────┴──┐ │
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ │ outbox │ │ inbox │ │
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├────────┤ ├────────┤ │
│object │ │note │ │actor │ │follower │ │activity│ │activity│ │
│author │ │by │ │... │ │followed │ │sender │ │sender │ │
│... │ │... │ │ │ │... │ │... │ │... │ │
└───┰───┘ └───┰────┘ └────┬────┘ └────┰──┬─┘ └┬───────┘ └──────┰─┘ │
┃ ┃ │ ┃ ┌┴────┴─────┐ ┏━━━━┻━━━━━━━━┓ │
┃ ┃ ┌───────┴──────┐ ┃ │ fed.Queue │ ┃ inbox.Queue ┃ │
┃ ┃ │ fed.Resolver │ ┃ └───────────┘ ┗━┳━┳━┳━━━━━━━┛ │
┃ ┃ └───────┬──────┘ ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ ┃ ┃ │
┃ ┗━━━━━━━━━━━┿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ ┃ │
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┿━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Once inserted into inbox, inbox.Queue processes the received activities:
- Adds new posts received in
Createactivities tonotes - Edits post in
notesaccording toUpdateactivities - Records
Announceactivities inshares - Marks a follower-followed relationship in
followsas accepted, when the followed user sends anAcceptactivity - Adds a new row to
followswhen a remote user sends aFollowactivity to a local user - ...
┌───────────────┐
┌─────────────────┐ │ outbox.Mover │
│ gemini.Listener │ │ outbox.Poller │
└────────┬────────┘ │ fed.Syncer │
┌────────┴─────────┐ └───┬─────┬─────┘ ┌──────────────┐
┌───────────┤ front.Handler ├──────┼────┐│ ┌──┤ fed.Listener ├──────┐
│ └┬────────┬───────┬┘ │ ││ │ └─────┬────────┘ │
┌───┴───┐ ┌──────┴─┐ ┌────┴────┐ ┌┴───────┴┐ ┌─┴┴────┴┐ ┌─────┴──┐ │
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ │ outbox │ │ inbox │ │
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├────────┤ ├────────┤ │
│object │ │note │ │actor │ │follower │ │activity│ │activity│ │
│author │ │by │ │... │ │followed │ │sender │ │sender │ │
│... │ │... │ │ │ │... │ │... │ │... │ │
└───┬───┘ └───┬────┘ └────┬────┘ └────┬──┬─┘ └┬──────┰┘ └──────┬─┘ │
│ │ │ │ ┌┴────┴─────┐┃ ┌────┴────────┐ │
│ │ ┌───────┴──────┐ │ │ fed.Queue │┗━━━━┥ inbox.Queue │ │
│ │ │ fed.Resolver │ │ └───────────┘ └─┬─┬─┬───────┘ │
│ │ └───────┬──────┘ └─────────────────────┘ │ │ │
│ └───────────┼───────────────────────────────────┘ │ │
└─────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Sometimes, a received or newly created local Activity is forwarded to the followers of a local user:
- When a remote user replies in a thread started by a local user, the received Activity is inserted into
outboxand forwarded to all followers of the local user. - When a user creates a new post, edits a post or deletes a post in a local community, the Activity is inserted into
outboxand forwarded to all community members.
┌───────────────┐
┌─────────────────┐ │ outbox.Mover │
│ gemini.Listener │ │ outbox.Poller │
└────────┬────────┘ │ fed.Syncer │
┌────────┴─────────┐ └───┬─────┬─────┘ ┌──────────────┐
┌───────────┤ front.Handler ├──────┼────┐│ ┌──┤ fed.Listener ├──────┐
│ └┬────────┬───────┬┘ │ ││ │ └─────┬────────┘ │
┌───┴───┐ ┌──────┴─┐ ┌────┴────┐ ┌┴───────┴┐ ┌─┴┴────┴┐ ┌─────┴──┐ │
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ │ outbox │ │ inbox │ │
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├────────┤ ├────────┤ │
│object │ │note │ │actor │ │follower │ │activity│ │activity│ │
│author │ │by │ │... │ │followed │ │sender │ │sender │ │
│... │ │... │ │ │ │... │ │... │ │... │ │
└───┬───┘ └───┬────┘ └────┬────┘ └────┬──┬─┘ └┬──────┬┘ └──────┬─┘ │
│ │ │ │ ┌┴────┴─────┐│ ┌────┴────────┐ │
│ │ ┌───────┴──────┐ │ │ fed.Queue │└────┤ inbox.Queue │ │
│ │ │ fed.Resolver │ │ └───────────┘ └─┬─┬─┬─┰─────┘ │
│ │ └───────┬─┰────┘ └─────────────────────┘ │ │ ┃ │
│ └───────────┼─╂─────────────────────────────────┘ │ ┃ │
└─────────────────────┼─╂───────────────────────────────────┘ ┃ │
└─╂─────────────────────────────────────╂───────────┘
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
To display details like the user's name and speed up the verification of future incoming replies, inbox.Queue uses Resolver to fetch the Actor objects of mentioned users (if needed).
┌───────────────┐
┌─────────────────┐ │ outbox.Mover │
│ gemini.Listener │ │ outbox.Poller │
└────────┬────────┘ │ fed.Syncer │
┌────────┴─────────┐ └───┬─────┬─────┘ ┌──────────────┐
┌───────────┤ front.Handler ├──────┼────┐│ ┌──┤ fed.Listener ├──────┐
│ └┬────────┬───────┬┘ │ ││ │ └─────┬────────┘ │
┌───┴───┐ ┌──────┴─┐ ┌────┴────┐ ┌┴───────┴┐ ┌─┴┴────┴┐ ┌─────┴──┐ ┏━━━━━━━━┓ │
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ │ outbox │ │ inbox │ ┃ feed ┃ │
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├────────┤ ├────────┤ ┣━━━━━━━━┫ │
│object │ │note │ │actor │ │follower │ │activity│ │activity│ ┃follower┃ │
│author │ │by │ │... │ │followed │ │sender │ │sender │ ┃note ┃ │
│... │ │... │ │ │ │... │ │... │ │... │ ┃... ┃ │
└─┰─┬───┘ └─┰─┬────┘ └──┰─┬────┘ └──┰─┬──┬─┘ └┬──────┬┘ └──────┬─┘ ┗━━━━━━┳━┛ │
┃ │ ┃ │ ┏━━━━━━━┛ │ ┃ │ ┌┴────┴─────┐│ ┌────┴────────┐ ┃ │
┃ │ ┃ │ ┃ ┌───────┴──────┐ ┃ │ │ fed.Queue │└────┤ inbox.Queue │ ┃ │
┃ │ ┃ │ ┃ │ fed.Resolver │ ┃ │ └───────────┘ └─┬─┬─┬─┬─────┘ ┃ │
┃ │ ┃ │ ┃ └───────┬─┬────┘ ┃ └─────────────────────┘ │ │ │ ┃ │
┃ │ ┃ └─╂─────────┼─┼───────╂─────────────────────────┘ │ │ ┃ │
┃ └───────╂───╂─────────┼─┼───────╂───────────────────────────┘ │ ┃ │
┃ ┃ ┃ └─┼───────╂─────────────────────────────┼───────╂───┘
┏━┻━━━━━━━━━┻━━━┻━━━┓ └───────╂─────────────────────────────┘ ┃
┃ inbox.FeedUpdater ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┛ ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
To speed up each user's feed, inbox.FeedUpdater periodically appends rows to the feed table. This table holds all information that appears in the user's feed: posts written or shared by followed users, author information and more, eliminating the need for join queries, slow filtering by post visibility, deduplication and sorting by time when a user views their feed. This table is indexed by user and time, allowing fast querying of a single feed page for a particular user.
tootik is free and unencumbered software released under the terms of the Apache License Version 2.0; see LICENSE for the license text.
The ASCII art logo at the top was made using FIGlet.