## Why trails.cool has public activities and public profiles, but no way for users to build a network. A signed-in user's home today shows only their own activities; the visitor-facing home shows every instance's public activity indiscriminately. There's no "activities from people I care about" view, which is table stakes for a social outdoor journal and the differentiator that gives users a reason to sign up over just using the Planner. This change ships the *local* social layer: follows between users on the same Journal instance and a personal `/feed` aggregating their public activities. ActivityPub federation (cross-instance follows, inbox/outbox dispatch, Fedify integration) is deliberately deferred to a follow-up change `social-federation` so this lands in days rather than weeks. The schema is forward-compatible: when federation arrives, remote follows slot in without migration. ## What Changes - Add an explicit `users.profile_visibility` setting (`'public' | 'private'`). New accounts default to `'private'` (matches trails.cool's privacy-first content defaults); existing accounts are backfilled to `'public'` so deploy doesn't lock anyone down. `private` is functionally Mastodon's "locked" account: profile renders a stub with a Request-to-follow button for non-followers; only accepted followers see content; follows land Pending until the owner approves. - Users SHALL be able to follow another *local* user (same instance) by clicking a Follow / Request-to-follow button on the user's profile page. Public targets auto-accept; private targets create a Pending row that the owner approves or rejects from `/follows/requests`. - A signed-in user SHALL have a `/follows/requests` page listing all incoming Pending requests with Approve / Reject actions; the navbar shows a count badge linking to that page. - A signed-in user SHALL be able to view a **social feed** of public activities from the users they follow with an accepted relation, reverse-chronological, at a dedicated `/feed` route linked from the nav. - The logged-in home (`/`) SHALL link prominently to the new social feed; personal dashboard content stays as-is for now. - Profile pages SHALL show follower and following counts (accepted-only) and a context-aware Follow control (Follow / Request to follow / Requested / Unfollow). - Privacy: follower/following counts and lists are public per instance. Only `public` activities appear in the feed; pending follows don't contribute content. - Privacy manifest: documents the new `follows` relation as data the instance retains about who follows whom. - **Forward-compatible schema**: `follows` is keyed by an `actor_iri TEXT` column even though all rows are local now (local user IRIs look like `https://{DOMAIN}/users/{username}`). When `social-federation` lands, remote IRIs go in the same column with no migration. - **Out of scope** (tracked as follow-ups): - ActivityPub federation primitives — `social-federation`. Goal there is "Mastodon can follow a trails account" inbound and "trails can follow other trails instances" outbound. - A unified notification UI. The follow-request count badge is a one-off; broader notifications (e.g., "your follow request was approved", "new public activity from people you follow") will be designed in a follow-up. ## Capabilities ### New Capabilities - `social-follows`: the follow/unfollow graph (local now, federated later) and the aggregated social activity feed surfaced at `/feed`. ### Modified Capabilities - `public-profiles`: add a `profile_visibility` setting on users, gate `/users/:username` on it, and add Follow / Unfollow button + follower and following counts to the profile page. - `journal-landing`: add a prominent link from the signed-in home to the new `/feed` route; personal dashboard content stays. ## Impact - **Code**: new `follows` table (Drizzle + migration), new `users.profile_visibility` column. Queries for follower/following lists, aggregated feed query, new routes (`/feed`, `/users/:username/followers`, `/users/:username/following`), profile-visibility setting in account settings. - **API**: new endpoints `POST /api/users/:username/follow`, `POST /api/users/:username/unfollow`; existing public-profile and feed endpoints gain follower/following counts. - **UI**: Follow button + counts on `/users/:username`; new `/feed` route with card list (reuses the home-feed card component); nav item "Feed" visible to signed-in users; profile-visibility toggle in `/settings/profile`. - **Federation**: deferred to `social-federation`. The schema's IRI key + `users.profile_visibility` are placed now so the federation change is additive (no schema rewrite). - **Dependencies**: none new; `drizzle-kit push` handles the schema migration. - **Privacy manifest**: new entry documenting the `follows` relation (which user follows whom on this instance, when). - **Operational**: the social feed query joins follows with activities; the existing index on `activities(created_at)` plus a new `(follower_id, created_at DESC)` on `follows` keeps the join cheap to thousands of follows per user.