trails/openspec/specs/social-follows/spec.md

social-follows Specification

Purpose

TBD - created by archiving change social-feed. Update Purpose after archive.

Requirements

Requirement: Follow another user

A signed-in user SHALL be able to follow another local user from a profile page. Public targets auto-accept (accepted_at = now()); private (locked) targets land in a Pending state (accepted_at = NULL) until the target approves the request from /follows/requests. Following remote ActivityPub actors is out of scope here and tracked in the social-federation change.

Scenario: Follow a local public profile

• WHEN a signed-in user clicks "Follow" on a local user with profile_visibility = 'public'
• THEN a follow row is recorded with accepted_at = now(), the button becomes "Unfollow", and the target's follower count increments

Scenario: Follow a local private (locked) profile

• WHEN a signed-in user clicks "Request to follow" on a local user with profile_visibility = 'private'
• THEN a follow row is recorded with accepted_at = NULL, the button becomes "Requested" (cancellable), the request appears in the target's /follows/requests page, and the target's follower count does NOT increment

Scenario: Cannot follow yourself

• WHEN a signed-in user attempts to follow their own profile
• THEN the follow API returns an error (4xx) and no follow row is created

Scenario: Unfollow (or cancel a Pending request)

• WHEN the follower clicks "Unfollow" or "Requested" on a profile they currently have a follow row against
• THEN the follow row is deleted regardless of state; the target's follower count decrements only if the row had been accepted

Scenario: Owner approves a Pending request

• WHEN a private user POSTs to /api/follows/:id/approve for a Pending row targeting them
• THEN the row's accepted_at is set to now(), the requester transitions from "Requested" to "Unfollow" view, and the target's follower count increments

Scenario: Owner rejects a Pending request

• WHEN a private user POSTs to /api/follows/:id/reject for a Pending row targeting them
• THEN the row is deleted; the requester sees the "Request to follow" state again and can re-request later

Scenario: Approve/reject is owner-bound

• WHEN any user other than the followed party POSTs /api/follows/:id/approve or /reject
• THEN the API returns 404 (no leak of who the row targets) and the row state is unchanged

Requirement: Follower and following collections

Every local user SHALL expose follower and following counts on their profile and paginated collection pages, listing only accepted relations. Pending requests do not count toward the public tallies.

Scenario: Follower count on profile

• WHEN any visitor loads a profile (public or private stub)
• THEN the page displays the follower and following counts of accepted relations, linking to paginated /users/:username/followers and /users/:username/following pages

Scenario: Collection pagination

• WHEN a visitor loads /users/:username/followers or /users/:username/following
• THEN the page lists the accepted relations in reverse-chronological order of acceptance, 50 per page

Requirement: Pending follow request management

A signed-in user SHALL have a dedicated /follows/requests page listing every Pending follow request targeting them (where followed_user_id = currentUser.id AND accepted_at IS NULL). The page SHALL provide Approve and Reject actions for each request. The navbar SHALL surface a count badge linking to this page when at least one request is pending.

Scenario: Owner sees their pending requests

• WHEN a signed-in user with N Pending incoming requests loads /follows/requests
• THEN the page lists all N requests reverse-chronologically by request creation time, with Approve and Reject buttons per request

Scenario: Empty requests page

• WHEN a signed-in user with zero pending requests loads /follows/requests
• THEN the page renders an empty-state message

Scenario: Anonymous visitor cannot access requests page

• WHEN an unauthenticated visitor requests /follows/requests
• THEN they are redirected to /auth/login

Scenario: Navbar badge reflects pending count

• WHEN a signed-in user has N > 0 pending follow requests
• THEN the "Follow requests" link in the navbar renders with a small red count badge of N; when N = 0 the link still renders but without a badge

Requirement: Social activity feed

The Journal SHALL expose a feed at /feed, visible only to signed-in users, listing public activities from the local users they follow with an accepted relation. private and unlisted activities SHALL NOT appear regardless of follow state. Pending follows SHALL NOT contribute content to the feed.

Scenario: Feed aggregates accepted-followed users' public activities

• WHEN a signed-in user with one or more accepted follows loads /feed
• THEN the page shows the most recent public activities across all accepted-followed users, reverse-chronological, up to 50 per page, with owner attribution, distance, date, and a map thumbnail

Scenario: Pending follows don't contribute to the feed

• WHEN a signed-in user has only Pending follows (no acceptance yet)
• THEN the feed renders the empty state — no Pending-target content is fetched or shown

Scenario: Empty feed state

• WHEN a signed-in user with zero accepted follows loads /feed
• THEN the page shows an empty-state message pointing them to /users/:username pages to follow someone, and suggests the instance public feed as an alternative

Scenario: Logged-out visitor cannot access the feed

• WHEN an unauthenticated visitor requests /feed
• THEN they are redirected to /auth/login

Requirement: Schema is forward-compatible with federation

The follows table SHALL key the followed side by an actor_iri TEXT column (not a plain user FK), so the social-federation change can store remote IRIs in the same column without migration. Local follows SHALL populate actor_iri with the local user's canonical actor IRI (https://{DOMAIN}/users/{username}).

Scenario: Local follow stores both IRI and FK

• WHEN a local user A follows local user B
• THEN the follow row has followed_actor_iri = 'https://{DOMAIN}/users/{B.username}' AND followed_user_id = B.id

Scenario: Lifecycle column already supports Pending

• WHEN any local follow row is created against a private target in this change
• THEN accepted_at is set to NULL; against a public target it is set to now(). Federation's remote-Pending state lands here without schema change