09abd5708e
Ullrich's notes from the first real federation exchange (2026-06-06/07 staging ↔ Mastodon soak), expanded with the constraints the soak surfaced: route map images in Notes, fediverse kudos (inbound Like/Announce), comments from the fediverse, planned routes as Events (Mobilizon), Wanderer interop, federated explore. The fourth note item — remote follower counted but not listed — was a bug, fixed separately in #475. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
70 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
70 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
# Fediverse enhancements (post social-federation v1)
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Pre-spec exploration. Collected during the 2026-06-06/07 staging soak —
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the first real federation exchange between trails.cool (staging) and a
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Mastodon instance — partly from Ullrich's notes, partly from what the
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soak itself surfaced. Everything here builds on the shipped v1
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foundation (keys, inbox, outbox, push delivery, dereferenceable Notes).
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## Near-term (high demo value, each roughly a day)
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### Route map images in Notes
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Attach a rendered map preview (`Document`, image/png) to outgoing
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`Create(Note)` activities so Mastodon timelines show *the route*, not
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just text. The archived `journal-route-previews` change already renders
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previews; this is plumbing, not new rendering. Single highest-impact
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small change — an activity post with a map is a self-advertising
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artifact every time someone boosts it.
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### Fediverse kudos
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Mastodon users can already favorite/boost federated activities; our
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narrow inbox currently drops the resulting `Like`/`Announce` silently
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(by design for v1). Counting them — a `kudos` tally per activity, "12
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kudos from the fediverse" on the activity page — extends the inbox by
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two activity types with trivially small attack surface (no content,
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just references to our own objects). Undo(Like)/Undo(Announce)
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decrement.
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### Comments from the fediverse
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Mastodon replies to a federated activity (`Create(Note)` with
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`inReplyTo` pointing at our object) shown as comments on the activity
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page. This deliberately opens the inbound-content door the v1 design
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kept shut, so it needs the moderation/abuse story first (per-instance
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blocklist at minimum, probably report handling). The engagement payoff
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is large; the scope is the largest of the near-term items.
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## Future
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### Planned routes as Events
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Publish group rides/hikes as ActivityPub `Event` objects → Mobilizon
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and Gancio users can RSVP from their instances. Plan in the Planner,
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announce to the fediverse, meet at the trailhead. Pairs naturally with
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multi-day routes and would make trails.cool the only outdoor platform
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with federated event organizing.
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### Interop with Wanderer
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[Wanderer](https://wanderer.to) is a federated trail-sharing platform
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that already speaks ActivityPub. The trails-to-trails outbound check
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(social-federation §6) keys on NodeInfo `software.name`; generalizing
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the allowlist to include Wanderer (and rebranded trails forks — an open
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question in the design doc already) could connect two outdoor networks
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instead of bootstrapping one. Requires mapping their activity/trail
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vocabulary to ours — scope unknown until we read their AS shapes.
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### Federated explore
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Opt-in relay (or peer crawl of trails-instance outboxes) aggregating
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public routes across instances so `/explore` shows the network's best
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routes, not just the local instance's. Pairs with `route-discovery`
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(spatial search) post-launch; the relay also gives self-hosters
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discoverability from day one.
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## Soak learnings that constrain these (see social-federation design.md)
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- Mastodon requires `attachment` arrays and tombstones deleted URIs
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forever — every new outgoing shape should be verified against a real
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instance early, not from the spec.
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- Inbound content (kudos, comments) must go through the async queue —
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Mastodon's 10s delivery timeout is unforgiving.
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- The `activities.owner_id NOT NULL` question (remote rows have no
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local owner) bites comments-from-fediverse too, not just §7 outbox
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ingestion — resolve it once, for both.
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