Owner decision of 2026-10-06: a persona's public or unlisted post outside any group names its replies
(…/scribbles/{id}/replies) and its conversation's context (FEP-7888), the root's …/context that a reply inherits from
its parent, ours or another server's. Both list only the public and unlisted posts PrivaPub holds; followers-only,
circle, direct and local-only posts name neither and their collections answer 404. Checked live: opening alice's
thread on Mastodon finds carol's reply, which nobody there follows (scenarios/threads.sh).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
Two owner decisions of 2026-10-05, both recorded in ROADMAP:
- After a verified Move the personas following the old account follow the new one, in the same lists, and a mute or
block of the old account carries over, as Mastodon does it.
- A direct message to one account on a server whose NodeInfo names Lemmy before 1.0 or Mbin goes as a ChatMessage,
the one place PrivaPub decides by a server's software (invariant 17). G-0008 is closed.
Mbin addresses its private messages to the recipient's profile page, so a Create addressed to a persona's /@name now
reaches the persona. Checked live: moves 8/8, Lemmy 0.19 30/30, Mbin 26/26 with messages both ways. The software
theory runs alone, since every test's peer shares 127.0.0.1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
Lemmy 0.19 (most of the threadiverse) and Mbin take a private message only
as a ChatMessage and refuse a direct Note. A direct message to one account
elsewhere that writes to us as ChatMessages now goes out as one: to it
alone, without a mention in its text, kept on the post (Post.AsChatMessage)
so the served copy and an edit match. No software name decides it.
Live against Lemmy 0.19: alice's answer to lemmyuser's private message and
another persona's message to lemmyuser arrive (29 checks). A first message
to an account that never wrote to anyone here is still a Note, which they
refuse; G-0008 keeps that open for the owner.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
A remote post's canReply, canLike and canAnnounce (with the older always and approvalRequired) are kept beside
canQuote and judged for each persona: let in at once when the rule names the public, the persona, the author's
followers while it follows the author, or the accounts the author follows while the author follows it; asked first
when only the manual list names it; refused (422) otherwise. Asked first, a ReplyRequest, LikeRequest or
AnnounceRequest with the interaction as its instrument goes to the author alone, and the interaction waits
(privapub.approval: pending). The author's Accept brings an authorization, verified on the author's origin as naming the
interaction and the post; the reply then goes out with replyAuthorization, the boost with announceAuthorization, the
like with likeAuthorization. A Reject leaves the reply ours alone and takes a like or a boost back. As a third party, a
reply a policy does not let in at once is kept only with an authorization that verifies. Clients see the rules as
GoToSocial's interaction_policy.
Checked live against GoToSocial 0.22.1: the scenario's nine new checks pass (64 in all), a reply and a like approved
through its interaction requests and a boost refused.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
Lemmy's moderation reached PrivaPub only as removals. Now a remote
community's lock and ban, relayed in its Announce, apply too:
- a lock (Announce{Lock}, or commentsEnabled false on the post) refuses
replies to the thread, ours included, until Undo{Lock}; statuses say so
in privapub.locked;
- a ban of a persona (Announce{Block} with the community as target, or the
moderator's own Block sent straight to us, which is the community's ban
and never the moderator's block of the persona) shows as blocked_by on
the community and refuses the persona's posts and replies there until
the Undo.
The Lemmy scenario's removal was an expected failure only because it gave
up before Lemmy's 30-second batch; it now waits, and checks the lock and
the ban live (Lemmy refuses a lock or an unban without a reason): 29
checks, none expected to fail. G-0003 and G-0006 are closed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
/api/v1/conversations answered one page, never unread, its read endpoint
did nothing, and DELETE was missing; each conversation cost a query per
member. Now each conversation keeps its newest post (DmGroup.LastPostId,
set as posts arrive, learnt once by migration _013) and pages by it as
Mastodon does, and each persona's ConversationState holds what it read and
what it took off its list:
- unread when someone else wrote last, after what the persona read;
- read marks it so, and writing in a conversation reads it;
- DELETE takes it off the list until a newer message brings it back.
The list reads its states, newest posts, members and accounts in a few
queries per page.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
A comment in a community was announced only as Announce{Create}, which
Akkoma, Mastodon and Misskey drop: their members never saw it (the village
found Akkoma's missing). A comment is now also announced as itself, as a
new post already was; Lemmy answers that form 400, harmlessly. Nothing is
decided by the follower's software.
The town's checker expects a followers-only quote to stay with the
followers, and G-0003 covers only Lemmy-hosted communities (their relayed
moderation), since relayed likes count.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
Mastodon's streaming API: /api/v1/streaming as a WebSocket (streams
subscribed in the URL or by message) and /api/v1/streaming/{stream} as
server-sent events, with health and the URL advertised. The user stream
tells posts reaching the persona's home (not those an exclusive list keeps
apart, which its list stream tells), notifications, edits and deletions;
public, hashtag and list streams tell what belongs in them. An in-process
hub carries ids only; each connection maps a post or a notification for its
own persona as it sends it, so nothing it may not see, or whose author it
blocked or muted, goes out. A deletion reaches only the streams that showed
the post. The token comes as access_token, header or WebSocket protocol.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
A boost and its undo went to the author's personal inbox and to the shared
inbox of its server's followers: two copies at once, which Misskey counted
twice as it processed them and undid once (seen in decePub's e2e boost on
Misskey). The author's server now gets them through its shared inbox, as
Mastodon sends them; a like still goes to the author's own inbox.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
Every boost of a post was announce-{post}, and every favourite like-{post}:
after an Undo, giving it again made the same activity id, which the
delivery queue had already delivered and dropped (and a server that
remembers ids would ignore). Found by decePub's e2e actions against the
pasture, which unboost and boost again. Now each boost and favourite is an
activity of its own, as Mastodon's are, and an Undo names the one it ends;
a concurrent second boost is removed after saving. An edit's Update is
named to the millisecond, a quote approval's to the tick.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
A reply whose text had lost the @name of the author it answers (decePub
prefills it, a reader may delete it) was addressed to nobody on the
author's server. PrivaPub delivered it to the author's inbox anyway, but
GoToSocial keeps only what is addressed to someone there, so the reply
never appeared under the post. A public or unlisted reply to a remote
post now names its parent's author in cc, as Pleroma does; the reply
already says whom it answers, so nothing new is revealed. The parent
author's actor id is kept on the reply (InReplyToActorURI).
Found by decePub's end-to-end tests on the town.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
Owner decision 2026-10-04: fix the mismatches and every other mismatch of the same kind.
- One counting rule (Domain/Privacy/Counted), Mastodon's. It is used for a persona's statuses_count, its outbox
totalItems, NodeInfo localPosts and the instance status_count, which used to count four different things. It
counts every post that is neither deleted nor a DM, boosts included, and circle and located posts too (owner
decision). A group's count includes its remote members' posts.
- Users. Personas of banned or deleted roots no longer count, and are not found in search. NodeInfo now gives
activeMonth and activeHalfyear, and the v2 instance gives active_month instead of a constant 0.
- replies_count counts only public and unlisted replies, so it no longer tells anyone that a private reply exists.
Migration _012 recounts it.
- A remote account that deletes itself takes everything out of every count (GoneActors): its likes, downvotes,
reactions and poll votes go and their counters come back, as do its boosts', replies' and quotes' counts, and its
notifications. Lookups, account lists, search and favourited_by no longer show it. Migration _012 applies this to
accounts already gone.
- Deleting a post also deletes its pins and the local boosts of it.
- /stalking gives the same total as following_count. Members are still never listed, and hide_collections is now
always true, since the setting never did anything.
- Joining a community by invitation is following it, so /flock and /groupies agree; leaving unfollows.
- Search. Anyone may search, as on Mastodon; resolve and offset need a sign-in, offset pages, and deleted accounts
are never found.
- notifications/unread_count counts what the list shows, and the owner's follower and following lists page with
Link.
- The instance API advertises what is enforced:
- max_characters, now enforced with a 422;
- max_pinned_statuses = MaxPins;
- the media types and limits MediaService and MediaOptions accept;
- PollService's limits;
- the configured languages;
- no streaming URL until streaming exists.
domain_count counts the servers we have exchanged with; which ones stays unpublished (peers is empty).
- Routes Mastodon answers now answer instead of 404:
- directory, tags/{name}, timelines/link and identity_proofs;
- instance/languages, translation_languages, domain_blocks and privacy_policy;
- the v1 and v2 notification policy, and notification requests.
Also, from phase 3: a recovered password ends /clientapi sessions through a per-root SessionStamp claim instead of
comparing the JWT's whole-second nbf with the change time. That comparison let a token issued in the same second
survive, which made a test flaky.
671 tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01ELjqpznMFMNrJoJUj6K5p2
Circles (owner decision 2026-10-04: fix them for compatibility):
- Mastodon 4.7 and GoToSocial drop a post that names none of their accounts, and a circle post named only the circle
and its /flock. OutboxPublisher.Publish now sends each member a copy that also names that member in `cc`, on the
activity and on the object, and names no other member. The Create, every Update (edit, poll, quote approval, policy,
through the new PublishUpdate) and the Delete (StatusService.Remove now uses Publish) all go that way.
- UpdateOf renders with the post's group, so an Update keeps a circle post's `audience` and a community post's `Page`
and title.
- A reply to a circle post stays in the circle, whichever client wrote it.
- A circle post can no longer quote a post that needs permission: asking would show the circle post to its author.
Posts that are not public, on refetch (SignedFetchAuthorizer.MayRead):
- Followers-only, direct and circle posts are served to a signed request from someone they were for, or from the
instance actor of a server where one of them lives. That is a follower or an addressed account, an addressed
account, or a member. Everyone else still gets 404.
- Once deleted they answer those readers 410. Mastodon deletes its copy when a refetch answers 404.
- A circle refetch names the requesting member, or the members on the requesting server, as the delivered copy did.
- /grunts/create-{id} serves the same.
- /peasants/{name}/whispers/{id}, a DM's `context`, was never routed. It is now the conversation's posts, for its
participants only.
SecureMode lets browsers through to the redirect to the public page, instead of answering them 401.
653 tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01ELjqpznMFMNrJoJUj6K5p2
- Our public and unlisted posts state interactionPolicy.canQuote. The policy comes from the post, then the persona
(`source[quote_policy]`: public, followers or nobody; default public as the owner chose), and is always nobody for
followers-only posts and DMs.
- QuoteRequests are answered with Accept{result} naming a parrot-licence at /peasants/{name}/parrot-licences/{id}
(the route name the owner chose), or with Reject. Followers-only checks that the requester really follows.
- A licence is a QuoteAuthorization naming both posts; revoking it (POST /api/v1/statuses/:id/quotes/:quoting_id/revoke)
marks it 410, sends Delete{licence} to the quoter and the persona's followers, and revokes our own copy of the quote.
- A quote that arrives with one of our licences is accepted only if that licence is ours, unrevoked and names exactly
that quoting post. One persona quoting another gets a licence too.
- Mastodon API: quote_approval for our posts (automatic, followers, current_user), `quote_approval_policy` when posting,
PUT /api/v1/statuses/:id/interaction_policy, `source.quote_policy`.
Checked live: GoToSocial still accepts our posts with the policy stated, and leaves likes, replies and boosts open.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_012CzABvBkbcFqoHdmi8b9WB
- Received quotes: read from `quote`, `quoteUrl`, `quoteUri`, `_misskey_quote` or a FEP-e232 Link tag; the quoted post
is fetched once; a quoteAuthorization stamp is verified field by field on the quoted author's origin; a consent
quote without a stamp is pending; an older-key quote of a public post is shown; Delete of a stamp revokes. Counts
and a `quote` notification follow the accepted state. The `quote-inline` fallback survives sanitising and is removed
from content when the real quote is shown.
- Personas quote through `quoted_status_id`: posts that state a quote policy get a QuoteRequest and stay pending until
an Accept brings a stamp we can verify, then an Update adds quoteAuthorization; posts that state none are quoted
the older way, without `quote`; another persona's posts cannot be quoted yet (we issue no stamps). Quoting posts
are delivered to the quoted author too.
- Mastodon API: Status.quote (with the quoted status one level deep), quotes_count, quote_approval from the remote
policy, GET /api/v1/statuses/:id/quotes, `quote` notifications, and api_versions.mastodon = 7.
Checked live: GoToSocial's author-only quote policy is respected.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_012CzABvBkbcFqoHdmi8b9WB
- A public post that links to a page gets a preview card: from the post's own data first (FEP-8967 Link preview, the
object's image, title and summary); otherwise the server reads the page once, 0-60 s after the post arrives, never
when someone reads it. OpenGraph and Twitter tags give title, description and image; one LinkPreview per address
is cached for 7 days and shared by the whole server, so a fetch never points at a persona.
- Lemmy link posts, which carry no title or description, get them filled in.
- The page fetch uses the guarded client (public addresses, three redirects, HTML only, first 512 KB).
- Federation:FetchLinkPreviews switches page fetching off.
- Local public posts get cards too.
Checked live: a link to a GoToSocial profile page becomes a card with its title, description and proxied image.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_012CzABvBkbcFqoHdmi8b9WB
- Custom emoji (Emoji tags) on posts, display names, bios and profile fields, at most 64 per object, proxied, in
Status.emojis and Account.emojis.
- Remote profiles keep their header, profile fields, locked flag, published date, movedTo, indexable, memorial and
image descriptions (a locked GoToSocial account no longer shows as open).
- Polls: incoming Questions (Mastodon, Misskey, Pleroma, GoToSocial shapes) with counts, voters, end and closed;
our own polls from the Mastodon API go out as Questions; votes in are counted once per voter and never become
replies; personas vote on other servers' polls with one Note per choice; counts refresh with an Update at most every
three minutes; a poll closes on time and tells its voters and its author. GET /api/v1/polls/:id and POST
/api/v1/polls/:id/votes.
- An Update without a newer `updated` only refreshes poll, video, audio and event details and leaves no revision.
Checked live against GoToSocial: each side's poll reaches the other as a poll and each side's vote is counted.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_012CzABvBkbcFqoHdmi8b9WB
Communities:
- a post addressed to a community (to, cc or audience) is accepted
according to its posting policy - followers, anyone, or moderators -
and GroupDistributor announces the whole activity with `audience` to
the community's followers, plus the object for new posts so Mastodon
shows them; updates and deletes of community content are announced too;
- top-level posts are Pages with a name (the title, or a headline from
the text); /flock counts members, /wardens lists moderators;
- a Mastodon client posts into a community by mentioning it, or into a
remote group, which sets `audience`;
- an Announce of an activity from a remote group a persona follows (Lemmy)
is followed through: the object is fetched from its own origin, kept with
its AudienceURI, and fanned out to the group's local followers; updates
are applied in place and deletes checked against the origin.
Circles stop being local-only: an undiscoverable Group actor whose follows
are all requests the owner approves; posts addressed to the circle and its
/flock and delivered to members' own inboxes, never announced, never
public; a remote member's post into the circle is accepted from members
only. SignedFetchAuthorizer serves circle posts and collections only to a
signed request from a member or a member server's instance actor - 404 for
anyone else. Circles never surface in search, lookups, mentions, account
ids or profile pages.
Federation:SecureMode requires a valid signature on every GET under
/peasants except the instance actor. Group forms take a posting policy.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_012CzABvBkbcFqoHdmi8b9WB
A post given a latitude and longitude becomes LocalGeo: its position is
rounded to two decimals (about a kilometre) and stored as a 2dsphere
point, its radius clamped to 1-50 km, and it is local only - no Create,
no delivery, no outbox, never in the Mastodon API or on a profile page.
/clientapi/post/nearby takes the viewer's position for the query only
(it is neither stored nor logged), runs $geoNear and keeps posts within
each post's own radius, minus authors the viewer blocks or mutes. A
located post cannot be direct or in a group.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_012CzABvBkbcFqoHdmi8b9WB
- /api/v1/media and /api/v2/media (and GET/PUT /api/v1/media/:id):
images go through libvips (NetVips, its native build bundled):
autorotated, every kind of metadata dropped (EXIF, GPS, XMP, IPTC,
comments), capped at 4096 px, with a 640 px preview and a blurhash
(own encoder, the reference algorithm); animated GIFs are re-encoded;
video and audio are remuxed by ffmpeg with -map_metadata -1, never
re-encoded, and a video gets a still preview. Files get random names
under /var/lib/privapub/media, outside the web root deploys replace, and
are served at /media/files with nosniff and a sandbox CSP.
- media_ids on create and edit (four at most, the persona's own, each used
once); notes carry them as Document attachments with alt text, blurhash,
focalPoint and size; inbound attachments were already kept.
- avatar and header uploads in update_credentials, cropped to 400x400 and
1500x500, federated with Update{Person}.
- Remote media reaches clients only through /media/proxy/{hmac}/{url},
fetched by the guarded client (no SVG, 40 MB cap) and cached outside the
served root, trimmed to 5 GB; foreign avatars and headers use it too, so
a client never contacts another server.
- MediaJanitor deletes uploads left unattached for a day.
- nginx accepts 100 MB bodies on the upload endpoints only (applied on Max).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_012CzABvBkbcFqoHdmi8b9WB
Domain/Statuses/StatusService takes a persona, not a root, and is what
/clientapi and the Mastodon API share:
- Publish renders Markdown (clientapi) or plain text (Mastodon clients),
checks the persona may see the post it replies to, opens or reuses the
conversation for a direct post from its recipients and mentions, fans
out and hands the Create to the outbox;
- Edit keeps a revision and sends Update{Note}; Remove soft-deletes and
returns the post, so a client can delete and redraft;
- Favourite and Reblog work on anything the persona can see and send Like,
Announce and their Undo to the author (and, for boosts, to followers);
boosts are refused for anything but public and unlisted posts.
PostsService is now the clientapi wrapper that checks the root owns the
persona. A persona's own boost is a local row: the outbox renders it as
Announce, /grunts/announce-{id} resolves, and object endpoints, profile
pages and NodeInfo skip it. ContentFormat gains Plain.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_012CzABvBkbcFqoHdmi8b9WB