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
tags/:name shows the tag's last seven days in public posts PrivaPub holds
(uses and authors, as Mastodon gives them) and whether the persona follows
it; follow, unfollow and followed_tags replace the stubs. A public post that
is neither a boost nor a reply comes, as it arrives, to the homes of those
following one of its tags. Nothing is fetched for a followed tag and no
other server hears of it. Posts are indexed by tag.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LsXgEaXee4GCU1hwYgPJXw
Owner decision (2026-10-03, "A remote account deletes itself"): its posts are kept but
hidden everywhere.
- Post.AuthorGone (additive bool). DeleteHandler's actor-delete branch sets it on every
post whose ActorURI is the actor (one update-many), besides dropping its follows and
timeline rows as before. RemotePosts.Build sets it on a post stored later for an
account already marked Deleted.
- One rule in VisibilityPolicy: IsShown (not deleted, author not gone), IsPublic and
CanSee exclude AuthorGone, plus Shown(post) for loaded posts.
- Lookups by id answer 404 through CanSee (statuses/:id and every sub-route, context,
bookmarks, favourites, polls, reactions, search); provenance, account statuses,
home/public/tag timelines, notifications, conversations, reblogged_by, the clientapi
home and post/DM lists, a community's outbox and our Announces filter on IsShown or
IsPublic; the Mastodon mapper never renders a hidden post or a boost of one.
Tests (30 new):
- AuthorGoneTests: the rule, the handler (posts kept, boosts included, follows and rows
gone), a post fetched after the delete, and 20 Mastodon/ActivityPub lookups over HTTP
seen before and hidden after.
- InboxGapTests: actor Update refresh (name, sanitised summary, key rotation in place
and to a new key id) even with an older `updated`; Undo{Follow} by activity id and by
object; Reject of our QuoteRequest (and a stranger's ignored); group-wrapped
Announce{Like} and Announce{Undo{Like}}; a locked persona's pending follow,
FollowRequest notification, and Decide accepting and rejecting with the original Follow.
- JobHandlerTests: AncestorsJobHandler up to its depth limit; PollRefreshJob and
PollCloseJob (local and remote polls); InstanceDescriber from a peer's NodeInfo and
the weekly dedupe through ObjectRecords; LinkPreviews for public posts only;
DeliveryJobHandler outcomes (2xx, 404/410, 429/503 with Retry-After in seconds and as
a date, 5xx) and a signature and Digest the peer can verify; MediaJanitor.Sweep;
OAuthPruner.Prune.
- MigrationTests: _003, _004, _006 and _007 on seeded rows.
- PublicPagesTests: /@user and /@user/{id} (visibility, junk ids, exact CSP,
Referrer-Policy and nosniff), circle 404, community page, the instance actor,
ActivityPub redirects, and markup escaped in posts, titles and bios.
Production changes besides the rule:
- LinkPreviews.Handle re-checks that a post is still shown and public (the rule
Wanted applies) before fetching anything; before, only enqueueing checked it.
- The legacy /clientapi post and DM lists no longer return soft-deleted posts.
- MediaJanitor.Sweep and OAuthPruner.Prune are the loop bodies, now public and tested.
- InstanceDescriber.Address: a protected virtual identity seam so a test can point
the https NodeInfo addresses at a plain-http peer; production behaviour unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01ELjqpznMFMNrJoJUj6K5p2
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
- Blocks are per persona and never federate (a Block activity would tell
the other server who blocked whom): the blocked account is removed as a
follower, with a Reject{Follow} if it is remote, unfollowed, cleared from
home and notifications, and refused with Reject if it follows again.
- Mutes (optionally timed, optionally sparing notifications) and per-
persona domain blocks keep authors out of home timelines, notifications
and every status list the API returns; the boosts of a hidden author's
posts are hidden too.
- Bookmarks and pins (at most five, public or unlisted, own posts) with
their Mastodon endpoints and flags; pinned posts are the actor's
`featured` collection at /trophies, and `featuredTags` points at
/tattoos.
- Reports: /api/v1/reports stores the report and, when forwarding to a
remote account, sends Flag from the instance actor, so the reporting
persona is never named to the other server. An inbound Flag about a local
persona or its posts becomes a report; moderators list and resolve them
under /clientapi/moderator/reports.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_012CzABvBkbcFqoHdmi8b9WB
Fanout writes a TimelineEntry for every persona a post should reach: the
author, local followers of a local author, local followers of a remote one,
the members of a direct conversation or a circle. Mastodon's home rules
apply when it is written: a reply shows only to followers of both sides
(or to the one replied to), a reblog only where reblogs are wanted. A
mention of a local persona becomes a Mention notification.
Inbound posts are now also kept when a persona follows their author.
RemotePosts holds what CreateHandler and backfill share: building a Post
from a note, and fetching a public parent the first time a reply to it
arrives, so its author is known (a reply to an unknown or non-public
parent stays out of home timelines). Each fetched ancestor queues a
FetchAncestors job for the next one, up to ten deep.
/clientapi/timeline/home and /clientapi/notifications (with
/notifications/read) page by max_id for the persona's own root only.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_012CzABvBkbcFqoHdmi8b9WB
thepraandClaude Opus 5.5