tootik

alice@pizza.example demo

Overview

tootik is a text-based social network.

tootik is federated using ActivityPub: users can join an existing instance or set up their own, then interact with users on the same instance and users of compatible servers like Mastodon, Lemmy, Sharkey, Friendica, Akkoma, GoToSocial, Mitra and PieFed.

Unlike other social networks, tootik doesn't have a browser-based interface or an app: instead, its minimalistic, text-based interface is served over Gemini:

                         Gemini           ActivityPub (HTTPS)
                           →                     ⇄
 ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓   ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓   ┌─────────────────────────┐
 ┃  Bob's Gemini client  ┣━━━┫ tootik instance ┠─┬─┤ Another tootik instance │
 ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫   ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ │ └─────────────────────────┘
 ┃2024-01-01 alice       ┃   ┃$ ./tootik ...   ┃ │ ┌────────────────┐
 ┃> Hi @bob and @carol!  ┃   ┗━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ ├─┤ Something else │
 ┃...                    ┃     ┃                 │ └────────────────┘
 ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛     ┃                 │ ┌───────────────────┐
               ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┓         └─┤ Mastodon instance ├─┐
               ┃ Alice's Gemini client ┃           └───────────────────┘ │
               ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫              ┌──────────────────┴────┐
               ┃2024-01-01 bob         ┃              │  Carol's web browser  │
               ┃> Hi @alice!           ┃              ├───────────────────────┤
               ┃...                    ┃              │╔═╗ alice              │
               ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛              │╚═╝             17h ago│
                                                      │Hi @bob and @carol!    │
                                                      │                       │
                                                      │  ╔═╗ bob              │
                                                      │  ╚═╝           16h ago│
                                                      │  Hi @alice!           │
                                                      ├───────────────────────┤
                                                      │┌────────────┐┌───────┐│
                                                      ││ Hola       ││Publish││
                                                      │└────────────┘└───────┘│
                                                      └───────────────────────┘

This makes tootik lightweight, private and accessible:

Its UI is Gemini-based: there's a wide variety of clients to choose from and some work great on old devices.
Rich content is reduced to plain text and links: it's a fast, low-bandwidth UI suitable for screen readers.
Anonymity: you authenticate using a TLS client certificate and don't have to share your email address or real name.
No promoted content, tracking or analytics: social networking, with the slow and non-commercial vibe of the small internet.
It's a single static executable, making it easy to set up your own instance and update it later.
All instance data is stored in a single file, a sqlite database that is easy to backup and restore.
It's lightweight: a <=$5/mo VPS or a SBC is more than enough for a small instance.
It implements the subset of ActivityPub required for its feature set but not more, to stay small, reliable and maintainable.
It's written from scratch (not forked from some other project) in two languages (Go and SQL), making the codebase suitable for educational purposes and easy to hack on.
It's permissively-licensed.

Features

Good compatibility with various fediverse servers
Text posts, with 3 privacy levels
- Public
- To followers
- To mentioned users
Sharing of public posts
FEP-044f quote posts, without support for approval
Users can follow each other to see non-public posts
- With support for manual approval of follow requests
- With support for Mastodon's follower synchronization mechanism, aka FEP-8fcf
FEP-ef61 portable accounts
- Accounts on different servers use one Ed25519 keypair
- User activity is replicated across all servers
Multi-choice polls
Lemmy-style communities
- Follow to join
- Mention community in a public post to start thread
- Community sends posts and replies to all members
Bookmarks
Full-text search within posts
Upload of posts and user avatars, over Titan
Automatic deletion of old posts
Account migration, in both directions
Support for multiple client certificates
Support for invite-only registration

Using tootik

You can join an existing instance or set up your own.

Interactive Demo

go generate ./migrations
go run -tags fts5 ./cmd/demo

Database Drivers

tootik supports two database/sql drivers:

github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3
modernc.org/sqlite, enabled when CGO_ENABLED=0

Building

go generate ./migrations
go build ./cmd/tootik -tags fts5

To build a static executable:

go generate ./migrations
CGO_ENABLED=0 go build ./cmd/tootik

To build a smaller executable without support for profiling, add the no_pprof build tag:

CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -tags no_pprof ./cmd/tootik

Architecture

┏━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ notes ┃ ┃ shares ┃ ┃ persons ┃ ┃ follows ┃
┣━━━━━━━┫ ┣━━━━━━━━┫ ┣━━━━━━━━━┫ ┣━━━━━━━━━┫
┃object ┃ ┃note    ┃ ┃actor    ┃ ┃follower ┃
┃author ┃ ┃by      ┃ ┃...      ┃ ┃followed ┃
┃...    ┃ ┃...     ┃ ┃         ┃ ┃...      ┃
┗━━━━━━━┛ ┗━━━━━━━━┛ ┗━━━━━━━━━┛ ┗━━━━━━━━━┛

Most user-visible data is stored in 4 tables in tootik's database:

notes, which contains Object objects that represent posts
shares, which records "user A shared post B" relationships
persons, which contains Actor objects that represent users
follows, which records "user A follows user B" relationships

notes.author, shares.by, follows.follower and follows.followed point to rows in persons.

shares.note points to a row in notes.

┌───────┐ ┌────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┏━━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━━━━┓
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ ┃ outbox ┃ ┃ inbox  ┃
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ┣━━━━━━━━┫ ┣━━━━━━━━┫
│object │ │note    │ │actor    │ │follower │ ┃activity┃ ┃activity┃
│author │ │by      │ │...      │ │followed │ ┃sender  ┃ ┃sender  ┃
│...    │ │...     │ │         │ │...      │ ┃...     ┃ ┃...     ┃
└───────┘ └────────┘ └─────────┘ └─────────┘ ┗━━━━━━━━┛ ┗━━━━━━━━┛

Federation happens through two tables, inbox and outbox. Both contain Activity objects that represent actions performed by the users in persons.

inbox contains activities by users on other servers, while outbox contains activities of local users.

  ┏━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
  ┃ gmi.Wrap ┣━┫ gemini.Listener ┃
  ┗━━━━━━━━━━┛ ┗━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┛
                ┏━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━┓
                ┃   front.Handler   ┃
                ┗━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┛
┌───────┐ ┌────────┐ ┌────┸────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌────────┐ ┌────────┐
│ notes │ │ shares │ │ persons │ │ follows │ │ outbox │ │ inbox  │
├───────┤ ├────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├─────────┤ ├────────┤ ├────────┤
│object │ │note    │ │actor    │ │follower │ │activity│ │activity│
│author │ │by      │ │...      │ │followed │ │sender  │ │sender  │
│...    │ │...     │ │         │ │...      │ │...     │ │...     │
└───────┘ └────────┘ └─────────┘ └─────────┘ └────────┘ └────────┘

gemini.Listener is a Gemini server that handles requests using Handler. It adds rows to persons during new user registration and changes rows when users change properties like their display name.

gemini.Listener provides Handler with a writer that builds a Gemini response and asynchronously sends it to the client in chunks, while Handler continues to handle the request and append more lines to the page.

  ┌──────────┐ ┌─────────────────┐
  │ gmi.Wrap ├─┤ gemini.Listener │
  └──────────┘ └────────┬────────┘
                ┌───────┴───────────┐
    ┏━━━━━━━━━━━┥   fron

Tootik

Install / Use

README