I rolled out a lot of features over the last several weeks and created a lot of bugs in the process. Release v3.2.5 of Ktistec is mostly about fixing those bugs. I did implement two requested features, however: support for editing posts in Markdown and support for Open Graph metadata. Here's the full list of new features:

Added

• Support for editing posts in Markdown. (fixes #25)
• Support for Open Graph metadata on actors and objects. (fixes #71)
• Support for uploading a site image.
• Internal table of contents page.
• Poll expiry notifications.

🎄 I'm working on support for poll creation and management now. It's also time for a performance improvement pass or two.

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

Release v3.2.3 of Ktistec includes two big features:

• FEP-1b12 Group federation
  Improved federation with Lemmy and other forum-type servers. Ktistec supports community and thread follow/unfollow, as well as up-vote/like (down-vote/dislike is supported but there is no visual affordance for that yet).
• FEP-9098 Custom emojis
  Support for viewing custom emoji in posts and on actor profiles. Ktistec does not yet support custom emoji creation and management.

The full changelog:

Added

• Support for viewing custom emoji in posts and on actor profiles.
• Actor type (Person, Group, etc.) overlay badges on actor panels.
• Colored fallback avatars for actors without icons.
• Support for robots.txt.

Fixed

• Federation with Lemmy and other servers that support FEP-1b12.
  • Shared inbox support for local actors.
  • Serialization of Undo includes the undone activity.
  • Serialization of Like and Dislike does not.
• Notify only once for an object's first received activity.

Changed

• Accumulate metrics by hour for finer granularity.
• Clean up presentation of public followers/following pages.

The next release will include support for Mastodon polls (FEP-9967).

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

Release v3.2.3 of Ktistec includes two big features:

• FEP-1b12 Group federation
  Improved federation with Lemmy and other forum-type servers. Ktistec supports community and thread follow/unfollow, as well as up-vote/like (down-vote/dislike is supported but there is no visual affordance for that yet).
• FEP-9098 Custom emojis
  Support for viewing custom emoji in posts and on actor profiles. Ktistec does not yet support custom emoji creation and management.

The full changelog:

Added

• Support for viewing custom emoji in posts and on actor profiles.
• Actor type (Person, Group, etc.) overlay badges on actor panels.
• Colored fallback avatars for actors without icons.
• Support for robots.txt.

Fixed

• Federation with Lemmy and other servers that support FEP-1b12.
  • Shared inbox support for local actors.
  • Serialization of Undo includes the undone activity.
  • Serialization of Like and Dislike does not.
• Notify only once for an object's first received activity.

Changed

• Accumulate metrics by hour for finer granularity.
• Clean up presentation of public followers/following pages.

The next release will include support for Mastodon polls (FEP-9967).

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

The big feature in release v3.2.2 of Ktistec is pinned posts with support for the Mastodon Featured Posts collection. Federation works both ways—pin a post on Ktistec and it will show up as a pinned post on Mastodon and vice versa. When you refresh an actor profile, Ktistec also fetches and updates the actor's pinned posts. This is another small step in the direction of supporting all features that Mastodon-compatible client applications expect to access via the API. It's also useful in its own right.

The other major feature, which I posted a short video demonstrating here, is X-Ray Mode. X-Ray Mode is a developer and power-user tool for inspecting ActivityPub JSON-LD representations of actors, objects, and other content. Pressing Ctrl+Shift+X on any page displays the data behind the page—like an x-ray. You can:

• Cached Version: View the local JSON-LD representation stored in the Ktistec database
• Remote Version: Fetch and view the original JSON-LD representation from the source server
• Navigation: Click on any ActivityPub IRI to navigate to that object
• History: Use Alt+Left and Alt+Right to navigate through your viewing history

This feature is useful for debugging federation issues, understanding ActivityPub structures, and verifying how content is stored and represented.

Here's the full changelog for the release:

Added

• Support for pinned posts and the Mastodon "featured posts" collection.
• X-Ray Mode for viewing and navigating JSON-LD resource (actor, object, etc.) representations.
• Back links on thread pages for easier navigation. (fixes #1)
• License page for LibreJS compliance. (fixes #127)
• Highlighting of recently fetched hashtagged posts.

Changed

• Improved presentation of audio and video media.
• Refactored theming/styling implementation.

The next release will focus on smaller features and bug fixes.

Enjoy!

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

The big feature in release v3.2.2 of Ktistec is pinned posts with support for the Mastodon Featured Posts collection. Federation works both ways—pin a post on Ktistec and it will show up as a pinned post on Mastodon and vice versa. When you refresh an actor profile, Ktistec also fetches and updates the actor's pinned posts. This is another small step in the direction of supporting all features that Mastodon-compatible client applications expect to access via the API. It's also useful in its own right.

The other major feature, which I posted a short video demonstrating here, is X-Ray Mode. X-Ray Mode is a developer and power-user tool for inspecting ActivityPub JSON-LD representations of actors, objects, and other content. Pressing Ctrl+Shift+X on any page displays the data behind the page—like an x-ray. You can:

• Cached Version: View the local JSON-LD representation stored in the Ktistec database
• Remote Version: Fetch and view the original JSON-LD representation from the source server
• Navigation: Click on any ActivityPub IRI to navigate to that object
• History: Use Alt+Left and Alt+Right to navigate through your viewing history

This feature is useful for debugging federation issues, understanding ActivityPub structures, and verifying how content is stored and represented.

Here's the full changelog for the release:

Added

• Support for pinned posts and the Mastodon "featured posts" collection.
• X-Ray Mode for viewing and navigating JSON-LD resource (actor, object, etc.) representations.
• Back links on thread pages for easier navigation. (fixes #1)
• License page for LibreJS compliance. (fixes #127)
• Highlighting of recently fetched hashtagged posts.

Changed

• Improved presentation of audio and video media.
• Refactored theming/styling implementation.

The next release will focus on smaller features and bug fixes.

Enjoy!

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

Release v3.2.1 of Ktistec adds support for bookmarking posts. This was so immediately useful I don't know why it took me so long to get around to it!

Pinned/featured posts are in the works for the next release.

The full changelog:

Added

• Support for bookmarking posts.

Fixed

• Invalidate user's sessions after changing password.
• Ignore supplied languages that don't conform to expected format.

Changed

• Upgrade Kemal.

In other thoughts... I'd like to make followed hashtags more consumable. I follow ~10 hashtags and: 1) it's hard to tell what's new, 2) it feels like they arrive in large batches that are difficult to digest, and 3) the reading experience is meh.

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang

Release v3.2.1 of Ktistec adds support for bookmarking posts. This was so immediately useful I don't know why it took me so long to get around to it!

Pinned/featured posts are in the works for the next release.

The full changelog:

Added

• Support for bookmarking posts.

Fixed

• Invalidate user's sessions after changing password.
• Ignore supplied languages that don't conform to expected format.

Changed

• Upgrade Kemal.

In other thoughts... I'd like to make followed hashtags more consumable. I follow ~10 hashtags and: 1) it's hard to tell what's new, 2) it feels like they arrive in large batches that are difficult to digest, and 3) the reading experience is meh.

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang

The major feature in v3.2.0 of Ktistec is thread analysis. The previous release, v3.1.2, added support for viewing threads from Lemmy communities. I follow the Open Source community, which leads to many large threads. The thread on FFMpeg and Google has 112 posts and is still growing.

Thread analysis helps me navigate these extensive conversations. It includes: top contributors, a timeline histogram, and notable branches.

The analysis applies several heuristics to identify interesting branches of the main thread. “Interesting” is subjective, but the algorithm currently looks for sudden bursts of activity and highlights those areas. Ktistec uses this to create a table of contents that links directly to those branches. Clicking on one of these links takes you to a branch-only view that focuses on the selected part of the thread.

It's fast—I anticipated needing to cache analyses, but analyzing a thread with over 400 posts takes only about 50 milliseconds on my production server.

This release also addresses an object visibility regression that was introduced in a previous version.

Full Changelog

Added

• Thread analysis that displays key participants, a timeline histogram, and notable branches
• New MCP tools: analyze_thread and get_thread
• Focal point rendering support for image attachments

Fixed

• Regression in object visibility affecting replies to threads

Changed

• Enhanced MCP tool details for likes, dislikes, and announces
• Improved cookie security.

#ktistec #fediverse #activitypub #crystallang