inkwell

joined 3 weeks ago
[–] inkwell@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks again Evan! I think that is where my bad information came from and good to note. I've been lucky and really appreciate the support. If there is anything I can do to improve on my side, I'm all ears!

[–] inkwell@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks, Evan! I honestly didn't take it personally and there were some learning I needed that will just help me be a better fediverse community member. And thanks for the kind words and feedback! That's mostly why I'm reaching out. The AP integration seems to be working okay, but I'm sure there are gaps I'm missing from a lack of knowledge.

[–] inkwell@piefed.social 3 points 3 weeks ago

I'm the outsider who overstepped and needed to learn a lesson. Thanks for hanging in there and getting me on the right track!

[–] inkwell@piefed.social 2 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks again, Julian! I will absolutely follow the suggestion on asking for advice. I've received great feedback when posting about the app and will hopefully go about it better moving forward. xD

[–] inkwell@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Hey Julian! No worries at all. I made an obvious mistake and I'm not afraid to admit that and learn better. I've done a lot of refection and do realized I have moved very fast. I originally started with a much smaller set of features but I posted on Reddit requesting feedback and people wanted writing features I wasn't expecting. I ended up shaping it by what people told me they wanted.

I've always wanted to build apps or work in development. The last three years I've been working in product adjacent roles and I recently moved into my first product management role. However, I want to break free of working for others so I've been starting ideas and dropping them before they got anywhere for as long as I can remember. I wanted to build my own thing and I was trying to figure out what I could do on my own with AI being where it is now. I grew up in the mid 2000s so I naturally spent way too much time on Myspace and Livejournal. I missed the feel and community of the early internet. So I started brainstorming a journaling app and how to differentiate it (I used AI to help). I had also joked about starting my own social media app because I hated when I posted stuff on FB etc the algorithms punishes me and no one sees it. So AI (Claude) actually pointed out the fediverse to me. That is why I was able to say stupid stuff like Article objects would show on Mastodon with preview notes (I hadn't realized Mastodon hadn't implemented changes on their side.) I found out about FEP-b2b8 through a Mastodon subreddit when I posted asking for feedback. I was moving too fast to fully understand the fediverse and the new parts of this. And it was painfully obvious to everyone but me haha.

[–] inkwell@piefed.social 2 points 3 weeks ago

This is genuinely getting funny now. AI doesn't do a good job of knowing what's real or fake, any better than humans. I can show you that picture on my camera roll. My full name is Stanton Melvin. I'm not a bot, chill. I use AI, but it doesn't mean I'm not a real person with real ideas and goals.

[–] inkwell@piefed.social 4 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

I apologize for responding with AI, I didn't realize people would think I'm a bot or think I'm hiding. This is a giant learning lesson for me and I'm listenig to you all. My name is Stanton, I live in Westfield, IN, and I've tried building many things that have never had any luck. I respect that I upset people by my approach and regardless what anyone thinks, that matters to me. I did change my username on here because I understand now that I need to show who I am in the community. Honestly forums are even new for me. So I won't keep pushing back or challenging. I understand I was wrong and appreciate the feedback even if it's hard to hear.

[–] inkwell@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

I've learned a lot from this post, so I appreciate everyone's patience. I moved too quickly and misspoke. You are right and preview notes are not used by Mastodon. I implemented this based on what I read but didn't verify it worked on the receiving end, my bad. I'm going to have to do more research into how Mastodon handles the article object and address any gaps. I'm sorry for the misleading post and lesson learned on my end.

[–] inkwell@piefed.social 2 points 3 weeks ago

I should have just written the post myself and been more direct with the URLs. I'm just glad I wasn't wrong about it being open source. xD

[–] inkwell@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

No, I know nothing about @portafed@mastodon.social. Inkwell is its own fediverse instance. If I had owners, I wouldn't be solo deving a product with AI.

[–] inkwell@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I'm confused, I have it set to public anyone should be able to see it. The link took me directly to it. Maybe I have a setting wrong in GitHub?

[–] inkwell@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago (15 children)

No, I didn't, but I appreciate you telling me.

I can write on my own and could have struggled to find the words that likely wouldn't have changed any opinions. I was an early adopter of AI and use it to move fast. Or when dealing with challenging circumstances. However, I do appreciate the feedback and will be more mindful. I could not keep up doing something like this on my own. My main goal is to learn as I'm a product manager by day. I build and ship things for corporate america. I am doing this for myself and trying to find a community of like-minded individuals to collaborate with. I figured I would eventually run into pushback about using but I was prepared. I could not do this if I did not have the experience to allow me to do so.

I admit I'm not an expert coder but I've always been interested in programming and have taken several college classes.

So bottom line, I will make mistakes and will own them. I apologize for not understanding the community or upsetting anyone. I'm testing the boundaries of what people can do with AI. It's going to be used whether we like it or not, and I want to use it responsibly and openly.

 

Wanted to share something with this community and see if it's useful to anyone. Inkwell (inkwell.social) is an open source, multi-tenant social journaling platform built on ActivityPub. The goal is to fill the long-form writing gap in the fediverse in a way that's accessible to non-technical users, not just developers who can spin up their own instance of WriteFreely or Ghost.

What it does: users sign up, write journal entries or articles, and those posts federate as Article objects per FEP-b2b8 with preview Notes so they render cleanly in Mastodon and other microblogging clients. You get a title, excerpt, and link rather than a decontextualized URL. Follows, boosts, and likes all work bidirectionally with Mastodon.

It's ad-free, algorithm-free, and the code is open source on GitHub (github.com/stantondev/inkwell). The hosted instance is at inkwell.social if you want to try it, or you can self-host your own.

Some things that might interest this community: ActivityPub federation with HTTP signature verification, Stamps (emotional reactions) instead of generic likes, a tipping system called Postage for supporting writers, newsletter delivery, custom profile themes, and data import from other platforms. Currently working on improving comment edit propagation and post scope handling for better fediverse compatibility based on community feedback.

Would love to hear thoughts, especially from anyone who's been looking for a long-form option in the fediverse or anyone interested in running their own instance. What's working, what's missing, what would make this more useful to the ecosystem?

#fediverse #activitypub #longform #writing #opensource

Edit: Adding this after looking into the spec more closely. Inkwell publishes Article objects following the draft FEP-b2b8 guidance. I was wrong about the Mastodon behavior in my original wording above. Inkwell includes a preview fallback, but Mastodon does not currently appear to render that preview behavior as envisioned by the draft. That is my mistake.

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