for the last couple weeks i've been busy with this, along with my website league node beam.phosphor.buzz, which is compatible with it.
posting on cohost has a lot of specific qualities that aren't really replicated anywhere else - I'd really like to see this style of posting and reading continue to exist in some form so I'm rolling up my sleeves and trying to make it happen.
it's still in a very early stage and not feature complete enough to be usable yet, but I'm running out of time to announce it; so here goes.
the core idea is to contextually re-interpret "statuses", which are the tweet-like objects that mastodon-compatible servers exchange, as cohost-like analogues in an attempt to approximate the feel of using something less like micro-blogging and more like cohost.
my current thinking on how to approach this:
- a status which is not a reply to another status, is a post
- a status which is replying to another status is a comment. it will not be shown in the home feed (maybe this will be toggleable, but for now they're just skipped over)
- a boosted status is a share without any addition.
- if a root status A contains a link to another status B, A is interpreted as a share of B; B is fetched and glued to the top of A. If B contains another link this happens again.
creating posts, or really, interacting in any way, is currently not implemented - for the initial proof of concept i focused on post viewing since that's the novel thing. however, the idea is for interacting with posts to also be cohost-like:
- modal post editor
- comments will feel like cohost comments, with a small compose box that's inside the context of the documents instead of the modal post editor
- the share button will decide behind the scenes whether to boost a status (if you don't add anything to it) or to create a new root post that links to it (if you add to it)
there's a whole lot left to do - all pillbug can do right now is view the home timeline (with pagination) and look at posts. aspirationally, i'd like to support css crimes as well, though that's not a priority until the basic features are implemented. the plan is for me to keep chipping away at it when i have time, but I could really use a hand from any devs out there who're interested. it's a single-page app written with solidjs and typescript. if you'd like to help out, the repo is on github at https://github.com/vivlim/pillbug.
if you'd like to follow the project, i haven't decided where i'll be posting updates yet, but most likely is my blog (https://wp.vivl.im) and website league (https://beam.phosphor.buzz/@viv) as well as the repo (linked above). thanks for reading!
