Stephan SchwabFeb 27, 2024

I am trying to wrap my head around this and thought I might ask and get some straight answers about #activitypub

I want to build me a little system that sends out messages to different social media services. I’ve already done that for Mastodon and Twitter as a prototype.

Now my question is: I know Mastodon has an API and I can talk to the Mastodon server my account is on. That’s what I have already. What benefits do I get if I were to use #ActivityPub directly? I don’t want to build an instance nor have users. It’s basically like a bot what I want.

As you can see I have a rough idea and am asking for some suggestions about which route to take. Thank you.

Show threadJason Culverhouse 

@snscaimito
you would need a server. It doesn't have to be too complex. You need to implement webfinger (could be a static file in your case if you only have a single actor). You would need to implement a basic `/users/{id}/(inbox|outbox|following|followers)` endpoints.

You would have to track reply to the incoming `Follow` with an accept message and store the URI of the follower so that you can deliver messages to their inbox.

You need a minimum of HTTP Signatures to sign and validate incoming and outgoing messages messages

Then when you bot wants to post something you just deliver the `Create` -> `Note` to the followers.

After that you can chose to respond to replies or mentions that com back to you user's inbox.

Feb 27, 2024 at 5:21pmWeb
Show threadStephan SchwabFeb 27, 2024
@JsonCulverhouse Ah! So the follow thing is like subscribing to a mailing list. That's interesting.