Inkwell - a multi-tenant long-form writing platform for the fediverse (open source, FEP-b2b8)

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

Beware this app was written using AI.

For example, Mastodon does not implement FEP b2b8. So that's bullshit.

The whole thing was 'written' in 3 weeks.

This morning I saw another product show up that was AI generated. No idea who is behind it but it's sketchy as hell.

It was an account portability migration tool, which is something the AP community-at-large needs, but not like this.

@inkwell@piefed.social are you involved with @portafed@mastodon.social as well?

Can you let your owner know to please come out from the shadows and own up?

I've seen two or three in !selfhosted@lemmy.world in the last week. Really concerning.

Fair points to address, and I appreciate the directness.

On AI: yes, I use Claude Code as a development tool and I'm transparent about it. There's a CLAUDE.md in the repo that says so explicitly. I'm doing this solo with a day job and a passion for building, and AI tooling lets me ship faster than I could alone. I get the skepticism given the slop AI is generating. I think the distinction that matters is whether someone is engaged, iterating on real feedback, and building something they actually use and maintain. I'm trying to be that.

On FEP-b2b8: my wording was unclear, and I can see how it read that way. Inkwell publishes Article objects per FEP-b2b8 and also sends a preview Note so the content renders cleanly in Mastodon and other microblogging clients that don't handle Article objects. Saiwal read it right. I should have separated those two ideas more clearly in the post. That's on me.

On the timeline: three weeks of full-time-equivalent effort from a solo dev using modern tooling. The code's all on GitHub if anyone wants to look at it, break it, or tell me what's wrong with it. Happy to take feedback on the implementation.
I'm not trying to sell anything here. I had an idea, I'm over big tech and social media, and I'm learning and trying to be part of the fediverse community. The platform is free to use and open source. If it's not useful to this community, that's fine. But I'd rather get roasted on specifics than dismissed as another bot project.

You even wrote this comment using AI. Do you have any idea how that makes people feel?

It's rude to show AI output to people | Alex Martsinovich

Feeding slop is an act of war

(distantprovince.by)

Is it open-source?! I don't see any GitHub repo.

Edit: https://github.com/stantondev/inkwell

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.

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?

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 said in Inkwell - a multi-tenant long-form writing platform for the fediverse (open source, FEP-b2b8):
>
> Saiwal read it right. I should have separated those two ideas more clearly in the post. That's on me.

Let me be clear, preview notes are not supported by Mastodon.

It's fine. I edited my comment to include the link after I didn't find it anywhere in the post nor anywhere on the dot social webpage.

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

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.

Ok, fair enough. The lure of AI-boosted 'productivity' would be irresistible to people in your position.

What grinds my gears is people show up and share their project, without disclosing how it was made, riding on the assumption we all have from the past that you put a certain amount of effort into it and that you did so as a reasonably well-practiced expert in your craft. There's some gravitas to that and a respect that is earned by giving something of value to us. In this scenario people may value the project and choose to help you by contributing their expertise and time and perhaps a kind of community will form around the project.

Some noob vibe coding a brain fart they had is not on the same level. Noobs are welcome to spit out some slop and give it away, if they don't pretend it's something more than it is. And when they share their output in this manner, they shouldn't expect people to read code that they never read themselves and can't expect any community to form.

An open source project is not just a bunch of code. It's also people. When you replace the people with AI, it dies. Yours is stillborn.

I don't buy it. I can't in good conscience interact with "Inkwell", there needs to be a real name and identity attached to the work.

If you're not willing to step up then what business do you have sharing your work openly?

@rimu@piefed.social the replies continue to be AI generated. The ones to you (possibly), the ones to me (definitely). Maybe an assumption is AI agents can't lie. I think maybe this one is proving that assumption wrong.