indiekit-server/CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md — indiekit-blog

Personal Indiekit deployment for blog.giersig.eu.

Always read memory files first

Before investigating or modifying anything:

File	When to read
memory/project_activitypub.md	Any AP / fediverse / reply threading work
memory/project_architecture.md	Server layout, MongoDB, nginx, internal URLs
memory/feedback_patches.md	Writing or debugging patch scripts

---

Running

npm run serve          # preflights + all patches + start Indiekit
npm run postinstall    # re-apply patches after npm install

Never start with node directly — patches must run first.

---

Patch system

All node_modules fixes live in scripts/patch-*.mjs. Both postinstall and serve run them in order.

Pattern

const MARKER = "// [patch] my-patch-name";
const OLD_SNIPPET = `exact source text (spaces not tabs, exact line endings)`;
const NEW_SNIPPET = `replacement text ${MARKER}`;

// 1. Read file — skip if MARKER already present
// 2. Warn if OLD_SNIPPET not found (upstream changed)
// 3. Replace + writeFile

Rules

• Include both candidate paths: node_modules/@rmdes/... and node_modules/@indiekit/indiekit/node_modules/@rmdes/...
• Escape template literals: \` and \${}
• Append new AP patches after patch-ap-federation-bridge-base-url in both postinstall and serve
• patch-microsub-reader-ap-dispatch is serve-only — check both scripts for microsub patches
• After writing a patch script, run it immediately (node scripts/patch-*.mjs) to verify it applies cleanly

---

Architecture — things that affect code

Two-jail setup

Internet → nginx (web jail 10.100.0.10) → Indiekit (node jail 10.100.0.20:3000)

The node jail cannot reach its own public HTTPS URL. Internal self-fetches must use INTERNAL_FETCH_URL=http://10.100.0.20:3000 directly. All such fetches go through _toInternalUrl() (injected by patch-micropub-fetch-internal-url).

nginx / Fedify

nginx must forward Host: blog.giersig.eu and X-Forwarded-Proto: https or AP lookups 302-redirect to the login page. See patch-ap-federation-bridge-base-url.

createFederation() requires allowPrivateAddress: true (blog resolves to a LAN IP) and signatureTimeWindow: { hours: 12 } (Mastodon retries with old signatures).

MongoDB collections

Collection	Contents
posts	Micropub post data — properties.url is the lookup key
ap_timeline	AP posts (inbound + outbound) — keyed by uid
ap_notifications	Mentions, replies, likes, boosts
ap_followers / ap_following	Actor URLs
ap_activities	Outbound/inbound activity log
ap_profile	Own actor (name, icon, url)
ap_interactions	Own likes/boosts
ap_keys	RSA + Ed25519 key pairs
ap_featured	Pinned posts

---

Post type discovery

getPostType(postTypes, properties) checks key presence only — value doesn't matter:

Key present	Type	Saved at
in-reply-to	reply	/replies/{slug}/
like-of	like	/likes/{slug}/
repost-of	repost	/reposts/{slug}/
photo	photo	/photos/{slug}/
(none)	note	/notes/{slug}/

If in-reply-to is silently absent, the post becomes a note with no error. This is the most common threading bug root cause.

---

Reply threading — compose paths

Three paths, different syndication mechanics:

Path	AP checkbox mechanism
AP reader /activitypub/admin/reader/compose	target.defaultChecked = target.checked === true (patched by patch-ap-compose-default-checked)
Microsub reader /microsub/admin/reader/compose	target.checked from Micropub q=config — already true for AP syndicator
Mastodon client API POST /api/v1/statuses	mp-syndicate-to hardcoded to publicationUrl — always AP

The AP reader template uses target.defaultChecked, not target.checked. These are different fields.

ap_timeline insertion timing

Own posts reach ap_timeline via two paths:

• Mastodon API: inserted immediately after postContent.create() (patched by patch-ap-mastodon-reply-threading)
• Micropub + syndication webhook: inserted by syndicator after Eleventy build (30–120 s)

Any new code path that creates posts should insert to ap_timeline immediately — otherwise in_reply_to_id lookups fail during the build window.

Status ID format

encodeCursor(published) = ms-since-epoch string. findTimelineItemById resolves this with a ±1 s range query using MongoDB $dateFromString to handle TZ-offset ISO strings.

---

ActivityPub syndicator

syndicator.syndicate(properties) does not filter by post type. A note and a reply both become Create(Note). The difference is whether inReplyTo is set (from properties["in-reply-to"]).

Deduplication (patch-ap-syndicate-dedup): at the start of syndicate(), queries ap_activities for an existing outbound Create/Announce/Update for properties.url. If found, returns the existing URL without re-federating. Prevents duplicate activities from CI webhooks triggering syndication twice (the Gitea commit that saves the syndication URL triggers a second build → second webhook call).

Delete propagation (patch-micropub-delete-propagation + patch-bluesky-syndicator-delete): action=delete in Micropub now iterates publication.syndicationTargets and calls syndicator.delete(url, syndication) fire-and-forget for any syndicator that exposes .delete(). The AP syndicator broadcasts a Delete(Note) via broadcastDelete(url). The Bluesky syndicator deletes the bsky.app post via com.atproto.repo.deleteRecord, resolving the URL from _deletedProperties.

JF2 → AS2 mapping:

Post type	Activity	Notes
note / reply	Create(Note)	reply has inReplyTo
like	Create(Note)	bookmark framing (🔖 emoji)
repost	Announce
article	Create(Article)	has name

Visibility:

Value	to	cc
public	as:Public	followers
unlisted	followers	as:Public
followers	followers	—

---

Fork dependencies

# Pull latest commit from a fork:
npm install git+https://gitea.giersig.eu/svemagie/<package-name>
npm install git+https://gitea.giersig.eu/svemagie/indiekit-endpoint-activitypub

Package	Fork
@rmdes/indiekit-endpoint-activitypub	git+https://gitea.giersig.eu/svemagie/indiekit-endpoint-activitypub
@rmdes/indiekit-endpoint-blogroll	git+https://gitea.giersig.eu/svemagie/indiekit-endpoint-blogroll
@rmdes/indiekit-endpoint-microsub	git+https://gitea.giersig.eu/svemagie/indiekit-endpoint-microsub
@rmdes/indiekit-endpoint-youtube	git+https://gitea.giersig.eu/svemagie/indiekit-endpoint-youtube

---

Debugging — starting points

Symptom	First check
Reply created as "note" not "reply"	Is in-reply-to in the Micropub request? Check: form hidden field, submitComposeController, findTimelineItemById return value, formEncodedToJf2
Reply not federated to AP	Is mp-syndicate-to set? Check target.defaultChecked / target.checked, getSyndicateToProperty in jf2.js
AP lookup returns 302 / auth redirect	nginx not forwarding Host/X-Forwarded-Proto — see patch-ap-federation-bridge-base-url
findTimelineItemById returns null	Item not yet in ap_timeline (build not finished) or TZ-offset date mismatch — $dateFromString range query should catch offsets
Favourite/reblog hangs in Mastodon client	resolveAuthor timeout — Promise.race 5 s cap should prevent this
"Empty reply from server" on webmention poller	Poller routing through nginx (returns 444 for wrong Host) — must use INDIEKIT_DIRECT_URL
HTTP Signature 401 errors on all inbound activities	nginx forwarding wrong Host header — fixed by patch-ap-signature-host-header (overrides to blog.giersig.eu)
HTTP Signature verify errors flooding logs for deleted/migrated actors	Expected noise — patch-ap-inbox-delivery-debug suppresses to fatal; real errors surface at error level
"OAuth callback failed. Missing parameters."	state parameter not echoed — fixed in fork (b54146c)
AP object 410 / Tombstone	Post was deleted — correct, served by FEP-4f05

---

Environment variables

Var	Purpose
AP_HANDLE	AP handle (svemagie)
AP_ALSO_KNOWN_AS	Migration alias (https://troet.cafe/users/svemagie)
AP_LOG_LEVEL	Fedify log level (info default; debug for delivery tracing)
AP_DEBUG	1 to enable Fedify debug dashboard at /activitypub/__debug__/
PUBLICATION_URL	Canonical blog URL
INDIEKIT_URL	Application URL (same as publication URL)
INTERNAL_FETCH_URL	Direct node jail URL for self-fetches (http://10.100.0.20:3000)
INDIEKIT_BIND_HOST	Jail IP for webmention poller direct connect
REDIS_URL	Redis for AP message queue + KV (production; without this, queue lost on restart)
MONGO_HOST / MONGO_URL	MongoDB connection
GH_CONTENT_TOKEN	Gitea PAT for writing posts to the indiekit-blog repo
SECRET	JWT signing secret (webmention poller auth)

---

Content store (Gitea)

@indiekit/store-github is pointed at the self-hosted Gitea instance instead of GitHub. Key config in indiekit.config.mjs:

"@indiekit/store-github": {
  baseUrl: giteaBaseUrl,          // GITEA_BASE_URL from .env
  user: process.env.GITEA_CONTENT_USER,
  repo: process.env.GITEA_CONTENT_REPO,
  branch: "main",
  token: githubContentToken,      // GH_CONTENT_TOKEN from .env
}

GITEA_BASE_URL must end with a trailing slash: http://10.100.0.90:3000/api/v1/ Without it, new URL(apiPath, baseUrl) silently strips the v1 segment → 404 on all writes.

GH_CONTENT_TOKEN — the Gitea PAT for svemagie. start.sh rejects startup if neither GH_CONTENT_TOKEN nor GITHUB_TOKEN is present. The token must have repo read/write scope on giersig.eu/indiekit-blog.

GITEA_CONTENT_USER = giersig.eu (the org, not the personal username) GITEA_CONTENT_REPO = indiekit-blog

---

Micropub → Gitea build dispatch

Gitea Contents API commits (what store-github does) do not trigger on: push CI workflows. patch-micropub-gitea-dispatch-conditional.mjs patches the Micropub endpoint to fire a workflow_dispatch event to giersig.eu/indiekit-blog after each create/update, so the blog rebuilds immediately after a post is published.

---

Pushing changes from the server

The node jail shell is tcsh, which mangles multi-line echo/printf and inline heredocs. To push file changes to Gitea from the server, use a Python script:

python3 << 'PYEOF'
import urllib.request, json, base64

TOKEN = "your-gitea-pat"
REPO  = "giersig.eu/indiekit-blog"
PATH  = ".github/workflows/deploy.yml"
BASE  = "http://10.100.0.90:3000/api/v1"

# 1. Get current SHA
req = urllib.request.Request(f"{BASE}/repos/{REPO}/contents/{PATH}",
      headers={"Authorization": f"token {TOKEN}"})
info = json.loads(urllib.request.urlopen(req).read())
sha  = info["sha"]

# 2. Read new content and encode
with open("/path/to/local/file") as f:
    content = base64.b64encode(f.read().encode()).decode()

# 3. PUT new content
data = json.dumps({"message": "update file", "content": content, "sha": sha}).encode()
req2 = urllib.request.Request(f"{BASE}/repos/{REPO}/contents/{PATH}",
       data=data, method="PUT",
       headers={"Authorization": f"token {TOKEN}", "Content-Type": "application/json"})
urllib.request.urlopen(req2)
print("done")
PYEOF

Always generate base64 from the actual file — never copy b64 strings from session history (they can be silently corrupted by terminal line wrapping).

For Node.js scripts passed via bastille cmd node sh -c '...', use base64 to avoid quoting issues:

# On local machine: encode the script
cat script.js | base64 | tr -d '\n'
# On server: decode and run
echo <b64> | b64decode -r > /tmp/script.js && node /tmp/script.js