Chatter Net Client

Chatter Net is a modern decentralized semantic web built atop self-sovereign identity.

For more, you can have a look at the sibling server project, and a prototype work-in-progress social application used to dog food the development process.

Warning: Chatter Net is currently in the prototype phase. Features are missing, features are broken, and the public interface will change.

Project Objectives

Chatter Net is a platform which is:

• Open: anyone can participate in, extend, and innovate on the platform.
• Decentralized: there is no central point of failure. Network consensus determines what content arrives to a user.
• Self-moderating: a user has enough control over what they receive to reject spam content.

Technology

Whereas the world wide web is a web of HTML documents, Chatter Net is a web of self-signed semantic documents. It closely follows (but is not fully compliant with) the Activity Pub protocol. Consequently, it is closely related to other federated platforms, of which Mastodon is the a well established platform.

Chatter Net's self-signed data model does differ in a subtle yet meaningful way: the authority resides in the users of the network, not the servers.

This is what allows the project to realize its objectives.

• No de-platforming: since no server is needed to verify the identity of a user, no server can prevent a user from accessing the network.
• No platform lock-in: since no server is needed to verify the authenticity of data, no server can lock data away from users and other servers.
• No spam from arbitrary users: would-be spammers need not only convince a server to trust them, they must directly convince other users.

Data model

Activity Streams is semantic, self-describing JSON data format. It can be used to describe arbitrary data as well as interactions between actors and the data.

Identity

The DID Key standard uses public-private key pair cryptography to prove identity. An account is created locally by a user, and the private key created by that user allows them to prove their identity. Verifiable Credential Proofs allow the users to verify the authenticity of messages.

Networking

Chatter Net does not rely on a specific network stack or protocol. It is instead specified by its data model. It would be possible (though prohibitively slow) to operate a Chatter Net network using carrier pigeons.

This library includes client functionality to communicate with a network of HTTP servers. Other network implementations could be added in the future.

Roadmap

There is a lot of work still needed to make this project workable. Here are some short term objectives:

• Message deletion and unfollow.
• Local message store.
• Server selection and load balancing.
• Account migration / recovery.

Examples

Coming soon.

Development

Requirements

The only system requirement is Node JS and a web browser. You can get Node JS on macOS or Linux with the following command:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.0/install.sh | bash
nvm install node

Installation

Get the source code using Git:

git clone https://github.com/chatternet/chatternet-lib-js.git

Or by downloading and extracting from https://github.com/chatternet/chatternet-lib-js/archive/refs/heads/main.zip.

Then install using NPM:

npm install

Commands

• npm run clean: remove the build artifacts
• npm run fmt: format all source code
• npm run build: build the package
• npm run test: run all tests (in a node environment)

Package configuration

Package building is handled by aegir: https://ipfs.github.io/aegir/. This is a Typescript template which necessitates further configuration: https://github.com/ipfs/aegir/blob/master/md/ts-jsdoc.md.

package.json

• The types key is set to module such that the project is exported as an ESM.
• TS types are output at dist/src/index.d.ts.
• The files key avoids packaging the compiled tests.
• The exports key specifies which module exports can be imported from the package.

Testing

NOTE: you will need a node version >= 19.0.0 to run the test suite.

Test are added to the test directory with the suffix .spec.ts. They can import from src using Typescript imports and ESM imports.

The tests are themselves built and output in dist/test. From there, they import from the built dist/src. In this way the tests run as compiled JS, calling code from the distributed module.

To run integration tests against a server, set the environment variable CHATTERNET_TEST_SERVER.

For example, to verify if a new node builds and connects:

CHATTERNET_TEST_SERVER='http://127.0.0.1:3030' npm run test -- -- -f 'chatter net builds new'