Nearstream

The home page is one dated document, not category sections

Everything you post — Lines, voice, pictures, tracks, essays — merged into a single reverse-chronological page with no pagination. Each kind carries its own form: a short Line is set large because one sentence is the whole post, a long one drops small and narrow, pictures go full width, audio is a band, an essay is the only thing with a headline. Why: the sectioned home read as four filing cabinets when full and as empty when sparse, and every entry rendered identically so a photograph and a one-liner were the same object. Stream is the diary; Library is where the same things are filed by kind.

Older entries fade; looking at one brings it back

Contrast and a hair of blur derived from the post’s age, floored so nothing becomes unreadable, with hover and focus restoring it fully. A companion idea — fresh entries arriving faint and darkening as the ink set — was built and then removed: it read as a rendering fault rather than a choice. Why: recency should come from optics, not from an algorithm choosing an order or a “load more” hiding the past. Nothing is ever removed from the page — it just goes quiet, the way a print left in the light does. And you can’t see your own new post at full strength immediately, which is the inverse of the instant-feedback loop every other posting surface is built on.

Letter becomes Now, and leaves the composer

Renamed and moved into its own block, separate from posting. Why: it was never a post. It replaces itself rather than accumulating, has no permanent URL, and never appears in RSS, a friend’s reader or the digest — it never leaves your own page. Sitting in “post something” beside five things that genuinely syndicate made it read as a sixth way to publish. “Now” is the IndieWeb convention for exactly this; “Letter” implied the newsletter §04 rejects.

The composer groups by territory, and Stream is already open

Two chips — Stream and Library — with the Line composer open on arrival, so the most casual thing you can post costs zero taps. Why: a flat row of primitives overflowed on every phone once music landed, and it grew with each new type. Two groups stay two groups forever; a new Library type joins one instead of extending a row. The short-text primitive is a “Line” rather than a “note” — a note sounds like it has length to it.

Voice and music are first-class, and the visualizer is a choice

Voice notes in Stream, music tracks in Library, both on one shared audio layer. Three visualizers — ant traces, proximity web, wave grid — and the pick travels with the post rather than with the viewer. Why: audio is the differentiator against every text-first alternative, and nothing else does it well at this scale. The visualizer is your signature, so a voice note should look the same on your page, in a friend’s reader and in the digest.

Stream tag is a mode, not a discipline

Three broad buckets — making / taking in / being. Modes describe the shape of a moment instead of the identity of its author — a knitter and a coder both fit “making” without inventing new tags.

Manifesto as a structured page, not rendered markdown

/manifesto is a curated, schematic page; NEARSTREAM.md is the internal working doc. The public manifesto is hand-laid for clarity. Decisions log here is the canonical reference for anyone reading the project.

Profile marks instead of profile photos

Every non-host tenant picks one of ten parameterised “human-circle” animations. A face is the wrong primitive for a network whose point is to stop performing for strangers. The mark is a moving signature, not a likeness.

Studio first-time empty state

Freshly-onboarded /studio leads with a single-paragraph welcome. Removes the “blank dashboard with eight unfilled forms” first impression.

Phase 1 deploys to Vercel — interim, not architectural

Vercel is the host today; the codebase avoids Vercel-specific APIs. Lock-in stays theoretical while we stay disciplined; migration to Fly remains a 2–3 hour task.

Two-layer design system: Nearstream chrome vs user site

Components in app/_components/ are platform chrome — same on every instance. Keeps the platform recognisable while letting users own the look of their personal stream.

Nearstream chrome palette is pure mono, no accent

Black, foreground, two greys, border. No light mode. Austerity makes it a backdrop, not a brand fighting for attention.

Auth is HMAC over Web Crypto, not a JWT library

Magic-link tokens and session cookies are base64url(payload).base64url(HMAC-SHA256(secret, payload)). This is auth for a handful of people, not enterprise. ~30 lines, zero dependencies, rotating AUTH_SECRET invalidates everything.

Allowlist is an env var, not a database

ALLOWED_EMAILS is a comma-separated list in .env. Adding a friend = redeploy. Friction by design. A self-serve invite UI is the exact kind of feature this project shouldn’t have.

R2 client is aws4fetch, not the AWS SDK

Single-file SigV4 signer over fetch. AWS SDK is ~1.6 MB / ~120 packages, mostly features we don’t need.

Two tracks + one protocol

Hosted multi-tenant codebase AND self-hostable template, bound by an open RSS + typed-primitive format. Solves adoption (Track 1), sovereignty (Track 2), and longevity (the protocol outlives any instance).

Friend graph is local, like a phone book

Domain = phone number (public). Friends list = your contacts (private). No follow requests, no central registry. Matches the real shape of friendship.

Ownership through exit, not infrastructure

Each user owns their domain. Content is exportable at all times (JSON + media bundle). Identity is the domain, not the instance. Lets us run a hosted instance for adoption without compromising sovereignty.

Scale by instance count, not user count per instance

Nearstream scales like email: many small instances, all interoperating via the protocol. Each instance ~10–80 friends. The friend-graph mechanic only works at small scale; the right unit of growth is the circle, not the user.

Alessandro’s instance is for his close friends

Growth is incidental, not a goal. Future hand-off (paid tier / co-op / non-profit) is a future decision. Locks v1 scope to “small but durable.”

Squarespace is the explicit anti-aspiration

Test for any new feature: would Squarespace add this? If yes, default to not adding it. Kitchen-sink builders are the wrong shape for friend-network publishing.

Library is the parent of disciplines, not their sibling

All sites use Stream / Library / About as nav. Multi-discipline sites partition inside Library. Keeps single- and multi-discipline sites the same shape; “Library” stays a stable network-wide term.