Relay
A micro-social network for you and your real friends.
Relay is a small social space you and your people run yourselves. It holds the
things you want to share: photos, links, writing, a poster, a page of notes.
There is no sign-up. People join by invitation link, and the link is the
account. No feed algorithm, no follower counts, no ads, no company in the middle.
Read docs/product.md for the product.
Where things live
| Path | What it is |
|---|
backend/ | Python (FastAPI) backend. API under /api; also serves the Expo web build at / |
mobile/ | Expo / React Native app, also exported as the web app at relay.mansus.org |
host.html, why.html, styles.css, web/fonts/ | The static site published to GitHub Pages |
mobile-mockups/, ui-experiments/ | Visual specs and design experiments |
docs/ | Product, design and backend development notes |
.pi/skills/ | Engineering and design standards (relay-design, relay-mobile-design) |
The earlier Go implementation has been removed. Several design notes in docs/
were written against it and say so at the top.
Docs
| Doc | What's in it |
|---|
docs/product.md | What Relay is, what it is not, and the vocabulary |
docs/backend-development.md | Backend architecture, DI, testing plan, ruff/ty/pre-commit, Docker |
docs/pivot-plan.md | The phased plan for the social layer |
docs/invites.md | Invitation links, member identity, cascade revoke |
docs/publishing.md | Posts, microwebsites, templates, the publish protocol |
docs/pivot.md | The original pivot brief, kept as the source note |
docs/navigation-pivot.md | Proposal. Feed-first navigation |
docs/indieweb-syndication.md | Proposal. POSSE: feeds, Webmention, Micropub |
docs/indieauth.md | Proposal. IndieAuth as sign-in and token layer |
|
Develop
Backend (needs only uv):
cd backend
uv sync
uv run pytest
Mobile: see mobile/README.md. The root Dockerfile builds the Expo web export and the backend into one image (docker build -t relay ., port 8000); CI builds it via .github/workflows/deploy.yml. A pinned Nix dev shell with
uv, Node and bun is available via nix develop.
host.html and why.html are written by hand. Edit the HTML directly.
Free software, owned by no one.
