Inkwell

A federated social journaling platform — LiveJournal meets MySpace, reimagined for 2026 with ActivityPub federation. No algorithms, no ads, user-owned spaces.

Live instance: inkwell.social

Features

Writing & Publishing

• Rich text editor (TipTap) with 17+ extensions — formatting, tables, task lists, image uploads, smart typography
• Drafts, excerpts, cover images, word count & reading time
• Series & collections for organizing entries
• 21 content categories, tags, mood & music metadata
• Distraction-free writing mode
• Post by Email (Plus) — publish by sending to a unique email address
• Cross-posting to Mastodon/fediverse accounts

Social & Discovery

• Pen Pals (follow/accept) with pending state
• Stamps — 7 postage-stamp-styled reaction types per entry
• Inks — community discovery signal with trending & "Most Inked" sorting
• Threaded comments ("Marginalia") with @mentions
• Guestbooks on profile pages
• Circles — group discussion spaces with a Writer's Salon aesthetic
• Native polling (entry polls & platform-wide community polls)
• Direct messaging ("Letters") with rich text
• User blocking with full visibility enforcement

Profile Customization (MySpace-style)

• 8 theme presets, 8 fonts, 4 layouts, 3 color pickers
• Background images, banner images, profile music player
• Avatar frames (10 decorative SVG overlays)
• Avatar builder (DiceBear Croodles hand-drawn doodle style)
• Widget ordering, custom CSS, custom HTML (full-page mode with template tags)
• AIM-style status messages, social links, tag cloud
• 3 entry display modes (cards, full post, timeline)

Federation (ActivityPub)

• Fully interoperable with Mastodon and the fediverse
• Users followable at @[email protected]
• Entries federated as Article objects (FEP-b2b8)
• Inbound/outbound: follows, comments, inks (boosts), stamps (likes)
• Relay support for bootstrapping fediverse content on Explore
• WebFinger, HTTP Signatures, actor endpoints

Newsletters

• Double opt-in email subscribers (CAN-SPAM/GDPR compliant)
• Send published entries as emails with one-click unsubscribe
• Scheduled sends (Plus), custom newsletter name & reply-to

Monetization & Support

• Plus subscription ($5/mo) via Stripe
• Ink Donor voluntary donations ($1/$2/$3/mo)
• Postage — reader-to-writer payments via Stripe Connect (8% commission)
• Writer Subscription Plans — recurring paid content access
• External support links (Ko-fi, BMC, Patreon, etc.)

Platform

• Community feedback board & roadmap at /roadmap
• Content translation (DeepL, 15 languages)
• Sensitive content labeling & reporting system
• Redactions (keyword-based content muting)
• Custom domains (Plus)
• Public API with ink_-prefixed API keys
• Full-text search (Meilisearch with Postgres fallback)
• Self-hosting support via Docker Compose

Architecture

• Backend: Elixir/Phoenix 1.8 — OTP release deployed to Fly.io
• Frontend: Next.js 16 + React — standalone output deployed to Fly.io
• Federation: ActivityPub handled natively in Phoenix (no sidecar)
• Database: PostgreSQL 16
• Search: Meilisearch (optional, graceful fallback to Postgres ILIKE)
• Email: SMTP via gen_smtp or Resend API (transactional + newsletters)
• Background Jobs: Oban (Postgres-backed)
• Payments: Stripe (subscriptions, Connect, donations)

Project Structure

inkwell/
  apps/
    api/          # Elixir/Phoenix backend (mix project)
    web/          # Next.js frontend (npm workspace member)
  services/
    federation/   # Unused — federation is native in Phoenix
  packages/
    types/        # Shared TypeScript types (npm workspace member)

npm workspaces monorepo. Lock file lives at root, not in individual apps.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Elixir 1.19+ / Erlang/OTP 28+ (install via brew install elixir on macOS)
• Node.js 20+
• Docker Desktop (for PostgreSQL and Meilisearch)

First-Time Setup

# 1. Start Docker services (Postgres + Meilisearch)
docker compose up -d

# 2. Install JS dependencies
npm install

# 3. Install Elixir deps, create DB, run migrations
cd apps/api && mix setup

# 4. Start Phoenix API (Terminal 1)
mix phx.server
# Wait for: Running InkwellWeb.Endpoint at 0.0.0.0:4000

# 5. Start Next.js frontend (Terminal 2, from project root)
npm run dev:web
# Wait for: Ready in ...ms

Development URLs

Service	URL
Frontend	http://localhost:3000
Phoenix API	http://localhost:4000
API Health Check	http://localhost:4000/health
Meilisearch	http://localhost:7700

Logging In Locally

No email service is needed for local development. The API runs in "dev mode" — after entering any email on the login/signup page, a clickable magic link appears on screen instead of being emailed.

If mix compile Fails

On first compile with Elixir 1.19, you may hit a one-time ordering issue:

mix deps.compile oban --force
mix compile

Self-Hosting

Inkwell runs on any x86-64 server with Docker Compose, on one domain of your own, with every feature on for everyone and no billing. Three settings to start (DOMAIN, ADMIN_EMAIL, SECRET_KEY_BASE); Caddy handles HTTPS; members are followable as @name@yourdomain.

See SELF_HOSTING.md for the guide: install, email, your own Terms and Privacy Policy, backups, upgrades and troubleshooting.

Images are published to GitHub Container Registry on every push to main, tagged with the commit. :latest moves only after that commit's images have booted the self-hosted setup and passed scripts/selfhost-smoke.sh:

• ghcr.io/stantondev/inkwell-api:latest
• ghcr.io/stantondev/inkwell-web:latest

Deployment (Fly.io)

The hosted instance runs on Fly.io. Deploy commands:

# API (runs migrations automatically)
fly deploy --config fly.api.toml --wait-timeout 600

# Frontend
fly deploy --config fly.web.toml --wait-timeout 600

# Meilisearch
fly deploy --config fly.search.toml --wait-timeout 600

CI/CD via GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/docker-publish.yml) builds Docker images on every push to main, runs the self-hosting smoke test against them, then tags them latest.

License

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0