Post #3742793

2026-07-11 13:47 UTC

The more I work on Hollo, the more its Mastodon-compatible API feels like a straitjacket. I chose it for a practical reason: people could use existing clients, and I wouldn't have to build a frontend too. I still think that was the right call at the time. The problem is that clients can only expose what Mastodon's API represents. I keep coming up with ideas, then asking whether the API has anywhere to put them. If it doesn't, I have no way to get the feature in front of users. ActivityPub API (so-called “C2S”) might be the eventual answer, but it doesn't help much today. I don't know of any clients Hollo users could realistically use with it, and adoption is still limited. So I keep coming back to the idea that Hollo will need a frontend of its own. I'd keep the Mastodon API for existing apps. I'm not especially eager to take on a whole frontend, but I don't see another way to try ideas that don't fit Mastodon's model.

Replies (3)

@fedicat@pc.cafe 2026-07-11 16:20

@hongminhee@hollo.social Several platforms have extensions or variations of the mastodon api that I and some others try to accommodate, but it depends how well they're documented (gotosocial, mitra, neodb, pleroma, akkoma) or if it's not too hard to glean from the source and, not least important, if I have a test account to try them out.

Open ##3742881
@evan@cosocial.ca 2026-07-11 13:58

@hongminhee@hollo.social it's a "ratchet" issue. We need servers like WordPress and onepage.pub and Hollo to support the API, then we get clients like ap or checkin.swf.pub, and that brings more servers, which bring more clients, and so on and so on.

Open ##4184230
@django@social.coop 2026-07-11 14:11

@hongminhee@hollo.social although it’s not an immediate goal, I am planning for @nuages app to be deployable as a white label / themeable front-end for c2s supporting servers

Open ##4184241