Sign-up stays closed (invitations only), so a new server's first login could only be made over SSH with admin
create-root, and an invitation needs a group, which needs a login. While no administrator exists, GET
/clientapi/user/setup says so and POST takes a SetupForm (login, password, first persona): the login is made the
administrator with its persona, and setup closes for good (owner decision 2026-10-16: first come, first served, no setup
code).
ServerSetup is one document with a fixed id, so the first request to insert it wins and two setups at once make one
administrator. A setup that fails before its login is made gives the claim back; one that named an administrator never
does, whoever is demoted or deleted later, and the CLI stays the way back. admin promote and create-root --admin seal it
too, migration _018 seals a server that already had an administrator, and no backup holds it nor does a restore drop it,
since a restore tombstones an administrator made after the backup. Public sign-up, NodeInfo and the instance API are
unchanged. RootUser.SetAdmin is the one place an administrator is made (with isModerator, which IsAdminPolicy asks for),
and the invitation endpoints share InsertPersona with setup.
Tests: ServerSetupTests on the invitations-only host (setup, the race, failed setups, sign-up still closed, the CLI's
seal) and the migration; the whole suite passes (962). In the pasture, decePub's setup and invitation pages pass end to
end.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Owner decision 2026-10-04: fix the mismatches and every other mismatch of the same kind.
- One counting rule (Domain/Privacy/Counted), Mastodon's. It is used for a persona's statuses_count, its outbox
totalItems, NodeInfo localPosts and the instance status_count, which used to count four different things. It
counts every post that is neither deleted nor a DM, boosts included, and circle and located posts too (owner
decision). A group's count includes its remote members' posts.
- Users. Personas of banned or deleted roots no longer count, and are not found in search. NodeInfo now gives
activeMonth and activeHalfyear, and the v2 instance gives active_month instead of a constant 0.
- replies_count counts only public and unlisted replies, so it no longer tells anyone that a private reply exists.
Migration _012 recounts it.
- A remote account that deletes itself takes everything out of every count (GoneActors): its likes, downvotes,
reactions and poll votes go and their counters come back, as do its boosts', replies' and quotes' counts, and its
notifications. Lookups, account lists, search and favourited_by no longer show it. Migration _012 applies this to
accounts already gone.
- Deleting a post also deletes its pins and the local boosts of it.
- /stalking gives the same total as following_count. Members are still never listed, and hide_collections is now
always true, since the setting never did anything.
- Joining a community by invitation is following it, so /flock and /groupies agree; leaving unfollows.
- Search. Anyone may search, as on Mastodon; resolve and offset need a sign-in, offset pages, and deleted accounts
are never found.
- notifications/unread_count counts what the list shows, and the owner's follower and following lists page with
Link.
- The instance API advertises what is enforced:
- max_characters, now enforced with a 422;
- max_pinned_statuses = MaxPins;
- the media types and limits MediaService and MediaOptions accept;
- PollService's limits;
- the configured languages;
- no streaming URL until streaming exists.
domain_count counts the servers we have exchanged with; which ones stays unpublished (peers is empty).
- Routes Mastodon answers now answer instead of 404:
- directory, tags/{name}, timelines/link and identity_proofs;
- instance/languages, translation_languages, domain_blocks and privacy_policy;
- the v1 and v2 notification policy, and notification requests.
Also, from phase 3: a recovered password ends /clientapi sessions through a per-root SessionStamp claim instead of
comparing the JWT's whole-second nbf with the change time. That comparison let a token issued in the same second
survive, which made a test flaky.
671 tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01ELjqpznMFMNrJoJUj6K5p2
Owner decision 2026-10-04: fix the account privacy findings.
- Sign-in. Every failure answers "That username and password do not match." after the same work: an unknown login
is hashed against a decoy, and the comparison is constant-time. "Banned" is told only to someone who gave the right
password. This covers /clientapi/user/login, /invitation/login and /oauth/login.
- Recovery.
- Every request answers the same sentence and queues a SendRecovery job, whether or not the account exists or has an
email. The lookup, the code and SMTP move to RecoveryJob, so neither the answer nor its timing says anything.
- Codes are kept only as a SHA-256 hash, for one hour. Migration _011 drops the plaintext ones, which never expired.
- A recovered password ends every session of the root. RootSessions sets CredentialsChangedAt, which JwtEvents
checks against the JWT's issue time, now stamped as nbf, and revokes each persona's OAuth tokens and authorizations.
- Deleting a root (RootRemoval: the admin route, or the restored self-delete at /clientapi/user/delete, which asks for
the password).
- Its sessions end.
- Each persona and each group it owns sends Delete{Actor} to its followers, its members and the accounts it follows.
- The personas' posts are emptied.
- /peasants/{name} answers 410 with a Tombstone (formerType Person or Group), as do its inbox and WebFinger, through
LocalActorService.Gone. The names stay reserved.
- The root keeps only a unique `deleted-{id}` name; the second deletion on an instance used to collide on
"Deleted user".
Also, from phase 2's pasture: GoToSocial files a circle post like a DM and shows it only to accounts it mentions. Each
member's copy, and a member's refetch, now also mentions that member silently. The GoToSocial scenario checks circle
posts in conversations, like DMs, and they pass there now, as on Mastodon.
657 tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01ELjqpznMFMNrJoJUj6K5p2
thepraandClaude Opus 5.5