socli

socli is an application for interacting with decentralized social media like bluesky, mastodon, and RSS feeds from one shared interface

Getting Started

1. Either build from source, or download a binary executable for your system from the releases page
2. Move the executable to somewhere in your $PATH, such as:
   • Windows*: C:\Users\<YourUsername>\bin
   • Linux & MacOS: /usr/bin
3. Decide on a pass-phrase for socli. It is used to store the credentials for logging in to each platform, and you will be unable to log in without it
4. For each platform you'd like to use, run its configuration step
5. After that, just run socli to start seeing posts

Usage

• socli with no arguments fetches and displays your feed
• socli reset will delete all locally saved credentials
• connect to to various platforms with:
  • socli bluesky
  • socli mastodon

Note

more platforms are eventually planned

Posts & Feed

On launch, you will be viewing the feed, and a post will be currently selected, represented with a > next to it. Pressing right-arrow will zoom in on the post, and pressing left-arrow will go back. Space/Enter and backspace like and unlike the selected post. A shows information about a posts' author. F and U follow and unfollow a posts' author. / prompts for and goes to a users' profile. P prompts for and then posts to all platforms.

Design

socli is separated into the main application, and its subapplications for handling each platform. The reason for this is twofold: updates for each platform subapplication can be done totally separately, and the subapplications can be repurposed, for example as a dependency of a GUI application

Build from Source

Important

building requires the following:

• bash or similar shell
• a C compiler (C11 or newer)
• python 3.11.*
• cython 3.*.*
• pip 23.*.*
• atproto
• argparse

The build process for socli is pretty minimal. socli builds into a binary for each platform it interacts with, and then the main application that interfaces each of them.

Running the ./build script should auto-magically fill the ./bin directory with binaries for your system. Installation is then as simple as moving the main binary and its dependencies to somewhere in your environment's $PATH

Security

Note

the pass-key required by socli on startup is never saved. credentials given during setup are obfuscated when saved

Caution

socli only obfuscates the data it saves locally, it is not secure against determined attacks, but intended to be good enough to prevent simple privacy violations by someone with physical access to your machine.

Caution

socli communicates through standard process pipes. Running it from within other applications means they may see your pass-key or other sensitive data, and programs which attach to these pipes may be a security vulnerability.

Contributing

Contributions are accepted through the GitHub page, and the process is just two steps:

1. open an issue describing what problem you're addressing, changes you're making, or features you're adding. Keep the name short and the description specific.
2. submit a pull request who's name begins with the number of the issue, such as #1 add keygen

Tip

we recommend using a .gitignore with at least the following entries:

generated/
bin/
.*

By submitting code to this repository, you implictly agree to only submit works of your own creation and which you have the rights to.