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@ elsat
2024-12-30 22:45:10Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! Here's an overview of keeping tabs on interoperability on nostr.
What is nostrability
Nostrability is: -the practical documentation of broken things on nostr between two or more apps, and -a place to advocate for positive interoperability updates to apps
Why does this matter?
If the hop and/or interaction between apps sucks, then nostr users will not have an amazing and unique experience. Nostr will lose to well funded incumbents.
How did this start?
Will was upset that he had to troubleshoot other dev's apps.
What nostrability does not aim for
All apps implement all NIPs.
Where can I read in detail
https://github.com/nostrability/nostrability
Timeline
Nov '23 Added placeholder to github. Jan '24 First issues documented. Jan '24 First nostrability two app bug is fixed Coracle cannot send DMs to Damus (thank you Hodlbod!). '24 Gave intro to nostrability talk at BBB. Presentation link. Aug '24 Galaxy devs educated elsat at NostrCI discussion at Nostriga. (n.b. where's the video??) Oct '24 Humbled by and grateful for OpenSats acknowledgment and funding. Thank you to all nostr enjoyers & devs who gave me their precious time, and to my advocates & supporters - you know who you are 🙏.
What are specific issues discussed?
Over a hundred open issues, and a couple of dozen resolved issues. Many of these were reported by extremetly very normal nostr users, and devs.
Example topics (too many to list in a single article) range from: -contact list wipes, mute list wipes (Kieran pls fix!!) -zaps not working between apps -missing notes -broken profiles -old profile information -q tags, a tags, missing replies and/or parent notes etc.. -to proposed onboarding best practices -outbox tracker positive interop -highlights -non-nostr interoperability: e.g. bluesky bridgyfed profile info -spillover NIP/other controversy such as edited notes -and migrating to nostr best practices
Learnings
- Lone wolf, limited resource devs are the norm. Most devs focus on their one app, or their multiple apps.
- Some devs are extremely generous with their time when it comes to interop. Proof of work is in the git repo.
- There is a lot of space for building amazing interoperable experiences - this remains frontier territory on the design, product, and dev side. Which will be the first experience to blow people out of the water? Is it zaps, DVMs, or something not yet put together?
- I empathize that without basic things "just working", and/or basic features missing it may be difficult to allocate resources to interoperability.
- Even devs with teams may struggle to allocate resources to interoperability.
- Bug reporting and crappy experience reporting matters! This is important for single apps, and even more so for multi-app interaction. Devs may not get around to fixing something right away. However, if nostriches don't share their negative experience, devs will have less impetus to improve an experience.
2025 plans
- Continue documenting broken things.
- Interview devs to better understand how I can suit nostrability to dev's single app workflows, as to more effectively close broken things, and better advocate for positive interoperability updates across apps.
- Help test nostrCI automated interop testing methodology with galaxy dev of nostr.watch & NIP-66 Sandwich, so that nostrability can be automated per particular test cases.
Dev and nostrich feedback
Let me know how I can make nostrability more useful for yall. Tag me on nostr, create issues on nostrability 💪.
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