Documentation
Guides for installing, upgrading and running Catodon, and notes for developers.
Running a server
Installing and running Catodon Catodon is Sharkey at heart, so the Sharkey installation guide still applies for the base setup. Use the Catodon repository (https://codefloe.com/catodon/catodon) instead of Sharkey's. Backing up before an upgrade Every upgrade instruction in this repo starts with "back up your database and files first." This page is the simple, step-by-step version of how to actually do that — pick your path: Upgrading your in-memory store from Redis to Valkey Catodon now ships Valkey instead of Redis as its bundled in-memory store (used for caching, pub/sub, and the job queue). This page is a step-by-step runbook for moving an existing installation over. For the reasoning… Migrating from Misskey to Catodon Catodon descends from Misskey through Sharkey, so a Misskey server's database can be carried over in place: your accounts, posts, files, follows and settings stay as they are, and Catodon's migrations bring the schema… Downgrading a Catodon instance to Sharkey This is a runbook, not a script. It is deliberately not automated: this procedure is run approximately never, and a script that silently rots as upstream Sharkey drifts is more dangerous than a documented, re-verified…
APIs and apps
ActivityPub client API Catodon implements the client-to-server half of ActivityPub (W3C REC §5–§6), following the SocialCG ActivityPub API Task Force's Basic Profile for ActivityPub API Servers. A generic ActivityPub app can sign an account… Lemmy-compatible forum API Catodon answers three read-only requests in the shape of Lemmy's API v3 (Lemmy 0.19), so that forum directories and crawlers written for Lemmy can find the public forums of a Catodon server. "Forum" is Catodon's word… Push notifications in the Aria app Aria (the cross-platform Misskey-family client) sets up push notifications by showing an AiScript snippet and telling you to open your server's Scratchpad page (https://your-server/scratchpad), paste the snippet, run…
Developing Catodon
Development How to get a Catodon development instance running, how to test it, and the conventions and traps of this codebase. For the social side of contributing (what to open an issue about, how pull requests are handled), see… Merging upstream into Catodon Catodon is a fork of Sharkey, which is a fork of Misskey. Changes therefore travel down a chain: Misskey to Sharkey, Sharkey to Catodon. Upstream map What a port from Misskey needs before reading a single hunk: for each upstream path, which file here holds that code, how far that file has drifted, and which other files here carry a copy of the same code. Merging… Ranked timeline hydration The Redis-backed Hot and Active paths in FanoutTimelineEndpointService now select ranking columns first, check eligibility in bounded batches in rank order, and load the original full graph only for the selected page.…
Other pages
Custom widgets: for administrators Custom widgets let an administrator put their own small web pages, or a third party's embed code, into the widget column beside the built-in widgets, and choose which widgets new accounts start with. They are in Control… Events An event is a post with a date and a place: a concert, a meeting, a book club, a protest. Catodon shows events from other servers (Mobilizon, Gancio, Friendica, Hubzilla and others), lets you post your own, and lets… Events: federation notes What Catodon sends and accepts for events, and what each piece of fediverse software it was tested against does with them. This page is for developers and administrators. For users, see Events. Events: for administrators What events add to a Catodon server, and what an administrator may want to know or change. For how events work for users, see Events; for what other servers do with them, Events: federation notes. Receiving webhooks Catodon sends a webhook as an HTTP POST with a JSON body, for the webhooks a user sets up under Settings > Developer > Webhook and for the ones an administrator sets up under Control Panel > Webhooks. This page is for… Server themes An admin can offer themes to every user of the server, in Control panel > Branding > Server themes. The field takes a YAML list of themes. Every user finds them at the top of the theme pickers in Settings > Appearance,… Single sign-on Catodon can let people sign in through an OpenID Connect provider, such as Keycloak, Authentik, Entra ID or any other provider that publishes a discovery document. This page is for the administrator who sets it up.…