The Spritely Institute

Impeccable curation:

Right after I talked about 4 ways to ♥️/👿 browsers, @flockofbirbs.bsky.social @spritelyinst.bsky.social is up next saying break up the browser monoliths, browsers should just be a shell for WASM.

Couldn't make it to #FOSDEM? Here's a list of talks by #spritely folks, including me, plus a list of talks I just recommend! social.coop/@cwebber/116...

If you're interested in funding or helping us find funding for a Discord replacement that's federated and end-to-end encrypted, we're interested in implementing that at @spritelyinst.bsky.social

We have the skills and underlying tech, but we need resources to fund it. Feel free to reach out.

Spritely @ FOSDEM Christine, Jessica, and myself will be presenting several talks at the FOSDEM conference in Brussels this weekend on 1/31 and 2/1. Click on links to individual talks to stream them live or watch afte...

Coming to #FOSDEM? Come see the #Spritely crew speak! We've got a whole bunch of exciting talks lined up this year! community.spritely.institute/t/spritely-f...

Mandy: ActivityPub on Spritely Goblins! spritely.institute/news/mandy-a...

Jessica Tallon, co-author of ActivityPub and Spritely engineer, discusses a proof of concept ActivityPub application combining the actor model properties of Spritely Goblins and ActivityPub alike!

I've said a lot, there's more that can be said, but instead I'll switch to the ask.

Does the above resonate with you? @spritelyinst.bsky.social could really, truly use your help.

Consider donating. I promise we'll put it to good use. spritely.institute/donate/

Let's build a better internet! 💜

But what does it mean for systems to be social? Here's something you can't do on either ActivityPub or ATProto, but is a demo we built with Goblins and OCapN: a collaborative farming game! spritely.institute/news/goblinv...

And we're still building key infrastructure. Goblins recently got a major upgrade to its persistence system: spritely.institute/news/spritel...

And it's about to get another one. Not really yet announced, but we're working on a hot-cache system that loads actors from store on demand. It's neat!

We also recently put out a blogpost and demo of a chat system that *nobody* centrally hosts called "Brassica Chat" spritely.institute/news/composi...

You can try on it on the page. It's a demo, but it's a step towards secure communication for a hostile world.

We're big believers in having tangible examples of tech so people can understand and it's not just vaporware. Sometimes that's challenging to do with low-level tech in development. But games are a great way to show things off!

Unusually, Spritely has a whole arcade page! spritely.institute/arcade/

We're building cool tech:
- Goblins, p2p distributed programming: spritely.institute/goblins/
- Hoot, a WebAssembly toolkit (and Scheme->WASM compiler) spritely.institute/hoot/
- OCapN, a secure distributed p2p networked protocol ocapn.org

But... what are we *doing* with these things?

User-empowering technology is a lot of work, corporations aren't motivated to build it. We need research and development of new tech that changes the game from an org that isn't bound by pushing profit.

And that's why @spritelyinst.bsky.social is a nonprofit research lab.

So... what are we doing?

I love computers. When people say "Computers were a mistake!" it makes me sad.

But it's had to blame people. The direction computers have gone in, the experience people largely have had, is a loss of agency and empowerment.

How do we bring that back, and do better than ever even?

Social Media: We Can Change the Defaults Christine Lemmer-Webber, best known as co-author of ActivityPub, the decentralized social networking protocol, will speak about the crisis technologists face. Why must we revise the default assumption...

What can we do? Is there hope? Is it possible to build something better?

Spritely was born out of this work, and the strive to create infrastructure allowing for "Networks of Consent". More on that here: spui25.nl/programma/we...

#fediday2025 Christine Lemmer-Webber - Protocols and Purpose in a Global Democratic Crisis Protocols and Purpose in a Global Democratic Crisis (EN) Christine Lemmer-Webber, The Spritely Institute Christine Lemmer-Webber, co-author of the ActivityPub specification, frames the work of dece...

*None* of the decentralized social networks today are robust enough to handle threats facing vulnerable people and activists today. Not the fediverse, not Bluesky/ATProto. What to do?

(Here's a talk on that: "Protocols and Purpose in a Global Democratic Crisis" c-tube.c-base.org/w/f9pF5pwxX8... )

@spritelyinst.bsky.social is developing some damn cool tech: Distributed programming! Leading the way on a secure P2P protocol (OCapN)! A WebAssembly toolkit!

But: is "cool tech" what matters? *Why* are we trying to make cool tech? What are the *social implications* of making this technology?

For this #GivingTuesday I'm going to make the (biased) argument for why you might consider donating to @spritelyinst.bsky.social, especially if you care about a healthier future for the internet! spritely.institute/donate/

Here's a little thread explaining more... 🧵

Local-first chat using CRDTs meets object capability security using @spritelyinst.bsky.social's tech!

A diagram of a local-first chat room shared between Alice, Bob, and Carol.

Composing capability security and conflict-free replicated data types spritely.institute/news/composi...

Capability security AND local-first chat?! Two great tastes that taste great together! Plus try our tasty demo, live on the blogpost: Brassica Chat!

Social Media: We Can Change the Defaults Christine Lemmer-Webber, best known as co-author of ActivityPub, the decentralized social networking protocol, will speak about the crisis technologists face. Why must we revise the default assumption...

If you're in Amsterdam next week, our Executive Director @dustyweb.bsky.social is giving a keynote: "We Can Change the Defaults: Building Networks of Consent and Spaces of Joy in the Ruins of Social Media" spui25.nl/programma/we...

Instead of doing the game jam this time around, we've been making some interesting new demos! And here's GoblinShare: Secure, Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing with Goblins spritely.institute/news/goblins...

Combining Goblins, OCapN, and encrypted content addressed storage!

Next office hours on 10/29 Hey everyone, Our next office hours will be held on Wednesday, October 29th at 2 PM EDT (6 PM UTC). The meeting will be held on Big Blue Button. Use the following link to join: Spritely Office Hours...

Next Spritely office hours! Today! At 2 PM EDT (6 PM UTC)! community.spritely.institute/t/next-offic...

Cya there!

Next office hours on 10/29 Hey everyone, Our next office hours will be held on Wednesday, October 29th at 2 PM EDT (6 PM UTC). The meeting will be held on Big Blue Button. Use the following link to join: Spritely Office Hours...

Next Spritely office hours! Today! At 2 PM EDT (6 PM UTC)! community.spritely.institute/t/next-offic...

Cya there!

What's New in Guile Hoot? - System Crafters Live! YouTube video by System Crafters

New System Crafters today focused on Hoot! www.youtube.com/live/0jvN_qW...

I am SO EXCITED to announce the new release of @spritelyinst.bsky.social Goblins 0.17.0 featuring MAJOR new improvements to our persistence system, including a lightning-fast storage backend called Bloblin! spritely.institute/news/spritel...

Hoot fans! Lisp fans! Rejoyce! Scheme in the browser just got even nicer and cozier to use with Hoot 0.7.0! spritely.institute/news/hoot-0-...

We say "Scheme to WASM compiler" but actually Hoot is a lot more than that, it's a dang cool entire Webassembly toolkit. But you know, sometimes easier to simplify your messaging a bit :)

Hoot, our Scheme to WASM compiler, version 0.7.0 is out! spritely.institute/news/hoot-0-...

A whole bunch of quality of life improvements! Importing Guile modules is easier, more common scheme library (SRFI) support, and much more!

Get it while it's hot, and enjoy this cozy release!

Spritely Goblins v0.17.0: Persistence is better than ever! spritely.institute/news/spritel...

Our distributed programming system Goblins has a brand new persistence system named Bloblin which is LIGHTNING fast! Your programs smoothly serialize and BAM, reawaken! Let's go!

Guix with an XFCE desktop running with its init daemon Shepherd running on top of Goblins, on PID 1!!!!!

It is ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to contain the amount of excitement in making this post... We have Shepherd running on Spritely Goblins running ON TOP OF GUIX! See the screenshot!

This is HUGE! We just wrote about Goblins + Shepherd a few days ago but progress is SO FAST! spritely.institute/news/shepher...