{"slug": "introducing-rss-chat", "title": "Introducing Rss.chat", "summary": "Dave Winer launched rss.chat, a read-only social network built on RSS 2.0, OPML, Markdown, SQL, and WebSocket, created with Claude Code. The project aims to foster small, interoperable communities and will be released under an MIT license.", "body_md": "Yesterday I asked if RSS can be a social network. #\n\nThe answer is yes, of course, and -- here's rss.chat! #\n\nThe site is read-only except for a few of my programming buddies who are helping me figure out how to work in this environment.#\n\nI started this project in April, a Dave/Claude creation. I could not have done something so complex internally, yet so simple to use and build on without Claude Code. The APIs on this thing are a product in their own right. #\n\nWe don't need anything more than RSS 2.0, OPML, Markdown, SQL and WebSocket. All very established in the web world, and remarkably only one was developed by a standards body. #\n\nWe support textcasting, or text as defined by the web. Bringing the philosophy of podcasting to text. It's important that we get together on what text is. #\n\nThe \"whole community\" feed has been in my blogroll for a month. #\n\nWe support rssCloud for instant updates. We were going to support WebSub until it became clear that we had to put an ad for Atom at the top of our RSS 2.0 feed. That bit of larceny has to be undone imho. I want to support a standard that other developers support, but to force something like that is incredibly anti-interop and as I said I believe the web and interop are the same thing. #\n\nI envision a world of small communities, running on small servers. We haven't released the code for this yet, but will, under an MIT license. #\n\nI don't care if rss.chat is a coral reef, what I want is a network of services that interop perfectly. I don't care whether you share your code or don't. Things are changing very quickly now, Claude and I wrote this together, but I am also teaching Claude how to clone this. So it'll be possible for a user, in vibe-coding mode, to change anything about the user interface, but you have to stick with the back-end formats and protocols to be part of the club. #\n\nWe're just getting started. This is Day 0 in a story that could last a while and spread out pretty far. #\n\nWorking with Claude we have a plan for docs for all the APIs and protocols. There are quite a few of those. #\n\nAnd we're going beyond Open Source, if you can believe that. AI has opened some new doors, I can't wait to build on those.#\n\nAnd as with blogging and podcasting, started 20+ years ago, we're going to follow what people do with this. RSS will fade into the background and do its work quietly. Its job is to give users choice. #\n\nRemember, every part is replaceable. If one is not, it's not part of the web.. #\n\nYou know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/introducing-rss-chat", "canonical_source": "http://scripting.com/2026/07/10/161133.html", "published_at": "2026-07-10 19:13:42+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-10 19:35:29.919202+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools"], "entities": ["Dave Winer", "Claude Code", "RSS 2.0", "OPML", "WebSocket"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/introducing-rss-chat", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/introducing-rss-chat.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/introducing-rss-chat.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/introducing-rss-chat.jsonld"}}