as i’ve been onboarding onto new apps i started losing track of where i’ve posted issues, asked questions, and created content. most of these apps are web-based, so there’s no native notification layer pulling it all together.
i put together a quick POC for a centralized notification client and posted a video on the feed to gauge interest. it sounds like people are already thinking about a solution and got a pointer to this forum. Boris mentioned there was a discussion about this in Montreal, so i wanted to bring it to a wider audience.
Brendan mentioned @awarm.space might be thinking about an on-protocol notification API at the PDS level, which would make something like this way more elegant than listeding to the firehose which is what my POC is doing. curious if there’s any active work there or if this is still an open problem.
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Still an open problem!
One could support all lexicons with some of Fig’s microcosm tooling, should respect user blocks, has to be blocks not just for bsky lexicon but like tangled and others have their own social graph and so on.
Semble @wesleyfinck.org has notifications in app and were in Montreal, as was @awarm.space from Leaflet
Hi complexity space! Could be rolled out in like a “notifications app”, how to deliver those notifications (eg Matrix for Beeper, bsky DMs etc)
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Oh, and someone could do email-notifications-as-a-service for apps (Or any of these). Not sure if there are existing web2 services - would be useful research.
Eg maybe Buttondown wants to do this - Mary works there.
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I have been thinking a lot about this. When I wanted to implement push notifications in my Bluesky client app, I was kind of bummed everything seemed to be built/taken care of by Bluesky except a push service.
If you want notifications in a 3rd party Bluesky client, you need to listen to the firehose and find a way to filter out mutes and blocks, which means now you need a server that stores some of the users’ private data. It’s workable and pretty standard, but it’s a bit of a hassle compared to everything else.
Then, when Bluesky came out with their DMs, I realized I had to poll to get those because there was no push mechanism. Their system, while open, is vertically integrated so they can do whatever they want.
I think what we need is some sort of cross-service way for something webhook-like that uses procedure Lexicons and trusted service auth. Repo records or DID docs could define, ‘I use this app, send my notifications here,’ and servers could talk to each other using whatever standards we design. Not sure what that would look like, but those are my thoughts.
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A centralized notification service would be great!
it’s coming up a bit more: @tessa.germnetwork.com on Bluesky
having a single mobile experience where notifications are organized by app would be great community infrastructure as an app. it’d also potentially make notification settings much easier to configure as well.
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i’ve made a Roomy Space for feedback on centralized notifications. Roomy Space
I’ve got an iOS app up on testflight if anyone wants to help get this app to be as helpful as possible
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