Activity Relay Server

A maintained and deployable ActivityPub relay written in Go

Note

This repository is a maintained fork of yukimochi/Activity-Relay, based on upstream release v2.0.10.

The authoritative repository is forgejo.argentwolf.org/alan/activity-relay. github.com/thystra/Activity-Relay is a public mirror and independent-validation surface. The public Go module path remains github.com/thystra/Activity-Relay.

What this project provides

Activity-Relay receives public ActivityPub traffic and redistributes eligible activities to participating servers. This maintained fork focuses on practical Fediverse interoperability, bounded Redis-backed delivery, modern HTTP signatures, operational visibility, and upgrade-safe native and container packaging.

Highlights include:

• Mastodon authorized-fetch and secure-mode interoperability;
• RFC 9421 HTTP Message Signatures and RFC 9530 Content-Digest, with destination-aware dual negotiation;
• support for relay followers and publishers from Mastodon, Friendica, NodeBB, WordPress ActivityPub, LitePub-family software, and compatible implementations;
• bounded Redis-backed fan-out with leased in-flight recovery;
• /status.json operational and participation information;
• optional Activity-Relay Directory registration, profile synchronization, participating-site telemetry, automatic heartbeat scheduling, and manual CLI lifecycle commands;
• native Debian/Ubuntu packages and multi-architecture container images; and
• an optional generated public relay website.

See CHANGELOG.md for release-by-release changes.

Install

Activity-Relay can be deployed with Docker Compose, the native Debian/Ubuntu package, or from source.

For complete installation instructions, prerequisites, actor-key handling, reverse-proxy requirements, and first-start checks, see:

docs/INSTALLATION.md

Published container images use:

ghcr.io/thystra/activity-relay:<version>

A native package install begins with:

sudo apt install ./activity-relay_VERSION_amd64.deb

The relay identity key is persistent state. Back up actor.pem; replacing it changes the relay's cryptographic identity.

Operate

The API server and workers use the same YAML configuration:

relay --config /etc/activity-relay/config.yml server
relay --config /etc/activity-relay/config.yml worker

Validate configuration before restarting:

relay --config /etc/activity-relay/config.yml --test-config

Directory lifecycle operations are available from the same executable:

relay --config /etc/activity-relay/config.yml directory status
relay --config /etc/activity-relay/config.yml directory heartbeat https://directory.example.org

For the operator command reference, configuration examples, Directory administration, observability, website maintenance, and troubleshooting, see:

docs/ADMINISTRATION.md

Federation endpoints

Traditional relay subscribers post to or subscribe through:

https://relay.example.org/inbox

Follower-style relay software follows:

https://relay.example.org/actor

A public reverse proxy should forward the relay's ActivityPub, WebFinger, NodeInfo, and status routes to the API server. The observability listener is separate and should not be exposed through the public reverse proxy. The full route list is in the installation and administration guides.

Documentation

• Install or upgrade: docs/INSTALLATION.md
• Operate the relay and use the CLI: docs/ADMINISTRATION.md
• Directory client/protocol behavior: docs/DIRECTORY-CLIENT.md
• Known Directory services: docs/DIRECTORY-INDEX.md
• Interoperability notes: docs/INTEROPERABILITY.md
• Security and HTTP signatures: docs/SECURITY.md
• Development and testing: docs/DEVELOPMENT.md
• Architecture: ARCHITECTURE.md
• Release process: docs/RELEASING.md
• Roadmap/release gates: TODO.md

Website-specific documentation lives under contrib/web/, and resource-guard/operational tooling is documented under contrib/ops/.

Releases and compatibility

Existing ActivityPub endpoints, configuration names, Redis state, and control commands remain compatible unless a release explicitly documents otherwise. Release candidates use complete -rcN version identifiers and do not move stable tags.

Forgejo is the release authority. GitHub is a downstream mirror and validation surface. Versioned release notes are retained under docs/releases/.

Upstream and attribution

This project is derived from yukimochi/Activity-Relay, upstream baseline v2.0.10. Original authorship, history, notices, and attribution are retained. See docs/UPSTREAM.md.

License

GNU Affero General Public License version 3. See LICENCE.