thatguygriffandClaude Opus 5
e64e83c124
The rules were a Markdown table, and a table cell cannot hold a bare `|`. It has to be written `\|`, which renders as a pipe and copies as a backslash and a pipe. Every one of these rules is an alternation full of pipes, so anyone reading README.md rather than a rendered view -- which, for a self-hosted thing, is most of the time -- got a regex whose alternation had quietly become literal characters. It matches nothing, and nothing about it looks wrong. That is not hypothetical: it is how this came up. The Reddit rule is the longest row, and reading it out of the file gave something that plainly did not work, so the backslashes came out. Which fixed the copy and broke the table -- four pipes turned into column separators, the row became seven cells, the separator row was widened to seven to match, and `(.*)` picked up an escape on the way past. Restoring the row would have left the trap exactly where it was, for the next person or the same one. So the table is now a code block: each rule is a comment naming the platform, then the find field, then the replace field, one per line. Nothing is escaped, the file and the render agree, and each field is a whole line to select. Every rule is checked by reading the block out of README.md byte for byte with no unescaping step -- the copy-paste path -- compiling it, and running it: all seven, against nineteen URLs including mobile.x.com, threads.net, the TikTok vm. and vt. hosts, five Reddit subdomains, a /s/ share link and a redd.it short code. Also reformats the rest of the file, and stops calling it a table on the way past. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_017nMQ2eDKnqALYhAibpTKTu
248 lines
13 KiB
Markdown
248 lines
13 KiB
Markdown
# antisocial
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Reads social posts back to you without the app.
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Links to X, Threads, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky and Reddit get shared constantly, and
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opening one means an app interstitial, a login wall, a feed you didn't ask for, and a
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pile of tracking. antisocial is the other half of a StopTheMadness rewrite rule: the link gets
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redirected here, and you get the post — the media and the words — plus a badge saying
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where it came from and a button to copy the original URL if you do want to go there.
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Built for one person, on a private network. There is **no authentication of any kind** —
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anything that can reach it can drive a browser through it, so put it somewhere only you
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can reach. It resolves posts by driving a real headless browser, logged out, exactly as
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if you had opened the link yourself.
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## StopTheMadness rules
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One redirect rule per platform. The host is swapped for antisocial plus a short platform
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segment; the rest of the path is left alone, so the original is always recoverable and
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readable in your history.
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Replace `antisocial.example.com` with wherever you are running it.
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Each rule is two fields. Both are on their own line below, and neither needs any
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escaping — copy them straight out of this file.
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```text
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# X
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/^https:\/\/(?:www\.|mobile\.)?(?:x|twitter)\.com\/(.*)$/
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https://antisocial.example.com/x/$1
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# Threads
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/^https:\/\/(?:www\.)?threads\.(?:net|com)\/(.*)$/
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https://antisocial.example.com/threads/$1
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# Instagram
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/^https:\/\/(?:www\.)?instagram\.com\/(.*)$/
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https://antisocial.example.com/ig/$1
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# TikTok
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/^https:\/\/(?:www\.|vm\.|vt\.)?tiktok\.com\/(.*)$/
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https://antisocial.example.com/tiktok/$1
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# Bluesky
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/^https:\/\/bsky\.app\/(.*)$/
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https://antisocial.example.com/bsky/$1
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# Reddit
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/^https:\/\/(?:www\.|old\.|new\.|np\.|m\.)?reddit\.com\/(.*)$/
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https://antisocial.example.com/reddit/$1
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# Reddit short links
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/^https:\/\/redd\.it\/(.*)$/
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https://antisocial.example.com/reddit/$1
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```
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A code block rather than a table, because a table cell cannot hold a bare `|` — it has
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to be written `\|`, which renders correctly and copies wrongly. The alternation in these
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rules is full of them, and a regex whose pipes arrive as literal pipes matches nothing
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and says nothing about why.
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So `https://x.com/user/status/123` becomes
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`https://antisocial.example.com/x/user/status/123`.
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Tracking parameters (`igsh`, `utm_*`, `share_id`, `s`, `t`, and friends) are stripped on
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arrival, so the URL the copy button gives back is the clean one. TikTok `vm.`/`vt.`
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share codes lose their subdomain in the rewrite; a single opaque path segment is
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recognised as a share code and rebuilt as `vm.tiktok.com/<code>/`, or `redd.it/<code>`
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where it came from Reddit. A Reddit `/r/<sub>/s/<code>` share link is followed to the
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post it points at, and that permalink — not the opaque share code — is what the copy
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button hands back.
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`/` serves these rules with the live hostname already filled in, if you'd rather copy
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them from there.
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## How it works
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Every request drives a real Chromium page load. One code path, and it survives markup
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changes better than parsing HTML from the outside would.
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Each adapter layers its extraction, most structured first:
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1. **The platform's own API response**, caught as it goes past during the page load.
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Reading the JSON a platform serves its own front end beats scraping what it renders.
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2. **An inline payload** in the page — a JSON script tag, or an object buried in a
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bootstrap call (`src/platforms/scan.ts` pulls a balanced object out by key, including
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when it arrives escaped inside a JS string, which is what Instagram does).
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3. **The rendered DOM** — whatever is actually on screen is real.
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4. **Open Graph tags** — the floor, and enough to show something.
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| Platform | Loads | Reads |
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| --------- | ---------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- |
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| Bluesky | the public AT Protocol API | `getPostThread`; falls back to the post page |
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| X | `platform.twitter.com` embed | the `cdn.syndication.twimg.com/tweet-result` response |
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| Instagram | `/embed/captioned/` | `shortcode_media`, then the rendered `<video>`/`<img>` |
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| TikTok | the post page | `__UNIVERSAL_DATA_FOR_REHYDRATION__` |
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| Threads | the post page | the Relay payloads in `<script type="application/json">` |
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| Reddit | the post's own `.json` | the post and the first page of comments; falls back to the page |
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On Bluesky and Threads people write in chains, so where the linked post is part
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of one, the author's own follow-ups are shown with it, in the order they were
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written, with the post you actually followed marked. Other people's replies are
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left out — they are a conversation, not the thing that was shared, and on a busy
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post there are hundreds of them.
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A post that quotes another shows both, on X and on Bluesky. The quoted post gets its own
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author, its own words and its own pictures, in a block inside the one quoting it —
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because half the quote posts people share are someone answering a stranger and the other
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half are someone continuing a thought from an earlier post, and neither reads with only
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one side of it on the page. Showing the quoted picture on its own, which is what used to
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happen, put it under the wrong person's name.
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X links are un-shortened. Every link in a post is rewritten to a `t.co` before it is
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stored, so left alone the page shows `t.co/QdJhOVu4En` and sends you through X's click
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tracker to find out where it goes; the real address is in the payload alongside. The
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shortlink X staples onto the end of a quote post is dropped rather than expanded, since
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the post it points at is already on the page — a link the author put there on purpose
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is kept.
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On Reddit the thread under the post is usually the reason the link was shared, so
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Reddit posts come with it: every comment the first page carried, nested the way it was
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written. Each comment is a `<details>` element, so folding one takes its whole subtree
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with it, works without JavaScript and works from the keyboard; a collapsed comment says
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how many replies it is hiding. "Collapse all" is the one piece that needs the script,
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which is why it only appears once the script has run. What was behind a _load more_ is
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not fetched — that is a second page and often a third — but it is counted and said out
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loud rather than quietly dropped.
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Media never gets linked straight at a CDN. Instagram and TikTok reject requests without
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a matching `Referer` (and sometimes cookies), and proxying keeps your browser from
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talking to the platform at all. Every asset is registered under an opaque `/m/<id>` and
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streamed through, with `Range` forwarded so the native video scrubber can seek.
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The one exception is Bluesky video, which is an HLS playlist — proxying it would mean
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rewriting the manifest and every segment, so it is linked directly. Safari plays HLS
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natively; other browsers show a note.
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Resolved posts are cached in memory for an hour, so a reload or a back button doesn't
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drive the browser again.
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## When a platform breaks
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It will. Someone else's markup is not a contract.
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Start with the CLI, which drives the real browser and prints what came back:
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```sh
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npm run resolve -- 'https://www.tiktok.com/@user/video/123'
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```
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If that fails, ask the page what it actually served:
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```sh
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npm run probe -- 'https://www.instagram.com/reel/ABC123/embed/captioned/'
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```
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Then `npm test`, which runs every adapter against captured payloads in `test/fixtures/`
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without touching the network. If the fixtures pass but the CLI fails, the shape changed
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upstream — capture a new payload and work from the diff.
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A failed resolve is never a blank error page: the failure card carries the platform, the
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original URL and the copy button, so a broken adapter still leaves the link one tap away.
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Known rough edges:
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- **Instagram is the least reliable.** It only ships the structured payload some of the
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time. When it doesn't, the rendered DOM carries single images and reels fine, but a
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carousel will come back as its first image only.
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- **TikTok sometimes answers with a slider puzzle** instead of the post. You get handed
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the puzzle rather than an error — see below.
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- **Reddit refuses `.json` to a browser it has never seen.** The first request of a cold
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profile gets a JavaScript challenge, which the page solves by itself on an ordinary
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navigation; the adapter does that once and retries, and the cookie it leaves behind
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serves every later post. If the JSON is still refused, the rendered page is read
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instead — the same comments, without the scores Reddit is withholding.
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## Verification puzzles
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TikTok will occasionally answer with a "drag the slider to fit the puzzle" challenge
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instead of the post. Rather than reporting that as a failure, antisocial gives you the
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puzzle to solve.
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The page showing it stays open in the server's browser and gets parked. You are
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redirected to `/challenge/<id>`, which streams screenshots of just the puzzle and
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forwards your pointer events back to be replayed onto that page. Solve it, and you land
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back on the post.
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What makes this work is that the cookie the challenge issues lands in the shared browser
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context, so it is not just this post that unblocks — the next few are fine too. And
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because the drag being replayed is your actual drag, at your actual timing, the movement
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looks like what it is.
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Parked pages hold a browser tab but no concurrency permit, so one waiting on you never
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blocks anything else. At most three are kept, and each expires after five minutes.
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There is a "give up" button, which closes the tab and leaves you the original link.
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Login walls are a different thing and are not passed through: Instagram asking you to
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sign in cannot be solved without an account, so those degrade to whatever the post's
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link preview offers.
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## Development
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Needs Node 22+. The container commands below use Apple `container`; `docker` takes the
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same arguments if that is what you have.
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```sh
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npm ci
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npx playwright install chromium # once
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npm run dev # http://localhost:8080
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npm test # adapters against captured payloads, no network
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npm run typecheck
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npm run build
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container build --tag antisocial:dev .
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container run --rm --publish 8080:8080 antisocial:dev
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```
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There is no ESLint: TypeScript 7 is a year ahead of what `typescript-eslint` supports,
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and `tsc` with `strict`, `noUnusedLocals` and `noUncheckedIndexedAccess` covers the
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ground for a project this size.
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### Configuration
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Everything has a working default; the container needs none of it set.
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| Variable | Default | |
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| ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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| `PORT` / `HOST` | `8080` / `0.0.0.0` | |
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| `PROFILE_DIR` | `./profile` (`/data/profile` in the image) | Chromium cookies and storage, persisted so the browser accumulates ordinary state |
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| `MAX_CONCURRENT` | `2` | page loads at once; the rest queue |
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| `NAVIGATION_TIMEOUT_MS` | `20000` | |
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| `RESOLVE_TIMEOUT_MS` | `30000` | whole resolve, including extraction |
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| `CACHE_TTL_MS` / `CACHE_MAX` | `3600000` / `200` | resolved posts, in memory |
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| `MEDIA_TOKEN_TTL_MS` | `21600000` | how long a `/m/` reference stays valid |
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| `PUBLIC_ORIGIN` | `http://localhost:8080` | only used to print the rules on `/` |
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| `LOG_LEVEL` | `info` | |
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## Adding a platform
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One file in `src/platforms/`, one entry in the table in `src/platforms/index.ts`. The
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adapter gets a `Page` and returns a `Post` (`src/types.ts`); everything downstream —
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proxying, rendering, caching, the error card — already knows what to do with one.
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Set `textPosition` to `'above'` for platforms that lead with words and `'below'` for the
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ones that lead with pictures.
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