Protocol-Spec/DEV_DOCS.md

Concepts

This list is out of date. Numerous changes and problems were addressed in the implementation of a client. We will update this list in May of 2020.

• Base64: The protocol will use Base 64 Encoding with URL and Filename Safe Alphabet as specified in RFC 4648. The protocol always uses the standard "=" character for padding. Deviations from this will be explicitly noted.
• Identity: A base64 ed25519 public key string starting with @ and ending with .ed25519.
• Message Signature: An ED25519 signature starting with a % and end with .sha256. Messages (covered later) are referenced by a signature.
• String: A 1..62 byte list of ASCII characters, Starting and ending with ".
• Blob: Arbitrary binary data, with a current max size of 1.4 MB.
• Blob Hash: A base64'ed SHA256 of a Blob, starting with & and ending with .sha256.
• Pair: One string and on of the following: Blob Hash|Signature|Identity|String, joined with a : character between the two. See "key" and "value" below.
• Header: A reserved pair of information that is required by the protocol for internal reasons. Not to be confused by a Pair, which is user definable. The only Headers the protocol currently uses are author, depth, kind, prev. Headers do not have "string quotes" around the key, and the value is delimited by a space ( ) character. Example: sequence 46.
• Key: The value to the left of a : in a pair. Always a string.
• Value: The value to the right of a : in a pair. It is always one of the following: Blob Hash, Signature, Identity, String.
• Message: A document with an author, prev, depth, kind, an arbitrary set of attribute pairs and a footer.
• Footer: ??? TODO ????
• Signature: ??? TODO ???
• Kind: A string at the top of a message indicating the message's purpose. Example "private_message", "mention", "share". Kinds may be namespaced by applications using the . character.
• Feed: A linked collection of messages.
• NONE: ????
• Bundle: A specially crafted text archive sent from one peer directly to another peer for the sake of synchronizing and gossiping feeds. Bundles are intricate and require their own document, found here

Running a CLI Client

Pigeon currently has one CLI available. It is written in Ruby. Documentation can be found here

Up Next

This concludes the roadmap. To learn more, continue to the idea bin.

Up Next

This concludes the frequently asked questions section. To learn more, continue to the roadmap