Ev BogueI have been publishing on the web since 1999. The names and the tools change every few years. The instinct never does.
The question underneath all of it is small and stubborn: can you publish what you make, and reach the people who want it, without asking anyone for permission? Everything below is one long answer to that question, worked out in public. Latest work first.
One system in three layers. ANProto is the primitive that everything hangs off — a signed, timestamped hash and nothing else. Wiredove is the client you actually open. apds is an optional data server that relays and notifies. Take the protocol on its own and it still works; the client and the server are conveniences you can throw away without breaking anything.
The Authenticated, Non-networked Protocol — the load-bearing piece. An ed25519 signature over a timestamp and a content hash, encoded in base64, and nothing more. No log, no chain, no opinion about how the message reaches you: bring your own network. Small enough that implementations already exist in JavaScript, Go, Rust, and Python.
The client you actually open. A distributed social app that runs entirely in a browser window — ANProto for identity, WebRTC for serverless peer-to-peer collaboration, and apds when you want it for delivery. Local-first, no install, no account to be deleted. Works on its own; the server just makes it nicer.
The optional always-on box. A personal data server for ANProto that stores and relays your signed messages and wakes your clients over web push when something new arrives. A convenience layer for people who want one — never a dependency for people who don't. This one runs as the wiredove.net pub, and its root is just the raw signed-message store as JSON.
Scuttlebutt was the peer-to-peer social protocol I bet on early. When the original project was discontinued in 2024 I came back and took over the classic restoration — which makes me the current maintainer of git-ssb, hosting git repositories over SSB with no GitHub in the loop. It's one browser-based engine wearing three faces: same feed, same keys, live-switchable skins.
The original. I forked Patchbay into Decent in 2016 — my first Scuttlebutt client — and it's the classic face of the restoration: a Patchwork-style reader that runs in the browser and shows the git-ssb activity feed, no native install and no upstream to depend on.
A dark, modern skin over the same engine — Discover and Following timelines, trending channels, a feed that reads like the social apps everyone already knows. Same signed messages underneath; the skin switches live and the identity never moves.
The professional-network skin — Feed, Network, Messaging, and a Start-a-Post composer styled like the business social site you're avoiding, except every post is an SSB message on a feed you own. The interface is a costume; the protocol is the thing.
The current desk. Deno and Hono, markdown files on disk, an RSS feed, and a subscriber list that is literally a JSON file. No CMS, no build step, nothing between me and publishing. The minimalism argument compiled into a stack.
Four years building my own protocol from scratch, getting it wrong three times on purpose — no replication strategy, then an append-only log, then a backward hash chain that finally synced fast. The laboratory that became ANProto once every load-bearing piece had been removed. A terrible name for marketing materials.
The minimalism blog I wrote when blogs still felt like they could change your life. I lived out of a bag, wrote every day, and grew an audience without a publisher, a platform deal, or anyone's permission. Most of that work is recovered and living in the archive here.
Before any of the code, there was the writing. I started publishing online in 1999 — as evbogue on LiveJournal and on catharsis.org — back when a personal site was something you hand-coded and a public journal was something you kept before anyone thought to call it blogging. I studied journalism at NYU, interned at Gawker in the middle of the blog era that rewired media, and was a photo editor at New York Magazine. I learned how a real newsroom decides what a story looks like and who gets to hit publish. It was a great education in exactly the gatekeeping I would spend the next fifteen years routing around.
In 2009 I left corporate media to publish for myself, and I have not been on a masthead since. The ebooks — The Art of Being Minimalist, Minimalist Business — sold directly to my own list, back when that was still a strange idea. The lesson stuck harder than the products did: the list is the asset, and the list should belong to you. Then I stopped trusting the platforms I published on and started building the ones underneath. I forked Patchbay into Decent in 2016, my first Secure Scuttlebutt client — the first time "own your presence" meant owning the transport, not just the writing.
Minimalism was never really about owning fewer things. It was about not being owned — by stuff, by a landlord, by a job, by a platform that can change its terms overnight and take your audience with it. The method was always the same: remove everything that isn't load-bearing, then remove one more thing. That is exactly how ANProto happened. Scuttlebutt, then Bogbook v1, v2, v3, then ANProto — every step threw out a piece of the network that turned out to be optional, until the only thing left was a signed timestamped hash. It's the 100-things list applied to a protocol. Own less so nothing can own you.
Since 1999, one refusal to ask permission. The names keep changing because the platforms keep failing. The kid posting to LiveJournal, the photo editor at a magazine, and the person designing a protocol that runs off a USB stick are all doing the same thing. The work is the same work.
If you want to build git over ANProto, argue with me about any of this, or just say hello — ev@evbogue.com or 773-510-8601.
