RSC Really Simple
Conversations

A social timeline built on open feeds

Your site is already part of the social web.

RSC turns open feeds into a live social timeline—where posts published here and posts published elsewhere meet as equals.

01 Enter the demo instance 02 Run your own instance

Pre-release Already working end to end: timeline, posting, threading, feeds, federation and accounts.

FIG. 01 How open feeds become one cross-instance conversation.

01

How it travels

Four hops over open feeds.

  1. 01
    rsc.rmdes.be A conversation begins rsc.rmdes.be/users/rss.xml
  2. 02
    Alice replies alice.rmdes.be alice.rmdes.be/users/rss.xml
  3. 03
    Bob joins bob.rmdes.be bob.rmdes.be/users/rss.xml
  4. 04
    The thread returns whole rsc.rmdes.be source + guid + inReplyTo

rsc.rmdes.be → alice.rmdes.be → bob.rmdes.be → rsc.rmdes.be

02

What RSC reconstructs

The same conversation, nested at every hop.

Main post rsc.rmdes.be
LOCAL

This conversation begins here.

Alice’s reply alice.rmdes.be
REMOTE

Received through RSS and answered without a shared API.

Bob’s reply bob.rmdes.be
REMOTE

A third instance reads Alice’s reply and joins the thread.

Back on main rsc.rmdes.be
LOCAL

The replies arrive as one unified thread.

Three independent instances. One conversation, reconstructed from open feeds.

Alice and Bob are readable labels for a real test. A handle such as @rmdes is local to its instance; federation follows web links and feeds.

01 / HOW IT TRAVELS

A network of things people publish.

Posts, replies, threads, feeds and media do not live in one central box. Independent sites discover and reconnect them through the open web.

Conceptual map · not live telemetry One route among many
RSC instance Published thing Selected conversation
01 / PUBLISH rsc.rmdes.be A post enters the network
02 / REPLY alice.rmdes.be Alice replies through her feed
03 / CONTINUE bob.rmdes.be Bob continues the same thread
community node many topics · many people
instance 17 independent timeline
instance 29 another community
POSTlocal note REPLYto a post THREADunified replies RSS ITEMexternal source PODCASTepisode 42 PHOTOfield notes AUDIOsound post VIDEOweb-native ARTICLElong-form NEWSsyndicated item EVENTcommunity note RELEASEproject feed

The protocol is deliberately ordinary Web + RSS + Code

02 / TWO WAYS IN

Use the commons. Or operate one.

A / USE A PUBLIC INSTANCE

Use a public instance.

Anyone can operate a public RSC instance. We run three demos so you can browse, post and test federation without friction.

  • Three project-operated demos
  • No account needed to explore
  • Federation ready to test
Choose a public instance below Submit your instance

B / OWN RSC

Make your own timeline with your own instance

Run RSC for yourself, a team or a community. Keep the code, data and trust decisions under your control.

  • Free and MIT licensed
  • Docker and automatic HTTPS
  • Basic administration and audit history
See how it runs

03 / STATE OF THE WORK

Still under development

The foundation is live today. The roadmap is the open web.

Live now

A working social surface

Unified live timeline, posting and editing, threaded replies, follows, feed discovery, accounts, and media attachments.

Interoperates

Feeds in, feeds out

RSS, Atom, JSON Feed, OPML, WebSub, rssCloud, Textcasting and live conversation exchange with other RSC instances and hopefully soon rss.chat.

For instance owners

Governance is part of the product

Manage accounts and sources, review outside feeds, set limits, moderate posts, and retain an audit trail.

Coming next

More ways to remain yourself

IndieAuth sign-in, Micropub posting, Webmention, and richer media discovery from external feeds.

AN OPEN-WEB PROPOSITION

The social web has always been there, but we got distracted by closed silos

Most social networks make the application the owner of the relationship. Your posts, your readers and the thread between them all live inside somebody else’s boundary.

RSS Feeds have moved independent publishing for decades. RSC applies that durable model to a live social timeline: many sites, one conversation, no private gate in the middle.

04 / OWN YOUR TIMELINE

The exit is also the entrance.

The same project powering the demo is free to run on your own server. No separate enterprise edition. No hosted-service dependency.

RSC / QUICK START 2 COMMANDS 
$ git clone https://github.com/rmdes/rsc.git
$ cd rsc && make up

timeline ready on localhost:5173

01

Development
One command starts the application, database and development mail inbox.

02

Production
The repository includes its Docker stack and Caddy configuration for automatic HTTPS.

03

Ownership
Your instance, SQLite data, feeds, policies and domain remain under your control.

Read the repository documentation

05 / CREDITS / Tribute

Standing on the shoulders of makers of the open web

RSC brings together Dave Winer’s Textcasting and rss.chat, the IndieWeb community’s protocols, JSON Feed, WebSub, and the wider open-feed ecosystem.

DAVE WINER / TEXTCASTING / RSS / OPML / RSScloud RSS.CHAT INDIEWEB JSON FEED WEBSUB

THE WIRE IS OPEN

Choose how you enter.

A / PUBLIC INSTANCES Try a project demo
rsc.rmdes.be Project-operated demo alice.rmdes.be Project-operated demo bob.rmdes.be Project-operated demo Submit your instance Request federation
B Run your own timeline github.com/rmdes/rsc