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Colibri Social Documentation

Communities and AppViews

Colibri is self-hostable, so there is more than one AppView. A community lives on exactly one of them: the instance that created it and holds its credentials.

A community’s data sits in permissioned spaces, readable only by holding a key the community issues. Only the managing instance holds one, so an AppView with no key for a community cannot read it and cannot show it to you.

What that means for you

Section titled “What that means for you”

Use a community on the AppView that hosts it. Reading, posting and moderating all happen there. Your account is the same everywhere, so this is a matter of which instance your client is pointed at, not of having several identities.

Presence stays inside one instance. Online status, typing indicators and voice presence come from the AppView you are signed in to, and reach nobody on another one.

Whether this changes

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For one AppView to serve a community hosted by another, it would have to hold a credential for that community’s spaces, and credentials are issued per reader by the community itself. A member’s own client can mint the token that stands behind such a credential, so there is a path to it. It is not built and it is not scheduled.

If something does not work

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  • A community you are in does not appear. It is hosted on a different AppView than the one you are signed in to. Point your client at that instance.
  • You cannot moderate, but you can read. That is a role and permission question rather than an AppView one. Ask an admin of that community to check your roles.
  • Nothing loads and the error mentions credentials. The AppView that manages that community may be unreachable. Its communities are unreadable while it is down, including to people who are not on it.

See also

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