What changed

Before:

{
  "context": "irc",
  "type": "send",
  ...
}

After:

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    "https://sockethub.org/ns/context/v1.jsonld",
    "https://sockethub.org/ns/context/platform/irc/v1.jsonld"
  ],
  "type": "send",
  ...
}

The server now routes by resolving the platform context URL in that array, not by matching a bespoke context string. That unlocks four things:

• Proper AS2.0 compliance. Payloads validate against any off-the-shelf JSON-LD or AS2 tool — no Sockethub-specific reader required.
• Deterministic platform resolution. The platform identity lives in the context URL itself, not in convention. No more guessing from a short name.
• Versioned platform vocabularies. A platform can ship breaking changes under /v2.jsonld without forcing every consumer to migrate at once.
• A real schema registry. The server exposes each platform's schema metadata (contextUrl, contextVersion, schemaVersion) so clients build canonical arrays without hardcoding URLs.

New client APIs

Two additions to @sockethub/client make this easy:

await sc.ready()

Waits for the schema registry to finish loading. Messages sent before readiness are queued and flushed afterward; anything emitted after ready() is validated immediately on the client.

const sc = new SockethubClient(socket);
await sc.ready();

sc.contextFor(platform)

Builds the canonical three-element array from server metadata. Use it instead of hardcoding URLs:

sc.socket.emit('message', {
  '@context': sc.contextFor('irc'),
  type: 'send',
  actor:  { id: 'alice@irc.libera.chat', type: 'person' },
  target: { id: '#sockethub@irc.libera.chat', type: 'room' },
  object: { type: 'message', content: 'hello' }
});

contextFor() is preferred over hand-writing the array because it derives URLs from the live schema registry and stays correct across server versions.

Why this matters

Sockethub has always carried the spirit of AS2.0, but not always the letter. Alpha 12 closes that gap. The protocol gateway now speaks a format that any AS2 consumer can read — which means an ActivityPub inbox, a Fediverse tool, or anything that knows JSON-LD can parse Sockethub traffic natively.

Upgrade with npm install -g sockethub@alpha. Full changelog: v5.0.0-alpha.12.

Stability has improved a lot and so we're announcing the alpha releases are available for anyone who'd like to try them out.

We won't individually announce each alpha release, but will do so once we move to beta.

Some new features include:

• Packaging changes, the sockethub package is still the main package, but works as a meta package for a number of packages in the @sockethub namespace. i e.g. @sockethub/server, @sockethub/client, @sockethub/platform-xmpp
• Greatly improved unit and integration tests
• A New Metadata Platform!
• An Examples package
• Migrate to BullMQ
• Migrate to Bun
• Improved documentation
• So much more...

To try it out, you can run npm install -g sockethub@alpha

For a full list of changes, see the Sockethub release page.

I haven't been announcing every Sockethub release, as they are very frequent and incremental, but be sure to check the github to see the latest activity.

[ kosmos | github.com/67p/hyperchannel | github.com/sockethub/sockethub]

[ release v1.0.4 ]

[ release v1.0.0 | CHANGELOG ]

[ release v0.3.0 | CHANGELOG ]

[ release v0.2.0 | CHANGELOG ]

[ dogfeed | github repository | official announcement ]

[ talk overview ]