gopherkindGopher · Nostr · kind 31436
Your writing outlives the box it was served from.
Gopherspace has one endemic disease: holes die. gopherkind turns gopher documents into signed Nostr events, so a hole belongs to your npub instead of a hostname, and any bridge that can fetch a copy serves it to any gopher client written since 1991.
MIT licensed. No token, no ads, no telemetry, no custody of your key. This page has no JavaScript and no trackers, which felt like the least we could do.
$ gopherkind read npub1mgvlrnf5hm9yf0n5mf9nqmvarhvxkc6remu5ec3vf8r0txqkuk7su0e7q2 TheCryptoDonkey =============== TheCryptoDonkey a virtual hole generated from Nostr events Bitcoin, freedom, decentralisation, liberty advocate. Profile /npub1mgvlrnf.../profile.txt Notes /npub1mgvlrnf.../notes Articles (long-form) /npub1mgvlrnf.../articles Follows /npub1mgvlrnf.../follows Followers /npub1mgvlrnf.../followers Search /_gopherkind/search/npub1mgvlrnf...
Nobody published that. Every npub is already a hole, generated from
the events the account has anyway. gopherkind also has a hole of its own, published
the ordinary way: gopherkind read gopherkind@gopherkind.com
The problem
A hole is a host, and hosts stop.
The hobby box behind your favourite phlog loses power. A domain lapses. A university closes an alumni account. Fifteen years of writing stop existing, all at once, with no forwarding address.
This is structural, not careless. RFC 1436 has no notion of an author, so nothing in the protocol survives the hostname, and nothing in the wire format can prove who wrote a document even while the host is up.
Gopher had
Interface divorced from information
Menus and text, navigated identically, rendered by anything with a TCP stack. No fonts to load, no consent dialog, nothing bidding for your attention. It is why a protocol from 1991 still has readers.
Gopher lacked
Authorship and permanence
Copy a phlog to another server and it is just somebody's file: identical bytes, no provenance, no way to prove it was ever yours.
Nostr supplies
Keypair identity, signed documents
Events are signed, addressable and copied to relays you choose. Exactly the two things gopher never had. In return, gopher gives Nostr a reading room instead of a timeline.
How it works
A directory in, four protocols out.
Kind 31436 is named for the RFC. The d tag is the
document's exact path, the type tag is the gopher item type, and menu
content is a kindmap: a gophermap with the host and port columns removed,
because the document no longer has a host.
What changes
Four things gopher never had.
The hole belongs to an npub
Lose the machine and another bridge serves the same events from relays that still hold them. The hostname stops being a single point of failure.
Every document proves its author
The signature travels with the text, so a copy served by a stranger is still verifiably yours.
Editing keeps the address
Addressable replacement: change a file, publish again, and the document at that path is replaced everywhere. No dead links, no cache busting.
Everyone already has a hole
Profile, notes, replies, threads, articles, follows and followers render as menus and text with nothing published at all. Gopherspace grows by the entire Nostr userbase.
Four front doors
Pick the one you already live in.
| Surface | What it is for | Identity |
|---|---|---|
| gopher | RFC 1436, type 7 search, every client since 1991 | Read-only over the network, permanently. Plaintext has no safe credential. |
| gemini | gemtext, status 10 input, Lagrange and friends | Client certificate bound to your NIP-46 signer |
| http | Plain HTML and real forms, aimed at lynx first | Loopback is you; remote visitors use NIP-46 or a NIP-07 extension |
| terminal | Interactive client in the VF-1 tradition, plus one-shot commands | Your paired signer, or none at all for reading |
It is a gopher client too, so traditional gopherspace renders through the
same interface, and a gophermap that links to a bridge with an npub selector or a
nostr: URI is followed natively through your own relays. Floodgap and an
npub are the same kind of object once you are inside.
Quickstart
Ten minutes, and reading costs none of them.
$ npm install --global gopherkind # read anything, no key, no account, no configuration $ gopherkind read npub1... $ gopherkind read gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/ $ gopherkind why # connect a signer you already control (Amber, nsec.app, Signet...) $ gopherkind pair 'bunker://...' # a directory of text files becomes a signed hole $ gopherkind publish ./my-hole --dry-run $ gopherkind publish ./my-hole $ gopherkind inspect npub1... # per-relay proof it is retrievable # serve it: gopher 7070, gemini 1965, http 8070, loopback by default $ gopherkind serve $ lynx http://localhost:8070/
Never
Your key does not enter this program
No nsec input, no key generation, no custody of any kind. Signing happens in your NIP-46 signer or your NIP-07 extension. A bridge stores only its own client key, a TLS certificate and a mode-600 pairing file.
Also never
No build step, no database
Runs directly on Node 24 type stripping. A bridge keeps a state directory and a few minutes of cache. Two runtime dependencies, both pinned.
Honest limits
What this does not fix.
A project that oversold this would deserve to be ignored, so here is the whole list before you install anything.
- Relays are not archives. Removing the single host removes one
point of failure. It does not promise any relay keeps an event forever. Publish to
relays you trust, keep an export, re-check with
gopherkind inspect. - Deletion is a request. NIP-09 asks relays to forget and some will not. NIP-40 expiry is enforced by well-behaved bridges but is not a tombstone for a path with older revisions.
- A bridge is still a host. It is simply no longer the host. If one disappears, the documents do not.
- Kind 31436 is proposed, not accepted. The submission is PR #2429, unmerged at the time of writing. It ships with a language-neutral fixture and an independent Python implementation which passes it, because a format only one program can read is not a format.
- Gopher stays read-only over the network. No authentication, no encryption, so no credential may ever cross it. 1991 gets to read; 2026 gets to write.
Support the work
Funding buys evenings. Evenings are all this is made of.
gopherkind is MIT licensed and unfunded. There is no company behind it, no token, no premium tier, no advertising and no data to sell, because it holds nothing about you. What there is: a public bridge with a monthly bill, and a maintainer writing after work.
One-off or monthly, card friendly Geyser
Lightning, project page GitHub Sponsors
Recurring, in the place you already are Lightning
profusemeat89@walletofsatoshi.com
Zap the maintainer directly:
npub1mgvlrnf5hm9yf0n5mf9nqmvarhvxkc6remu5ec3vf8r0txqkuk7su0e7q2
What it unlocks
- Getting kind 31436 through NIP review, which is what makes other clients implement it
- Packaging so running a bridge is a fifteen-minute job for someone else
- A conformance suite so a second implementation is a weekend, not a month
- Archival tooling: scheduled retrievability checks and alerts when copies thin out
Free ways to help
- Publish a hole, so there is more to read
- Run a bridge; more bridges is the entire point
- Review the NIP, which is worth more than money
- Report what broke, especially in odd clients
- Tell one person. The failure mode here is silence, not criticism