subScribe

Tired of the ads on Discord? Have a fun writing/creative group you meet with? Is your writing group having to use multiple apps for writing sessions, sharing, collaboration, and feedback? Hate sharing your info with big tech so they can serve you even MORE ads?

For me, that's a yes, yes, yes, and a big ol' YES.

subScribe is a fully self-hosted app for group creative-writing sessions. Run your own server, connect with the desktop app, and write together with groups, chat (text, voice, and video), timed writing prompts with full session history, friends & DMs, and an Obsidian-compatible personal notes vault.

Every feature is an "app" on an internal platform layer (dock, UI slots, command palette), and third-party plugins use the exact same extension points — see docs/plugin-api.md.

Install

Windows / Linux: grab the installer from Releases.

macOS: build it locally — notarizing a download needs a paid Apple Developer account, but apps compiled on your own Mac are never quarantined, so they just open. Double-click scripts/Build subScribe (macOS).command; it checks for Xcode Command Line Tools, Node, and Rust, offers to install anything missing, and drops the finished app in Applications.

See the setup guide for connecting to or hosting a server.

Layout

Path	What
crates/writform-proto	Shared wire types (serde + ts-rs → generated TS bindings)
crates/writform-crypto	Post-quantum identity (ML-DSA-65), PBKDF2 passwords, tokens
crates/writform-server	Self-hostable axum server (SQLite, single binary, TLS)
apps/desktop	Tauri 2 desktop client (React + TypeScript)
examples/plugins	Example third-party plugin(s)
docs/	Protocol, crypto, plugin-API, and canvas-phase specs
deploy/	systemd unit; Dockerfile at the repo root

Built-in apps

• Chat — groups (invite codes, roles, kick), channels, messages with image attachments, markdown, custom emotes, @mentions and #channel references, presence (online/busy/invisible).
• Sessions — a session holds multiple rich-text prompts; each is started/timed/stopped by its creator, everyone writes privately, writings reveal when the prompt ends, side chat throughout, full history browsable.
• Documents — collaborative writing with live multi-user editing (CRDT), writing formats (screenplay, stage play, manuscript, poetry), version history, folders, full-text search, anchored feedback threads, PDF/DOCX/RTF/Pages/TXT/MD import, and sharing with friends or whole groups.
• Canvas — group storyboards: sticky notes, text, frames (with color), connectors, pasted images, link cards, live document references, live multi-user editing. Voice — audio channels per group: peer-to-peer WebRTC mesh (media never touches the server), mute, speaking indicators, device/gain settings. Friends — requests, DMs, note sharing, profile cards.
• Notes — local-first markdown vault (Obsidian-compatible files), wiki-links + backlinks, share snapshots to friends.
• Plugins — enable third-party plugins with per-plugin permissions.

Native notifications for DMs, mentions, new sessions, shared documents/notes, and friend requests. Server admins can issue one-time password reset codes for locked-out users.

Development

Prereqs: Rust (see rust-toolchain.toml), Node 24+, and the Tauri system dependencies.

# server (HTTPS on :7311; identity fingerprint printed at startup)
cargo run -p writform-server -- --data-dir ./tmp-data

# desktop app
cd apps/desktop && npm install && npm run tauri dev

# checks (same as CI)
cargo fmt --check && cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings && cargo test
cd apps/desktop && npm run build

# regenerate TS bindings after changing writform-proto
cd apps/desktop && npm run bindings

Generated bindings in apps/desktop/src/bindings/proto/ are committed; CI fails if they drift from the Rust types.

Self-hosting & updates

• Easiest — no server admin at all: open the desktop app and pick "Host on this computer" on the welcome screen. It runs a full server inside the app (data under the app's data directory), makes you the server admin, and shows shareable addresses in Settings → Server — including one-click UPnP port mapping for internet access, with port-forward/Tailscale guidance when the router refuses.
• Docker: docker run -p 7311:7311 -v writform-data:/data ghcr.io/hullabaloo-vincent/writform-server
• Bare metal: grab writform-server from GitHub Releases + deploy/writform-server.service
• Upgrading = pull the new image / binary and restart; SQLite migrations run at startup.
• Releases are one button: Actions → Release → "Run workflow" picks the version bump, commits it, tags, and publishes installers + the server image to GitHub Releases/GHCR (auto-update via the Tauri updater once signing keys are configured — see .github/workflows/release.yml for the one-time setup).

Security model

Clients pin a self-hosted server on first connect (TOFU): TLS 1.3 with hybrid X25519+ML-KEM-768 key exchange (FIPS 203), plus an ML-DSA-65 (FIPS 204) server identity key whose signature binds the TLS certificate — verified on every connect, so a changed identity is a loud warning. Passwords are PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA-512; session tokens are opaque and stored hashed. All client network I/O runs in the Tauri Rust core (the webview cannot pin certificates). Details in docs/crypto.md.