Own your words.
Yarn.social is a decentralised ecosystem for social micro-blogging: open specifications, many clients, servers and services — and your posts in a plain text file you own, hosted wherever you like.
Start reading on twtxt.app Choose your own path
No account, no signup, no app store — reading needs nothing at all.
The big idea
Not a social network — an ecosystem
There is no Yarn.social server to sign up to, no company behind the curtain, and no algorithm deciding what you see. There is just twtxt: a decentralised way of sharing short posts as plain text files over HTTP, plus a family of open extensions, clients and services that make it feel social.
📄
A feed is just a file
Your feed is a twtxt.txt file on any web server. One line per post — a
timestamp, a tab, and what you have to say. You can read it, back it up,
move it, or delete it. It is yours, forever.
🧩
Open specs, no gatekeepers
The twtxt specification and its extensions — threads, mentions, avatars, multiline posts and more — are small, open documents anyone can implement. Use all of them, some of them, or none.
In fact, this is a complete, valid post:
$ echo -e "$(date -Is)\tHello World" >> twtxt.txt
Get started
Join at your own pace
Start by simply reading, and climb only as far up the ladder as you want to go. Every rung is decentralised — there is nothing to sign up for unless you choose a pod.
Read
Open twtxt.app and follow a few people — by feed URL
or nick@domain. It’s an offline-first web app: your timeline is cached on
your device and readable on a plane. Install it to your home screen if you
like.
Post
Pick a posting backend in twtxt.app’s settings: a twtxt.txt in your own
GitHub or Gitea repo (no server required!), an account on a community pod
like twtxt.net, or your own
twtd server.
Host
Run twtd — a tiny personal feed server with media, avatars and follower discovery:
$ docker run -p 8000:8000 -v twtd-data:/data \
prologic/twtd -n yournick -u https://your.domain
Or run yarnd to host a whole community.
Build
It’s plain text over HTTP — you can write a client in an afternoon. Start with the specs and developer docs, and come say hi; extensions are designed in the open.
The ecosystem
Woven from many threads
Everything below is free, open source and self-hostable. Mix and match.
🐦 twtxt.app Easiest start
An offline-first web client for twtxt and Yarn.social. Read without an account, post via the backend of your choice, pair your devices with a QR code.
🪶 twtd
A tiny single-user feed server:
one Docker command, one access token, and you own your corner of the web —
complete with followers, media and nick@domain mentions.
🧶 yarnd
The community pod server. Multi-user,
web UI, API and the yarnc CLI. twtxt.net is the
original pod, and many independent pods federate alongside it.
🌉 bridge
An ActivityPub ↔ twtxt gateway: follow twtxt feeds from Mastodon and friends, and bring the Fediverse into your timeline.
🔍 search.twtxt.net
A search engine and crawler for the whole network — discover feeds, follow conversations, explore who’s out there.
📰 feeds.twtxt.net
An RSS/Atom-to-twtxt bridge — follow websites, blogs and news sources right in your timeline.
📗 twtxt.dev
The developer docs and specifications: the twtxt file format and every extension, written to be implemented.
🛠 Community clients
jenny, twet, twtr, Yarn Desktop Client and more — terminal, desktop, or roll your own.
See for yourself
This website is a feed
Follow it in any client at https://yarn.social/twtxt.txt, or as
@<Yarn https://yarn.social/twtxt.txt> — or just paste the URL into
twtxt.app.
Peek inside twtxt.txt — this is the entire format
# nick = Yarn
# url = https://yarn.social/twtxt.txt
# avatar = https://yarn.social/logo.png
# description = Yarn.social is a decentralised self-hosted social media based on the Twtxt format.
2022-10-30T23:20:41+10:00 Hello World
2026-07-12T12:39:43+10:00 🥳 yarnd v0.16.0 "Silver Sojourner" is out — the first full release in nearly 4 years! https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/yarn/releases/tag/0.16.0
Principles
What we will never do
✅ No ads — nothing is sponsored, promoted or boosted.
✅ No tracking — no analytics, no metadata collection, ever.
✅ No PII — pods store no personally identifiable information.
✅ No lock-in — your feed is a text file; take it anywhere.
✅ No algorithm — your timeline is just the feeds you follow, in order.
✅ No secrets — every component is open source (AGPLv3).
Pull on a thread 🧵
Open twtxt.app and start reading, chat with us in #Yarn.social on Libera.Chat, or dive into the source code.