The federated code forge

285 points86 comments18 hours ago
stryan

Really looking forward to seeing Tangled develop! I've got a side project that's main repo and CI is on my self-hosted Gitea but code and releases are mirrored to Github; I'm hoping to move it off Gitea and onto Tangled for code/releases/potentially CI and just keep Github for discoverability/backups/namespace "squatting". Just need git-bug to add a Tangled bridge so I can keep issues synced and (ideally) for there to be instructions for running the client self-hosted. It doesn't have to be a full featured client but I also don't want to be SOL for web visibility if the main Tangled appview is down.

One musing: I did run into my first "issue" with federated Git hosting the other day while setting up Neovim on a new machine. One of the plugins I use is hosted on Tangled and I guess its backing Knot was down. This was awkward for two reasons:

1. It as unclear to me from the Tangled website the backing knot was the issue (for a while I thought it was something on my end)

2. I really had no backup plans for something like a Neovim plugin's source forge being down and, clearly, neither did the Neovim package manager as it just kept showing an error on every session I started with no way to fix it :).

I suppose in the long run we really shouldn't be assuming that code storage is just Always There or easily cached somewhere, but I anticipate some growing pains in the mean time. ATProto doesn't seem to have the benefit ActivityPub has where if the instance I wanted to view content on was down I can usually find some other instance that's gotten the messages.

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icy

Hi! Tangled co-founder here. We're super stoked with this launch -- we've stabilized our AT Protocol lexicons, completely overhauled our architecture and UI, and made self-hosting the entire stack (or parts of it!) incredibly easy. We've also shipped support for organizations, and have private repos rolling out in the following couple weeks.

Happy to answer any questions at all.

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bluerooibos

I hope this takes off!

Some feedback:-

* I found the UI on the homepage/timeline a bit busy - lots going on. Notifications, Recents, Announcements don't seem like they need to live on this page?

* The Activity chart on a users profile page seems a bit wild to me. I'd suggest simplifying it or just using what GitHub/GitLab use with their square grid activity chart - it's what users are most familiar with. It's kind of analagous to all the LLM/Chat applications in recent years - they all converged on the same UI because that's what works - no need to reinvent the wheel when users understand an existing pattern. Plus - it's better for marketing:- people like to share their activity on GitHub/GitLab as it quickly conveys how much work they've done over the year - your current page doesn't.

ivanjermakov

Finnish startup Tangled raises €3.8M to reinvent code collaboration https://www.vestbee.com/insights/articles/tangled-raises-3-8...

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eterm

I tried to run:

    git clone https://tangled.org/tangled.org/core 
And it failed?

    Cloning into 'core'...
    warning: redirecting to https://knot1.tangled.sh/did:plc:j5hmlfdrwkvtxm7cjmu7j2is/
    remote: Thanks for using knot1.tangled.sh!
    remote: Enumerating objects: 99191, done.
    remote: Total 99191, done.
    Receiving objects: 100% (99191/99191), 122.19 MiB | 39.12 MiB/s, done.
    Resolving deltas: 100% (49286/49286), done.
    error: invalid path 'localinfra/fixtures/blobs/did:plc:igzuueb63dytyy3tpaweofuu    bafkreieify5bix4cmrj4iuxiceb6srr2boltkbbf7yizwtgwurqv42sltm'
    fatal: unable to checkout working tree
    warning: Clone succeeded, but checkout failed.
    and retry with 'git restore --source=HEAD :/'
    You can inspect what was checked out with 'git status'
It's not a great look when the very first thing I'd want to try to do:

    1. Redirects from .org to .sh suspiciously
    2.  falls over.
I now have to try to work out whether that other domain is deliberate or compromised.
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pksunkara

I see in the post that lexicon has been finalized. Does that include putting the issue, pr & comment records under the repo scope instead of the user scope?

I am asking because I have been waiting for that change. I intend to make all the public repos from https://juju.bi (code forge I am building) interoperable with Tangled and basically behave as knot server.

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gnabgib

Tangled, a Git collaboration platform built on atproto (332 points, 2025, 86 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45543899

paaloeye

tangled.org has potential.

Pre-update, code review UI was horrific compared to GitHub. Post-update, code review is much better, but "Comments" section without a "Comment" button is unforgivable. People are probably closing PRs right and left without knowing it. Shift-Enter is a submit action.

I'm a keyboard-first user, but for something which can end up in somebody's inbox notifications, UI button is the way to go.

I just don't understand how such a prolific pattern is being ignored.

donmcronald

In the self hosting docs…

    atcr.io/tangled.org/knot:2
Does anyone know if ‘tangled.org’ is verified / guaranteed to be owned by tangled.org?
huksley

Is the private repo support possible when self hosted?

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paaloeye

Is it actually smart to self-host when all those CVEs are dropping right and left? Sounds like a lot of maintenance for some marginal gains.

max-privatevoid

For a federated system they sure talk a lot about their struggles around scaling centralized infrastructure. ATProto seems like it's entirely the wrong protocol for this sort of application.

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Zak

I'm disappointed that issue tracking inside the VCS (probably as a separate repository, or at least a special branch) never got popular. That would reduce the importance of web-based code forges and make moving between them easy.

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joshka

https://tangled.org/oppi.li/naut needs migration to the new knot

LelouBil

I really like ATProto as an interoperable protocol for social applications !

asimovDev

Didn't know they were Finnish, I wonder if they are planning to join https://koodiasuomesta.fi

lorbus

Could this not use ActivityPub instead of ATProto?

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mbStavola

I honestly love Tangled.

At this point it's really the only forge I want to use going forward, considering that it sits nicely alongside all my other social data with ATProto.

rebolek

I would really love to use it but when are you going to support SHA256? I have SHA256 repo and I don’t want to rewrite all history especially when Git 3 is moving to SHA256 anyway.

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pfraze

Congrats on the launch, tangled team!

monster_truck

still don't understand what this is and the koolaid is so offputting

wealthville_net

[flagged]