Hacker News: markmnl

New comment by markmnl in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)"

markmnl — Mon, 11 May 2026 09:31:42 +0000

You're absolutely right to pick up on that, I did study the landscape and Matrix is closest.. biggest difference is fmsg is just messages - group like chats evolve naturally in the threads - but to get a message someone has to send you one. Group messaging platforms like Matrix, Rocket.Chat etc have concept of rooms/forums/channels i.e. groups, then have HTTP APIs to manage membership and sync messages.. fmsg just messages someone has to send you

Also fmsg being its own protocol can do novel things like to auto challenge during sending back to sender - can't do that with HTTP

New comment by markmnl in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)"

markmnl — Mon, 11 May 2026 05:33:26 +0000

Shiping a real product, esp. a game, from scratch is an awesome achievement, congrats. (My first shipped product was Square Heroes also on Steam).

I feel like perfecting something can be trap, sure keep it alive, but maybe think about the next thing to work on too?

New comment by markmnl in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)"

markmnl — Mon, 11 May 2026 05:29:48 +0000

Working on fmsg - open protocol for instant messaging, distributed by domain like email..

Its a message definition and protocol, addresses look like @user@domain, anyone can run a host, and threaded messages are linked by cryptographic parent hashes..

The idea is to take the best from email: open protocol, domain ownership, interoperability (unsolicited mail is a feature not a bug), and the best from closed instant messaging rebuilt: efficient binary messages, conversational threads, sender verification, message integrity etc. built-in. Originally envisaged for human-to-human messaging but partculalrly interesting time right now with human-to-agent and agent-to-agent messaging...

The OSS stack is up and running: Go host, Dockerised full setup, CLI, Web API, and a spec nearing v1.0. Did Show HN post week ago: https://markmnl.github.io/fmsg/show-hn.html

Seeking feedback, criticism, validation :) protocol bikeshedding, and especially interest from founding-engineer types who want to help build an open messaging ecosystem rather than another closed app..

Show HN: fmsg – An open distributed messaging protocol

markmnl — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:06:34 +0000

fmsg is a message definition and protocol intended as an alternative to email and IM apps. Like email it's distributed – anyone can host a server for their domain. Unlike email, messages are binary, verifiable by all peers, and linked into a DAG using cryptographic hashes. Sender verification and message integrity are built into the protocol, so you get what email needs SPF/DKIM/DMARC for out of the box.

The host implementation (fmsgd) is written in Go. There's a Docker compose setup to get a full stack running in minutes: https://github.com/markmnl/fmsg-docker

The spec is nearing v1.0: https://github.com/markmnl/fmsg — would love feedback. Send me a fmsg at @markmnl@fmsg.io

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834580

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

Why Exceptions should be Exceptional

markmnl — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 06:48:32 +0000

Article URL: http://www.mattwarren.org/2016/12/20/Why-Exceptions-should-be-Exceptional/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13235401

Points: 1

# Comments: 0