How to Help WarpNet

WarpNet is a free, open, and decentralized social protocol. There is no central owner — just people building together. It is built and maintained by one person, with no company and no team behind it, so help here has outsized impact. If you want to contribute, there are many ways:

New here? Start with the Contributor Onboarding Guide

docs/ONBOARDING.md in the repository is the complete end-to-end walkthrough: the philosophy, the architecture, how to build and run every node role, the desktop, Android and remote clients, and how to ship your first feature. Read it before anything else — it will save you a week.

→ https://github.com/Warp-net/warpnet/blob/main/docs/ONBOARDING.md

1. Test the Software

• Run a node and use it. Linux is the easiest — sudo snap install warpnet. Windows has a prebuilt zip in the releases. macOS is not supported yet: the builds are unsigned and Gatekeeper blocks them.

• Use testnet as your playground: warpnet --node.network testnet. Nothing you do there touches the live network, and make prune-testnet wipes it clean.

• Use the UI, break things, and report what happens.

• Experiment with multi-node setups in your LAN or VPN.

Bug reports are always appreciated → https://github.com/Warp-net/warpnet/issues

2. Improve the Code

• Read the source and open PRs

• Fix bugs, add missing error handling

• Optimize critical paths (message storage, discovery)

• Fix the frontend (PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE)

Look at good first issues if you're new → https://github.com/Warp-net/warpnet/labels/good%20first%20issue

How a feature is shaped. Adding one usually means touching several layers in lockstep: a path in event/paths.go, a DTO in event/event.go, a handler in core/handler/, a repo method in database/, registration in member-node.go, plus tests. It sounds like a lot; it is mechanical once you have done it once. core/handler/like.go and like_test.go are a complete worked example you can copy.

The workflow:

1. Fork, then branch: git checkout -b <IssueNumber>/<ShortName>

2. Make your change. Every new .go file carries the AGPL header — copy it from like.go.

3. Run make tests, and make sure go vet ./... and golangci-lint run are clean.

4. Commit in imperative present tense ("Add bookmark filter handler").

5. Open a PR that names the route(s) you touched — reviewers map changes to layers by the route string.

There is no CLA and no paperwork. Just the AGPL header.

The repository is mirrored at codeberg.org/Warpnet/warpnet if you prefer to work there.

3. Build Tools and Interfaces

• Write a desktop client or cross-platform GUI

• Improve the Android client. warpdroid/ is a fork of Tusky that talks to a Warpnet node over libp2p instead of HTTP to a Mastodon instance. Kotlin people are badly needed. It is currently under F-Droid inclusion review.

• Make an iOS client — nothing exists there yet

• Create visualizations or dashboards for peers and network metrics

WarpNet is modular. Anything that speaks the protocol can join the network.

4. Research and Audit

• Review the cryptographic primitives (Noise, PSK, local key derivation, the deterministic identity scheme)

• Propose improvements to moderation, discovery, or reputation models

• Help design trust-minimizing coordination methods

Three sister projects are worth a look on their own:

• moderation — on-device LLM content moderation (Llama Guard 3, quantized GGUF, via a llama.cpp cgo binding). No network calls.

• activity-pub-gw — a deliberately stateless ActivityPub gateway bridging Warpnet to Mastodon and the Fediverse.

• libp2p-camouflage-transport — a DPI-evading libp2p transport that makes traffic look like ordinary HTTPS (uTLS fingerprints, TCP fragmentation, active-probing defenses).

5. Write and Document

• Translate the documentation into your language. The F-Droid store listing lives in fastlane/metadata/android/ and currently exists only in en-US — that is a small, self-contained first contribution.

• Write tutorials or explainers ("How Warpnet stores tweets locally")

• Improve error messages or CLI help output

6. Run Infrastructure

• Host a publicly reachable relay node (PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE). Relays are stateless, thin entry points that help new nodes find peers over the DHT — they hold no user data. Grab relay_linux_amd64.tar.gz from the releases page, or build the image from Dockerfile.relay.

• Run a moderator node. Anyone can — it is the same software with a moderation model loaded. There is no application process and no approval, and no special power either: your vote counts the same as anyone else's, and you cannot pick which reports you judge. It needs enough memory and CPU for a small language model and a stable connection.

• Mirror binaries or snapshots

• Help with continuous integration or builds

7. Spread the Word

• Share WarpNet with like-minded developers

• Star the repository to increase its visibility

If you're doing any of the above, you're already helping. WarpNet is not a startup. There is no monetization. It's a protocol for people who want to own their tools.

You can reach the maintainers at: contact@warpnet.site or https://t.me/warpnetdev