Mastodon & Fediverse Monitor

Navigating the decentralized web requires specialized tools. This Mastodon and Fediverse monitor is designed to scrape and extract public data from any ActivityPub-compatible instance using standard API endpoints. Whether you are conducting social listening for a brand, tracking trending hashtags across different servers, or building a dataset of public conversations, this scraper provides direct access to the decentralized social graph. Users rely on this tool to run daily or weekly schedules to monitor specific profiles, aggregate posts, and track engagement without needing any authentication. By simply inputting the target instance URLs, accounts, or hashtags, you can extract rich details from the public timelines.

The results are highly structured, making it easy to analyze decentralized communities. You can scrape full status content, URL links, account handles, creation timestamps, and language tags. Furthermore, it accurately captures critical engagement data, including reblog, favourite, and reply counts, alongside a detailed summary of media attachments. Because the Fediverse operates differently than traditional platforms like Instagram or Facebook, capturing cross-instance chatter requires a targeted approach. This monitor bridges the gap, allowing marketers, researchers, and community managers to gather actionable insights, search for specific keywords, and export the scraped web data seamlessly for downstream analysis.

Status

Scaffolded as part of Wave 17 Batch S — Tier 3 (strategic / emerging platforms + governance). Domain logic lives in src/workflow.js.

Feasibility

Very high — the Mastodon API is a well-documented open standard exposed by every Fediverse instance; /api/v1/accounts, /api/v1/timelines/tag, and /api/v1/timelines/public require no authentication for public content.

V1 scope

Mastodon-compatible public API only (/api/v1 endpoints). Per status: ID, URL, account handle, content, created-at, reblog/favourite/reply counts, media attachments summary, language. OUT OF SCOPE: authenticated home timeline, direct messages, follow requests, instance admin endpoints, ActivityPub inbox/outbox federation mechanics.

Extraction surfaces

• Account lookup: https://{instance}/api/v1/accounts/lookup?acct={user}
• Account statuses: https://{instance}/api/v1/accounts/{id}/statuses
• Hashtag timeline: https://{instance}/api/v1/timelines/tag/{tag}
• Public timeline: https://{instance}/api/v1/timelines/public
• Instance info: https://{instance}/api/v1/instance

Known limitations and explicit warnings

• Each Fediverse instance is independently operated — rate limits, up-time, and federation scope vary.
• Not every Fediverse instance runs Mastodon; Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, GoToSocial expose compatible but not identical APIs (V1 targets the Mastodon-compatible subset).
• Hashtag timelines only include statuses the queried instance has federated; global hashtag coverage requires querying multiple instances.
• Public timelines exclude private / followers-only / unlisted posts by design.
• Rate limits are typically 300 requests / 5 minutes for unauthenticated clients; the actor paces at ≥250ms per request.
• Instance admins can disable the public API entirely — the actor gracefully skips blocked instances and records the reason.
• Boost (reblog) counts are per-instance and are not a global Fediverse-wide total.
• Account lookups require webfinger resolution when the account is on a different instance — best-effort.
• Content HTML is emitted verbatim; plain-text extraction is a convenience field only.
• Media attachments return URLs only; bytes are not downloaded.

Input

• Fediverse instances / accounts / hashtags
• Delivery mode (dataset or webhook)
• Dry-run support for local validation

Output

• Normalized statuses array
• meta section with implementation status, feasibility note, V1 scope, warnings, and notes

Local run

npm test
npm start

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