Core concepts¶

Before Mastodon is My Blog (MIMB) feels intuitive, four ideas matter more than anything else.

1. Meta account¶

The meta account is the local person using the app on this machine.

It is not the same thing as a Mastodon account. It is MIMB's way of saying:

"These local preferences, cached items, and read states belong to this human."

An identity is one real Mastodon account.

You can have more than one identity under the same local setup, for example:

The selected identity changes what you see because each one has different follows, activity, and topic bundles.

MIMB keeps a local cache so it can organize Mastodon in ways the standard interface does not.

That cache powers:

MIMB does not try to feel like a nonstop live stream. You refresh on purpose.

That is why the Admin page is important. It gives you clear moments to:

Your blog roll is the set of people MIMB thinks are relevant for person-by-person reading.

A storm is a long post or a self-thread that reads more like an essay than a quick update.

A bundle is a named topic collection in the Content area. It can combine several hashtags and search terms.

A server follow is a hashtag you already follow on Mastodon. MIMB can import those into Content as read-only groups.

A catch-up job is a larger backfill process that goes deeper into cached history than a normal refresh.

MIMB is trying to answer a different question.

The default Mastodon interface asks:

"What is happening right now?"

MIMB asks:

"What do I want to read, from whom, and in what shape?"