Nostr Compass

Technical resource for the Nostr protocol. Weekly newsletter covering NIP proposals, client updates, relay developments, and notable code changes. Weekly podcast featuring conversations with the developers whose work is covered in each newsletter. Comprehensive topic index documenting key Nostr concepts with links to primary sources and our coverage.

All materials open source under MIT license.

What We Provide

• Weekly Newsletter: Coverage of NIP proposals, client updates, relay developments, and notable code changes across the Nostr ecosystem
• Podcast: Conversations with the developers building Nostr
• Topic Index: Documentation of key protocol concepts, NIPs, and implementations with links to primary sources

Goals

The Nostr ecosystem is growing fast but lacks a central, neutral technical resource that documents what's actually shipping and changing week to week. Developers building clients don't have time to monitor every other client's repo. Relay operators miss NIP discussions that affect them. New contributors have no on-ramp to understand how the protocol has evolved.

Our goal is to create that resource: a consistent, technically accurate, non-promotional publication that helps developers stay informed, helps businesses evaluate Nostr for their use cases, and creates a durable archive of protocol evolution.

Development Workflow

Local development (with live reload):

hugo server
# Visit http://localhost:1313

Using Docker:

docker-compose up
# Visit http://localhost:1313

Build static site:

bun install
bun run build
# Output in /public/

hugo server is still useful for content work, but Pagefind search assets are generated during the full build step. Local builds automatically reserve 2 CPU cores for headroom. Override with BUILD_HEADROOM_CORES=<n> or cap the build directly with BUILD_MAX_CORES=<n>.

Deployment

Deploys automatically to GitHub Pages via GitHub Actions on every push to any branch.

Setup:

1. Repository Settings → Pages → Source: "GitHub Actions"
2. Repository Settings → Environments → github-pages → Deployment branches: "All branches"
3. Pages → Custom domain: nostrcompass.org
4. Configure DNS A records at your registrar pointing to GitHub Pages IPs (185.199.108-111.153)

Site live at: https://nostrcompass.org

Adding Content

Newsletter edition:

hugo new content/en/newsletters/2024-01-15-edition-1.md

Blog post:

hugo new content/en/blog/my-post.md

Edit content: Files in /content/en/ - Markdown with front matter

Fetch project updates:

python3 scripts/fetch_project_updates.py --since-days 7
# Outputs to data/project_updates/*.json

Contributing

We welcome contributions. Please review the contributing guidelines.

If you're building on Nostr and would like to contribute or appear on the podcast, reach out via NIP-17 DM to npub1wav4fae3gyfy3xj298kxj2mj8phavz7vavps34przq02j7w902qq902923.

License

All materials are released under the MIT license.