fedtail: опоссум, обнявший свой хвост fedtail
eugene-vereshchagin/fedtail -
EN

tail -f for the fediverse

A desktop client for GoToSocial, Mastodon, Akkoma and anything speaking the Mastodon API. Made for people who remember Juick and Point.im and are tired of reading scraps of other people’s conversations.

fedtail: an opossum holding its own tail
  • Every reply has its context
  • Whole threads, from the author's server
  • Follow threads, like on Point
  • Boosts don't bump old posts
  • Every detail is a switch
# Download and make it executable:
curl -LO https://github.com/eugene-vereshchagin/fedtail/releases/download/v0.16.0/fedtail-0.16.0-linux-x86_64
chmod +x fedtail-0.16.0-linux-x86_64

# put it in the menu with its icon (and exit), then run it
./fedtail-0.16.0-linux-x86_64 --install-desktop
./fedtail-0.16.0-linux-x86_64

Latest release: fedtail 0.16.0, October 19, 2026 · changelog · coming in 0.17.0 · source .tar.gz

Download Release All Features Documentation

What makes fedtail different

The whole point of fedtail is giving conversations their context back. Every reply shows what it answers, a thread opens as a tree right where you came from, a lane remembers where you stopped and never jumps. Everything below is there today, and next to none of it is in other clients.

Whole threads, wherever you open them

Replies your server doesn’t have are fetched from the author’s server, so a thread looks the same everywhere. As a tree, indented and numbered /1 /2 …, with the post you came from highlighted.

Every reply has its context

Above every reply in a lane, a strip with the start of the post it answers. A click opens the whole conversation right there. No more scraps of other people’s talks.

Read in order, never lose your place

Oldest on top, a lane opens at the first unread post. New posts arrive below and never shift what you’re reading. After a break it catches up without gaps.

Like on Point

Follow threads like S #abc: what’s new in them gets a lane of its own. The command line #abc text, S #abc, @user right in the window.

A lane without the noise

A repeated boost doesn’t bump an old post back up. Bots live in their own lane. Filter a lane by media and boosts; people in your lists leave the general lanes.

Whole profiles

Posts older than your server knows about come straight from the author’s server. “Following since …” and, if you want them, honest reply counters across the fediverse.

Approvals on GoToSocial

When your settings ask for it, approve or decline who may reply to, like or boost your post, right in the activity lane.

Search everything you've seen

Ctrl+F searches the current lane or all of them at once, in the local database, without asking the server. Find it, click it, you’re in the thread.

Every behaviour is a switch

Every behaviour is a key in config.toml, themes are files, arts mode is one flag. Defaults are the author’s way; “like everyone else” is one line away. Qt, TUI, web and CLI on one core.

For Juick and Point.im people

fedtail aims to feel like Point on top of the fediverse:

  • Read feeds in order without losing your place.
  • Every comment belongs to its visible thread tree.
  • Thread comments are numbered /1 /2 …, and thread subscriptions work like S #abc.
  • Honest counters show the real number of replies in a thread, not just what made it to your home instance.
Getting Started Guide

Compare with Mastodon Web, Tusky, Ivory & Elk

From the author

Why fedtail is the way it is

I’ve never been a programmer, but I’ve worked in IT for 20+ years: I’m a sysadmin and, dare I say it, a Linux guy. But just like with drawing or music, I could never write code well enough to earn the proud title of programmer. Small scripts and automations don’t count.

But as a slightly advanced user I saw it and kept wondering: why does nobody finish their projects? Why can’t you just implement an API fully, instead of dropping it halfway through the important calls, so that the rest turns up in a competing product five years later, on a different toolkit? Why do you always have to make a hard choice: either this feature or that one?

I’m still baffled: why can’t you give the users of your program a choice? Want a dark theme - there it is; want a light one - fine; want the menu on the right - sure, or on the left. No: for some reason every bit of software gets trimmed, nailed down and hardcoded until it’s “want to change it? Disassemble it.” Come on, people, are you serious? You sit in KDE, your more or less working Jabber client is GTK, and ICQ has to run under Wine. Well, that’s for those who remember what Jabber and ICQ were.

So as soon as AI tools started writing things that actually work, I decided: “Let me design an app that’s done PROPERLY from the start, without pain and suffering.” Where every option can be turned on or off. Where the frontend is separate from the backend, and the API is implemented for everything there is right away.

And so, after a week of Claude’s torment, fedtail was born - the most feature-complete, configurable-by-default and easy-to-extend-by-design fediverse client.

Who did what

Every line of fedtail’s code was written by a neural net - Claude, by Anthropic. The tests, the builds, the docs and this website too. My part: what it should be and how it should behave, the call at every fork in the road, testing it by hand every day, and an endless stream of “it broke here again”. I’m the tester, the coordinator and the customer in one person; the programmer isn’t me.

Neural nets and meatbags

To be honest, I’m against AI-generated code, especially the mindless kind, and especially in serious production. It’s genuinely scary to think of real-time systems written by neural nets alone, with no review and no testing.

But! But the meatbags are somehow in no hurry to write everything and anything with their own (crooked) hands, and they flat out don’t want to fix bugs or build features. So knocking together a couple of apps for yourself with a neural net isn’t really all that shameful any more…

For example: how do you crack open an MKV container and write extended tags into it without rebuilding the whole container? For mp3 there are tons of tools like that, of every degree of crappiness. For video - none. There’s a library on Linux that supposedly can do something along those lines. Go on, poke at it, sure. So you end up taking Claude and making it do weird stuff. And it does! The little program honestly changes the tags in an MKV, fast and without a rebuild! Miracles, nothing less. It took an hour, tops.

And yes, I couldn’t care less about spaghetti code or any other remarks there. Write your own, then we’ll talk.