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Posted by dandano 6/28/2025

I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric(blog.danpetrolito.xyz)
601 points | 264 commentspage 2
taraindara 6/28/2025|
This was a fun read. Being experienced in various methods of self hosting, it was cool to learn of coolify. Seeing more people get into self hosting always makes me happy.
udev4096 7/1/2025|
What? This has nothing to do with it. If author was interested in self-hosting, he would have used mumble or something instead of signal/discord
ksynwa 7/1/2025||
If folks don't want to understandably install the discord app perhaps notifications could be sent through something like ntfy. Like create a dedicated channel for notifications for this and have the interested people subscribe to it. Can't say for sure if the discord.py library will allow for something like this but I think it should be possible.
braiamp 7/1/2025||
Please, fix the contrast of the clicked links and your background. The discord.py link is unreadable. Same with supabase and coolify. Those I'm sure I haven't visited.
drewtato 7/1/2025|
This comment is so interesting because clearly, it's the unvisited color that's broken, you know this, and you even typed it out, but it is so common for visited links to be darker than unvisited links that it makes you assume the opposite.
kadhirvelm 7/1/2025||
Wow so cool, I feel like if I had a light near by desk that turned on every time a friend was on discord voice, I'd be so much more likely to hop in for a few minutes over getting an notification. Something about the physical affordance feels harder to ignore
ethan_smith 7/2/2025|
Check out Philips Hue or Govee lights with IFTTT integration - they can already do exactly this with Discord webhooks, no need to build it from scratch.
rpgbr 7/1/2025||
I always try to solve problems by using what people already have, so I wonder if having another group on Signal, where only “I'm playing!” messages would be allowed, couldn't fix the issue…?
dandano 7/1/2025||
I think it was the fact that actions spoke louder than words for us. It’s easy to say “I’ll jump on” but then you get distracted and then 30 mins later you go online. Similarly to when people say “leaving now” and then they start getting ready to leave. Because we are notified that someone has taken the action of going online they are 100% available to chat or play a game.
lazyeye 7/1/2025||
Do discord events allow for connections to ifttt or zapier? Or even just trigger a webhook? If so then you can trigger a smart light bulb in each persons home via these services. To get this to work you create 2 applets triggered by the same webhook. One to turn the light on, then another to turn it off after a specified delay.
dandano 7/2/2025||
Of course, you can code whatever you want into the event that I hook into - that is my idea for the IoT device I mentioned.
lazyeye 7/2/2025||
ok then all you need is a mid-tier IFTTT subscription (approx $30 a year) and a TAPO or LIFX wifi smart bulb to set this up.
Ringz 7/1/2025|||
I’ve always thought this way and it’s amazing what applications and problems you can solve or replace with text files (csv, TXT, md), calendars (shared) and email. If I had to estimate, 80-90%?

I always believed in the power of simple tools and don’t reinvent the wheel.

rpgbr 7/1/2025||
There's that theory that all apps are just glorified (and/or multiplayer) txt files or spreadsheets. Which is true in… 80–90% of the cases?
fragmede 7/1/2025||
what're the last 10-20%?
leptons 7/1/2025||
My friend group has multiple Signal chats for different purposes. One is a general chat, no politics allowed. Then there's a chat that is for politics. One is for live music, and there are other sub-groups for specific interests.
peterldowns 7/1/2025||
Fun story. This reminds me of the summer my friends and I were all still around our small town — we used the Yo! app the same way, as a bat signal to meet up and get into nonsense. Someone would start Yo!ing and then once there was a critical mass of return Yo!s we'd switch to text/phone and link up.

Good times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_(app)

stevage 7/1/2025||
That actually sounds really nice.

> Over the next year, our group chat (in Signal) was drowning in notifications. A mix of general chit chat, talks on the ever changing news of COVID and the most important - when can people play games and chat. It really annoyed me when people would post on "hey anyone wanna play [game] in 15 mins?", for it to be buried in another 5 messages.

My friend group's solution to this problem is...lots of different group chats. They're all on Google Chat, but we have tons of different ones for different topics: bikes, space, covid/infectious diseases, baking, craft, plants, wildlife, true crime, politics, depressing news, renewables/sustainability, tech geekery, board games, home improvement...

I do miss video chat nights during lockdown though.

henryaj 7/1/2025||
WhatsApp has a somewhat similar feature - pull up to start a group voice chat. You can ping others to let them know you're around.

https://faq.whatsapp.com/1973730693032338

fdgjgbdfhgb 7/1/2025|
The only time I've seen this feature be used is when my grandma accidentally turns it on in the family groupchat - I just don't wanna hang out with my friends in WhatsApp
eveld 7/1/2025||
This reminds me a lot of the days when we would just hang in ventrillo and teamspeak to just hang out even when not playing games. Especially around the time when communities gathered around dedicated servers were still a thing. Miss those days :(
johndhi 7/1/2025|
I had the idea of making a website where anyone of a group of friends can post their evening plans - go to trivia, play tennis, etc - and others would be able to sign up to join.

Never made it but glad to see these things can work.

johndhi 7/1/2025|
Anyone know if something like this already exists I could buy or use?
gorpomon 7/1/2025|||
This was the original purpose of Twitter-- it was advertised as a network where anyone could post what they're doing and notify their friends immediately. Even until recently tweets could be received via SMS (not sure about the current status of that feature) so you'd see in real time what they're up to.

Of course, Twitter/X/etc are a far cry from that now-- but it could be worth trying where you and your friends use the service like that.

Imustaskforhelp 7/1/2025||||
I do think this is an interesting idea. Lemme see if I can do this. How do you think the UI/UX should look like.

Here's what I am thinking. You sign in It asks you what you want to do And at what time (hour) in another column and (date) in another column And then it asks you the location

And then we can have a contact-me: which could lead to discord or signal. Or, if you aren't comfortable sharing that info, then you could have a shareable link that you can share with anyone and then they can write their email or whatever and you would get live notifications through mail or whatever platform you decided.

Lemme know if we are on the same page?

EDIT: I have created a mvp but like, the problem is that it's just a form y'know and I just created something where you would input in this information and it would give html and then you can host it and using https://formsubmit.co/ you can use it. Though I guess one of the issues is that you have to validate each form in formsubmit (not good for ephemeral forms) and I guess it also shows email but there's a way to hide it too.

Also, I guess the problems aren't of forms but of discoverability. How do you make people discover your forms but I guess one way could be of having a list of all your forms or just the current ones that you want to show (IDK?) on github pages for example and then you could just share the github pages link to anyone or just have it in a about me section of most messengers?

Also.. Maybe then if you wanted to rather share it to anybody you could create a additional place where anybody can share their forms/such website. But I am not sure if what I've all said is the best user experience.

johndhi 7/2/2025|||
Cool, thank you!

The UI I envisioned is that the website shows what people are doing and when. You can add activities (with a form like you descibed) - but the key is that a site will show what's going on right now and for the rest of the day. And when people add to that site, notifications go out.

Imustaskforhelp 7/1/2025|||
I just realized that I just reinvented a form generator or a form itself...
elendee 7/2/2025||||
I sketched out an app like this but with the added feature that you have a slider to indicate your commitment level.

The event poster can set a collective-commitment-threshold which triggers once sufficient commitment is reached.

Currently working on another web app though...

Grimblewald 7/2/2025|||
use a kanban board. FOSS options exist for web-hosted implementations. Kanban works because It supports a 'backlog' of events to do, timelines for things to do that are on a deadline (e.g. concerts) and allows people to add activities / plans to backlogs which get moved to 'ready to do' as things are done / cleared. Keeps everything organised and simple, with good over-sight on what's going on when. Downside is it requires friends already somewhat technical or at least willing to learn.
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