Dotplan

A modern, decentralized re-imagining of the Unix plan file.

• User-provided content tied to an email address.
• Text only.
• No re-tweets, shares, @s, likes, or boosting of any kind.
• Authenticity optionally verified by clients using minisign.
• Accessed via public APIs.
• Open source.
• Self-hostable, discovery via domain SRV records.

Client Implementations and Tools

• dotplan-cli is a script for interacting with dotplan providers from the linux shell

API

Any Dotplan implementation should expose at least the following endpoint and behavior:

• GET /plan/{email} - retrieve a plan
  • Accept: text/plain request header - return raw plan content
  • Accept: application/json request header - return json plan details:
    • plan - raw plan content
    • timestamp - when this plan was created
    • signature - optional signature if this plan was signed
  • Last-Modified response header should indicate when the plan was created
  • X-Dotplan-Pubkey: {base64 signify pubkey} request header - perform signature verification
    • append X-Dotplan-Verified: true response header if verification succeeded
    • 403 if verification failed or is not supported by the server
    • client-side signature verification using the json response should be favored since the server may not be trusted
  • 404 if no plan found
  • 301 redirect if domain SRV record indicates plan is on a different dotplan provider
    • this is optional for servers to act as relays, client-side SRV lookups should be favored since the server may not be trusted

Authentication

The reference dotplan implementation also exposes these endpoints for account management and authentication. Other implementations may differ and offer other authentication mechanisms (OAuth2 for example, or supporting the creation and invalidation of multiple authentication tokens).

• POST /users/{email} - request new account
  • request json data:
    • password - the password for the new account
  • an email with a validation link will be sent
• PUT /users/{email} - validate new account
  • request json data:
    • token - the validation token from the email
• GET /token - retrieve auth token
  • http basic auth
  • ?expires={minutes} sets an explicit expiration, default is 5 minutes from creation
  • response json data:
    • token - the authentication token
• DELETE /token - invalidate current auth token
  • http basic auth
• GET /users/{email}/pwchange - get password change token
  • an email with a password change token will be sent
  • token expires 600 seconds from creation
• PUT /users/{email}/pwchange - update password
  • request json data:
    • password - the new password
    • token - the password change token from the email

Updating a Plan

The reference dotplan implementation exposes this endpoint to update a plan using a given authentication token. Other implementations may differ and offer other mechanisms to update a plan (by email or text message for example, or integration with other services).

• PUT /plan/{email} - update a plan
  • request json data:
    • plan - optional new plan content
    • signature - optional ascii encoded PGP signature
    • auth - the authentication token
  • omitting plan from the payload will delete the existing plan

Discovery via Domain SRV

To facilitate service discovery by Dotplan clients and relays, add a SRV record to your email domain with the name _dotplan._tcp. For example, to use dotplan.online as the service provider for email addresses at example.com, the record would look like this:

_dotplan._tcp.example.com. 86400 IN SRV 0 1 443 dotplan.online.