Pull missing responses into Mastodon

This GitHub repository provides a GitHub action that runs every 10 mins, doing the following:

1. It can pull remote replies into your instance, using the Mastodon API. That part itself has two parts:
   1. It gets remote replies to posts that users on your instance have already replied to during the last REPLY_INTERVAL_IN_HOURS hours, and adds them to your own server.
   2. It gets remote replies to the last HOME_TIMELINE_LENGTH posts from your home timeline, and adds them to your own server.
2. It can also backfill posts from the last MAX_FOLLOWINGS users that you have followed.
3. In the same way, it can also backfill posts form the last MAX_FOLLOWERS users that have followed you.

Each part can be disabled completely, and all of the values are configurable.

Be aware, that this script may run for a long time, if these values are too high. Experiment a bit with what works for you, by starting with fairly small numbers (maybe HOME_TIMELINE_LENGTH = 200, REPLY_INTERVAL_IN_HOURS = 12) and increase the numbers as you see fit.

For full context and discussion on why this is needed, read the following two blog posts:

• The original announcement post: Pull missing responses into Mastodon
• The announcement for v3.0.0: Pull missing posts from recently followed accounts into Mastodon

Setup

1) Get the required access token:

1. In Mastodon go to Preferences > Development > New Application
   1. give it a nice name
   2. enable read:search, read:statuses and admin:read:accounts
   3. Save
   4. Copy the value of Your access token

2) Configure and run the GitHub action

1. Fork this repository
2. Add your access token:
   1. Go to Settings > Secrets and Variables > Actions
   2. Click New Repository Secret
   3. Supply the Name ACCESS_TOKEN and provide the Token generated above as Secret
3. Provide the required environment variables, to configure your Action:
   1. Go to Settings > Environments
   2. Click New Environment
   3. Provide the name Mastodon
   4. Add the following Environment Variables:
      1. Required for all parts of the script:
         • MASTODON_SERVER: The domain only of your mastodon server (without https:// prefix) e.g. mstdn.thms.uk.
      2. Required to pull in remote replies:
         • HOME_TIMELINE_LENGTH: An integer number. E.g. 200. (See above for explanation.) Set to 0 to disable this part of the script.
         • REPLY_INTERVAL_IN_HOURS: An integer number. E.g. 24. (See above for explanation). Set to 0 to disable this part of the script.
      3. Required to backfill posts from your last followings (new in v3.0.0):
         • MAX_FOLLOWINGS: An integer number representing how many of your last followings you want to backfill. (e.g. 80). Leave blank to disable this part of the script.
         • USER: The username of the user whose followings you want to pull in (e.g. michael for the user @michael@thms.uk). Leave blank to disable this part of the script.
      4. Required to backfill posts from your last followers (new in v3.0.1):
         • MAX_FOLLOWERS: An integer number representing how many of your last followers you want to backfill. (e.g. 80). Leave blank to disable this part of the script.
         • USER (if not already provided): The username of the user whose followings you want to pull in (e.g. michael for the user @michael@thms.uk). Leave blank to disable this part of the script.
4. Finally go to the Actions tab and enable the action. The action should now automatically run approximately once every 10 min.

3) Runn this script locally as a cron job

If you want to, you can of course also run this script locally as a cron job:

1. To get started, clone this repository. (If you'd rather not clone the full repository, you can simply download the get_context.py file, but don't forget to create a directory called artifacts in the same directory: The script expects this directory to be present, and stores information about posts it has already pushed into your instance in that directory, to avoid pushing the same posts over and over again.)
2. Then simply run this script like so: python3 get_context.py <ACCESS_TOKEN> <MASTODON_SERVER> <REPLY_INTERVAL_IN_HOURS> <HOME_TIMELINE_LENGTH> <MAX_FOLLOWINGS> <USER> <MAX_FOLLOWERS> (See the section above for an explanation of these parameters. The final two parameters can be omitted, if you are not interested.)

When setting up your cronjob, do make sure you are setting the interval long enough that two runs of the script don't overlap though! Running this script with overlapping will have unpleasant results ...

If you are running this script locally, my recommendation is to run it manually once, before turning on the cron job: The first run will be singificantly slower than subsequent runs, and that will help you prevent overlapping during that first run.

Acknowledgments

This script is mostly taken from Abhinav Sarkar, with just some additions and alterations. Thank you Abhinav!