A minimal, fast, JSON-LD native Solid server for the agentic web.

Documentation | GitHub

• Architecture
• Features
• Quick Start
• Installing with Podman
• Running with Podman
• CLI Reference
• Documentation
• Comparison
• Performance
• Running Tests
• Maintainers
• License

• LDP CRUD — GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, HEAD, PATCH (N3 + SPARQL Update)
• JSON-LD Native — Stores and serves JSON-LD by default, Turtle via --conneg
• Web Access Control — .acl file-based authorization
• Solid-OIDC — Built-in Identity Provider with DPoP, passkeys, Schnorr SSO
• Programmatic Auth — POST /idp/credentials issues tokens from email/password; agents and headless clients authenticate with no browser flow
• WebSocket Notifications — Real-time updates (solid-0.1 protocol)
• Content Negotiation — Turtle ↔ JSON-LD conversion (optional)
• Multi-user Pods — Path-based (/alice/) or subdomain-based (alice.example.com)
• Single-User Mode — Personal pod server with --single-user
• Git HTTP Backend — Clone and push to pod containers
• Nostr Relay — Integrated NIP-01 relay (wss://your.pod/relay)
• Nostr Auth — NIP-98 signatures, did:nostr → WebID resolution
• End-to-End Encryption — Encrypt pod content client-side via NIP-44 / NIP-04 using did:nostr keys (docs, zero server-side changes)
• LWS / CID v1 profile shape — New pod profiles are structurally W3C Controlled Identifier documents, ready for LWS 1.0 auth (docs)
• ActivityPub — Fediverse federation with Mastodon-compatible API
• remoteStorage — draft-dejong-remotestorage-22 file sync
• MongoDB Storage — Optional /db/ route for JSON-LD at scale
• WebRTC Signaling — Peer-to-peer connections via WebID-authenticated signaling
• Tunnel Proxy — Decentralized ngrok through your pod
• Terminal — WebSocket shell access via --terminal
• Password CLI — jss passwd for user password management
• MCP Server — Expose the pod as a tool surface for agents (Claude Desktop, Cursor, custom bots) via --mcp (docs)
• HTTP 402 Payments — Monetize endpoints with per-request sat payments
• Mashlib / SolidOS UI — Optional data browser (CDN, local, or ES module)
• Storage Quotas — Per-user limits with CLI management
• Invite-Only Mode — Controlled registration via invite codes
• SSL/TLS, CORS, Range Requests, Conditional Requests

# Install
npm install -g javascript-solid-server

# Start
jss start

# With common options
jss start --port 8443 --idp --mashlib --conneg --git --nostr

curl -X POST http://localhost:4443/.pods \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "alice"}'

# Read
curl http://localhost:4443/alice/public/

# Write
curl -X PUT http://localhost:4443/alice/public/data.json \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/ld+json" \
  -d '{"@id": "#data", "http://example.org/value": 42}'

pkg install nodejs git
npm install -g javascript-solid-server
jss start --port 8080 --nostr --git

These steps install Podman and the helper tools used to run JSS in a Podman pod (with a Makefile, a jss.yaml pod spec and helper scripts, all in the podman/ folder). Podman isolates the JSS from your host system and Podman Pods can be orchestrated with Kubernetes.

You need Podman, make, and curl, jq and openssl for the helper scripts. Then run everything from the podman/ folder of this repo (see Running). Only Ubuntu has been tested here; the macOS and Windows steps follow Podman's standard setup and are untested.

sudo apt install -y podman make curl jq openssl

Linux Mint 21 and 22 are based on Ubuntu, so it's the same:

sudo apt install -y podman make curl jq openssl

Mint 22 (Ubuntu 24.04 base) ships Podman 4.9, which has everything used here (podman kube play --replace --publish, podman kube down). Mint 21 (Ubuntu 22.04 base) ships Podman 3.4, which is too old; upgrade to Mint 22 or install a newer Podman from the Podman install page.

Rootless Podman needs your user in /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid; normal Mint accounts already are. Check with:

grep "^$USER:" /etc/subuid /etc/subgid

Podman runs containers in a small Linux VM on macOS. With Homebrew:

xcode-select --install

brew install podman jq

podman machine init && podman machine start

xcode-select --install provides make (curl and openssl are built in). Published ports such as 127.0.0.1:4443 are forwarded from the VM to your Mac, so http://localhost:4443/ works as on Linux. Keep your Podman setup under your home folder, which the VM can see. The jss-data and jss-secrets volumes live inside the VM, so on-disk volume paths are Linux-only. After a reboot, run podman machine start before make up. Podman Desktop is a graphical alternative to the brew install. For HTTPS, brew install caddy.

The simplest route is WSL 2 with Ubuntu, then the Ubuntu steps inside it. In PowerShell as administrator:

wsl --install -d Ubuntu

Restart if asked, open the Ubuntu app, and run:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y podman make curl jq openssl

Keep your Podman setup inside the Ubuntu home folder (for example ~/git/), not under /mnt/c/, and run the make commands from there. WSL forwards localhost, so http://localhost:4443/ opens from your Windows browser.

Alternatively, install Podman for Windows (it also runs on WSL 2) with winget install -e --id RedHat.Podman or Podman Desktop, then podman machine init and podman machine start (again after each reboot). From PowerShell you can then use the commands in Running without make, but the Makefile and the create-pod/grant-webid scripts need bash (WSL or Git Bash). For HTTPS, winget install -e --id CaddyServer.Caddy, or install Caddy inside WSL.

Run make and the podman commands below from the podman/ folder of this repo, which contains jss.yaml and the Makefile. They use relative paths such as jss/, profiles/ and jss.yaml, so they fail from anywhere else.

Pass the same PROFILE= to restart and rebuild that you used for up.

Without make, the equivalents are podman kube play --replace --configmap profiles/local.yaml --publish 127.0.0.1:4443:4443 jss.yaml to start and podman kube down jss.yaml to stop. Build the image first with podman build -t localhost/jss:latest jss (make up does this for you). For another profile, use profiles/<name>.yaml (or your profiles/<name>.local.yaml) and its bind: --publish 0.0.0.0:4443:4443 for lan, --publish 127.0.0.1:4443:4443 for local and internet.

With make:

make status

The jss pod should show Running and jss-server should show Up, with 127.0.0.1:4443->4443/tcp (or 0.0.0.0:4443 on the lan profile). Exited or no pod at all means it's stopped. make logs follows the server log.

Without make:

podman pod ps

podman ps --all --filter name=jss-server

Look for Running (pod) and Up … (container); Exited means it stopped. Follow the log with:

podman logs -f jss-server

Either way, check that it answers HTTP:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' http://localhost:4443/

200 means it's up; 000 means nothing is listening on port 4443. You can also open http://localhost:4443/ in a browser.

The pod doesn't start again by itself after a reboot (rootless Podman doesn't start pods at boot unless you set that up), so after restarting the machine, run make up again. Your data is kept in the jss-data and jss-secrets volumes.

jss start [options]    # Start the server
jss init [options]     # Initialize configuration
jss invite <cmd>       # Manage invite codes
jss quota <cmd>        # Manage storage quotas
jss passwd <username>  # Manage user passwords

Key options: --port, --idp, --conneg, --mashlib, --git, --nostr, --mcp, --activitypub, --webrtc, --tunnel, --terminal, --mongo, --pay, --public, --single-user

Full options: docs/configuration.md

npm test

JSS is maintained by @melvincarvalho and @jjohare. See MAINTAINERS.md.

Licensed under AGPL-3.0. Commercial licensing also available — see LICENSING.md.