We're excited to announce the release of BotKit 0.3.0! This release marks a significant milestone as #BotKit now supports #Node.js alongside #Deno, making it accessible to a wider audience. The minimum required Node.js version is 22.0.0. This dual-runtime support means you can now choose your preferred #JavaScript runtime while building #ActivityPub #bots with the same powerful BotKit APIs.

One of the most requested features has landed: poll support! You can now create interactive polls in your #bot messages, allowing followers to vote on questions with single or multiple-choice options. Polls are represented as ActivityPub Question objects with proper expiration times, and your bot can react to votes through the new onVote event handler. This feature enhances engagement possibilities and brings BotKit to feature parity with major #fediverse platforms like Mastodon and Misskey.

// Create a poll with multiple choices
await session.publish(text`What's your favorite programming language?`, {
  class: Question,
  poll: {
    multiple: true,  // Allow multiple selections
    options: ["JavaScript", "TypeScript", "Python", "Rust"],
    endTime: Temporal.Now.instant().add({ hours: 24 }),
  },
});

// Handle votes
bot.onVote = async (session, vote) => {
  console.log(`${vote.actor} voted for "${vote.option}"`);
};

The web frontend has been enhanced with a new followers page, thanks to the contribution from Hyeonseo Kim (@gaebalgom개발곰)! The /followers route now displays a paginated list of your bot's followers, and the follower count on the main profile page is now clickable, providing better visibility into your bot's audience. This improvement makes the web interface more complete and user-friendly.

For developers looking for alternative storage backends, we've introduced the SqliteRepository through the new @fedify/botkit-sqlite package. This provides a production-ready SQLite-based storage solution with ACID compliance, write-ahead logging (WAL) for optimal performance, and proper indexing. Additionally, the new @fedify/botkit/repository module offers MemoryCachedRepository for adding an in-memory cache layer on top of any repository implementation, improving read performance for frequently accessed data.

This release also includes an important security update: we've upgraded to #Fedify 1.8.8, ensuring your bots stay secure and compatible with the latest ActivityPub standards. The repository pattern has been expanded with new interfaces and types like RepositoryGetMessagesOptions, RepositoryGetFollowersOptions, and proper support for polls storage through the KvStoreRepositoryPrefixes.polls option, providing more flexibility for custom implementations.

#fedidev