Tribe

A relationship-first social app informed by social brain theory, rebuilt for a world with portable identity.

Tribe is a mobile-first social product for people who want a calmer, more intentional network. Instead of flattening everyone into the same follower graph, Tribe organizes relationships into bounded circles inspired by social brain theory and Dunbar-style limits:

• inner up to 5
• close up to 15
• tribe up to 50
• village up to 150

It is also the latest step in a much longer product journey.

Origin Story

Tribe is an evolution of earlier attempts to build socially healthier software around the science of human relationship limits.

About five years ago, that idea started as Social Brain Network, an Instagram-style social app built around grouping relationships according to social brain theory. It aimed at the right problem, but ran into the classic cold start problem: a better social graph model does not matter much if your people are not there yet.

That led to a simpler follow-up called Social Brain Contacts, a mobile app that grouped people from your phone contacts into meaningful relationship layers. It reduced the cold start problem by using a graph users already had, but it also gave up the power of a portable online identity and a shared networked social layer.

Tribe is the next swing:

• keep the science-informed model of relationship tiers
• keep the emphasis on intentional social design
• avoid starting from zero
• use the AT Protocol so identity is portable and infrastructure is federated
• tap into an existing online social graph instead of hoping everyone joins a brand-new network from scratch

Why This Exists

Most social apps optimize for reach, engagement, and scale. Tribe is designed around a different premise: people have finite attention, finite intimacy, and finite relational bandwidth.

Tribe is for users who want:

• a smaller and quieter social layer
• audience control that maps to real relationships
• identity they can carry with them
• a path beyond the cold start problem of new social apps

What The Repo Contains

This repo is a pnpm monorepo with:

• apps/mobile: Expo Router React Native client for iOS and Android
• apps/api: Fastify API with Drizzle-based Postgres compatibility
• packages/shared: shared product types, validation schemas, and domain helpers

At the moment, the project uses AT Protocol primarily for identity and authentication. The broader vision is a product where portability, federation, and science-informed social design reinforce each other.

Current Product Shape

Today the app includes:

• AT Protocol sign-in with native OAuth on iOS development builds
• a demo/local sign-in path for faster product iteration
• onboarding that asks users to shape their circles intentionally
• tier-based feeds and posting
• private relationship tiers rather than one flat friend/follower model

The long-term direction includes deeper Bluesky and AT Protocol interoperability, but the current implementation is intentionally scoped so the core product can be tested quickly.

Local Development

This repo requires Node.js 20.19.4 or newer.

1. Install dependencies:

   nvm use || nvm install 20.19.4
   pnpm install

2. Copy env files:

   cp .env.example .env
   cp apps/mobile/.env.example apps/mobile/.env

3. For real AT Protocol OAuth, fill in the blank values in apps/mobile/.env:

   • EXPO_PUBLIC_ATPROTO_CLIENT_ID
   • EXPO_PUBLIC_ATPROTO_CLIENT_URI
   • EXPO_PUBLIC_ATPROTO_REDIRECT_URI

4. Start the API:

   pnpm dev:api

5. Start the mobile app:

   pnpm dev:mobile

6. Or start both the API and iOS simulator flow together:

   pnpm dev:ios

7. To run a native iOS development build with custom native modules such as AT Protocol OAuth:

   pnpm dev:ios:native

8. To generate a free-hosted OAuth metadata site for a Cloudflare Pages-style hostname:

   pnpm atproto:prepare-pages -- --host tribepreview.pages.dev

   That writes a deployable static site to dist/atproto-oauth-site and prints the exact mobile env values to copy into apps/mobile/.env.

Development Notes

• The API runs against in-memory PGlite if DATABASE_URL is unset, and switches to Postgres-compatible mode when DATABASE_URL is provided.
• Supabase is intended as the managed Postgres and storage layer behind the API, not as the client-auth boundary.
• pnpm dev:ios uses Expo Go. That is enough for the demo/local flow, but Expo Go cannot load @atproto/oauth-client-expo; real AT Protocol sign-in needs a native development build.
• pnpm dev:ios:native uses expo run:ios and requires local Xcode and iOS simulator tooling. On first run it will generate native project files and compile the iOS app.
• The native redirect URI must match the app scheme in apps/mobile/app.config.ts. The mobile app derives its scheme from EXPO_PUBLIC_ATPROTO_REDIRECT_URI, so changing that value requires rebuilding the iOS development app.
• A free *.pages.dev host works for development. The helper command reverses the host labels into the native callback scheme for you, so tribepreview.pages.dev becomes dev.pages.tribepreview:/auth/callback.