selfcaster GitHub

Your own Farcaster client.

Selfcaster is a calm, chronological Farcaster app that you host yourself. No algorithm, no ads, nobody else's rules. Deploy your copy in about ten minutes.

Deploy your own Read the code

Free and open source. MIT licensed.

Selfcaster's Following feed on a phone: a cast with two sunset photos, then the next casts in order.

What you get

Newest first, every time
The Following feed is chronological. A line marks where you left off, and new casts wait in a pill instead of shoving the page around.
Your channels up top
Pick a few favorites from the channels you follow. They become your tabs and the only channels in the composer.
Posting that just works
Photos, links, quote casts and replies. Farcaster videos, YouTube, Spotify and SoundCloud play right in the feed.
Filters that stay quiet
Mute words, phrases, tickers and people. A quality dial hides spammy accounts. Your own casts are never hidden.
Seven looks
Selfcaster, Orange, Stone, Farcaster, Higher, Twitter and X, each in light and dark, every color checked for readability.
Actually yours
It runs on your Vercel account, behind your password. Change the name, the colors, anything. There's no Selfcaster server in the middle.

What it skips: DMs, ads, tracking, and anything that ranks your feed for you.

The theme picker: seven themes shown as small light and dark previews.
Pick a theme. It changes as you tap.
Favorite channels: three picked channels at the top, then a searchable list of followed channels.
Search the channels you follow, keep a few.
The feed in light mode.
Light, dark, or whatever your phone says.

Set it up

About ten minutes, all in your browser. No Terminal.

What you need

  1. Get your Neynar key

    Sign up at dev.neynar.com and create an API key. Keep the tab open.

  2. Tap Deploy

    Vercel copies Selfcaster into your GitHub, makes a photo store, and asks for two things: your Neynar key and a password. Pick a long one. Anyone with it can post as you.

  3. Connect your account

    Open your new site, enter your password, and follow /setup. You'll approve the connection in the Farcaster app with one tap.

  4. Make it stick

    Setup shows two values. Paste them into Vercel's environment variables and redeploy, so every device is connected. Then add it to your home screen.

Deploy your own

Rather fork it by hand? The README walks through that too.

What it costs

Vercel's free Hobby plan covers one person easily, photos included (Vercel Blob comes with 1 GB of storage and 10 GB of downloads a month).

Neynar's free plan includes 10 million credits a month. One person using Selfcaster every day uses well under a million, so the free plan should cover you. Your copy uses your own key, so nobody else's usage counts against you. Their pricing page has current numbers.

About your recovery phrase

Farcaster makes your account sign off on any new app. Setup does that signature in your browser: it uses the phrase once, then wipes it. It's never sent to a server or saved.

Don't take that on faith. Read the code that does it, or use a spare Farcaster account to make the request instead.

Questions

Is Selfcaster a service I sign up for?

No. There's nothing to sign up for. Each person deploys their own copy to their own Vercel account, and that copy only talks to Neynar and Farcaster.

Can my friends use my copy?

It's built for one person. Anyone with your password could post as you, so give them the link to deploy their own instead.

Does it have DMs?

No, on purpose. It's for reading and posting.

Can I change how it looks?

Yes. Pick a theme in the app, or edit the code: the name lives in lib/brand.ts, colors in lib/themes.ts, icons in public/.

How do I get new versions?

Your copy doesn't update by itself. Watch the repo and copy over what you like, or fork it on GitHub instead of using Deploy, and you'll get a Sync button.

What if Neynar changes its plans?

Every read goes through one file, so pointing Selfcaster at another Farcaster API or your own node is a contained change.