## 2026.09.01 / Tuesday

### Magical Protocols and Where to Find Them 

Yeah, discoverability is kind of problematic on smolweb/smolnet.
Pretty much every other ("production") distributed system consists
of plenty of small, autonomously functioning sub-systems with
every one of them either registering and unregistering itself on
activation/deactivation (so the "hub" can poll its status on
demand or now and then) or broadcasting its status to keep
everyone involved up-to-date.

Finding anything, especially on a Nex service, becomes really
quickly ridiculously intensive in terms of browsing, and requirese
a lot of luck. There are no headers, no file age information
accessible to a "user agent" (well, there's literally no need for
a browser anyway - the ones that exist are just a convenience), so
there's literally no way to find new or updated content without
going everywhere, downloading everything, and reading it.

It's a great adventure for someone who just discovered the
protocol and the small universe behind it, but what about
sustained interests and returning visitors? 
Looking for new content becomes a chore, and that alone
positions the whole idea among "novelties" and not "viable
alternatives" to anything already out there. 

There's a notion of "it's simple, simpler than gemini, simpler
than gopher, etc. etc." The "user end" *is* undeniably,
refreshingly simple. What about the "back-end" though? Is there an
added value in keeping the server side simplistic?

I'm not (really) complaining, I see an enormous potential getting
wasted by outsourcing the connection part to other protocols. 
Kind of "here's my Nex station. Find me on Gemini." Weelll, when
I'm on Gemini anyway I can stay there *shrug*