What's up on the smolweb? September 2026 roundup

2026-10-05 17:00

Autumn is here, the AI slop tide keeps rising on the big web, and the smolweb responds by growing quietly but noticeably. Here is a roundup of what happened on the small web, the smolnet, and around the Gemini protocol in September 2026.

Geminispace approaching 3,600 active capsules

The Lupa crawler (Stephane Bortzmeyer's Geminispace survey) currently lists 5,215 known capsules, with 3,567 recently connected (page updated on October 5). That is up from 4,761 total and 3,487 active in July 2026: a net gain of 80 active capsules in two months. The database includes 1.6 million URIs, of which about 445,000 recently served Gemtext content.

Two more details from the stats page that say a lot about the smolnet's character: 92.5% of capsules use self-signed certificates, and 99% run TLS 1.3.

Source: Lupa statistics

ROOPHLOCH 2026: the eighth annual smolnet posting challenge

September means ROOPHLOCH, Solderpunk's annual challenge to publish at least one post via Gopher or Gemini during the month. This was the eighth edition, and it brought a moderate but healthy crop: 21 posts in total (14 Gopher, 7 Gemini) from 13 distinct users.

Highlights from Solderpunk's round-up:

• xiled made nine attempts, eight of them successful, a record-breaking gap between posts and authors. He also deserves a shoutout for participating in six out of the eight editions, more than anybody else.
• therainingmonkey was not only a first-time ROOPHLOCH participant but a first-time poster to Geminispace altogether.
• For the second year in a row, ROOPHLOCH was multilingual, with caleb posting in Spanish.
• The Free Thinker's homebrew optical transmission system from last year made a return in fairer weather.
• Solderpunk himself failed to make time to participate, bringing his participation rate in his own challenge down to "a mere 50%". September 2026 was a turbulent month for him. The community carried the flag.

Sources: ROOPHLOCH 2026 round-up, participating posts

Gemini-to-Web proxies considered harmful

On October 1, michaelnordmeyer published a sharp technical warning: open Gemini-to-Web proxies (Kineto, Mozz.us and others) are being exploited by web crawlers to crawl Geminispace. The trigger: Acidus' DeLorean archive got crawled 3.7 million times from a single IP in a couple of days, straining the Mac mini it runs on.

The mechanism is nasty: crawlers only look at the web proxy's robots.txt, so even well-behaved bots happily crawl everything, and the capsule hosting the proxy becomes an involuntary relay, exposing its own IP address to every capsule it crawls. The fix is simple and urgent: if you run Kineto, use the -P parameter to limit proxying to your own domain and stop exposing all of Geminispace to the big web's crawlers.

This builds on michaelnordmeyer's September 14 transmission "To All Gemini-to-HTTP Proxy Providers" and his continuously updated meta-info page listing the dozen or so open proxies without proper robots.txt support.

Sources: Beware of Open Web Proxies and Fix Your Config, To All Gemini-to-HTTP Proxy Providers, Meta Information About Gemini Crawlers, Acidus' BBS post

Rogallo: three major releases in two weeks

davep's terminal-based Gemini/Gopher client Rogallo had an extraordinary month, going from v1.2.0 to v3.1.0 in a matter of weeks:

• v1.2.0 (Sep 23): initial Gopher protocol support. Rogallo is no longer Gemini-only.
• v2.3.0 (late Sep): Titan protocol support (for editing and uploading to capsules) and an overhauled Gemini input dialog, prompted by testing on the BBS where server prompts were getting truncated.
• v3.1.0 (Oct 5): a simple download facility.

davep describes Rogallo as now being in a good position to act as a near-zero-compromise daily driver for wandering around the small web. When a terminal client adds Titan upload support, the smolweb gets a practical editing workflow with no browser required.

Sources: Rogallo on davep's blog, v3.1.0 on the BBS

Sterrenkijker 1.1.0: a Flutter-based Gemini client gets visual upgrades

Released on September 28, Sterrenkijker 1.1.0 by lisanne.gay is a "modern and cute" Gemini client for Android and desktop, built with Flutter. This release focused on UI: custom color algorithms generated from a seed color, proper Linux system accent color support (the author had to implement the DBus integration herself because nobody ever properly did it for Flutter), and improved Gemtext heading and quote rendering.

It is always good to see new Gemini clients shipping. Diversity of clients keeps the protocol healthy.

Sources: Sterrenkijker releases, announcement on the BBS

"Oldnets and Altnets": a comprehensive guide to low-spec internet

On September 9, Brennan Kenneth Brown published a substantial guide: Oldnets and Altnets: A Guide to Building a Low-Spec Daily Internet Out of Gemini, Gopher, and Terminal Tools. This is arguably the month's most important onboarding resource.

The guide covers:

• Gemini, Gopher, Spartan protocols and their key communities (CAPCOM, the BBS, Midnight Pub, Kennedy, Bongusta, SDF, Veronica-2)
• Lynx-friendly web resources (Lobste.rs, Hacker News, CBC Lite, plaintext.report)
• Terminal-based programs and services for daily use
• Alternative mesh networks: Yggdrasil, I2P, Hyphanet (formerly Freenet), GNUnet, Lokenet, Reticulum
• A practical section on making a low-end device a daily driver

Brennan's motivation is telling: after a year writing about the IndieWeb, he wants "constraint" and to "distance himself from the entire paradigm of complex technical stacks". The guide is a roadmap for anyone who feels the same.

Source: Oldnets and Altnets (brennan.day)

AI slop on Gemcities: the watch continues

On the BBS, user Haze reported finding an AI-generated capsule on Gemcities (hermes.gemcities.com, no longer active). The thread gathered 7 comments: a community that has always prided itself on being human-written is keeping watch, without panicking.

The broader context is that the big-web exodus from AI slop keeps accelerating: Codeberg's members passed an assembly proposal in July to extend their Terms of Use and prohibit LLM-extruded projects, and the debate about where AI content belongs (and does not belong) rages on everywhere. The smolweb is drawing a line.

Sources: BBS thread (s/Geminispace), Codeberg proposal 1253

Gemtext versus Markdown: a format debate on the BBS

BBS user ps posted asking the community to "prevent me from converting my Gemlog to Markdown", planning to archive the legacy Gemtext version in a Git branch. The post gathered 9 comments, a real discussion about whether Gemtext's simplicity is a feature or a limitation when you want richer formatting.

This is a perennial smolnet debate, and a healthy one: it means people are using Gemini seriously enough to hit its format constraints.

Source: BBS post (u/ps)

Caracal: Nostr meets Gemini, now with an encrypted key vault

cipres announced that caracal, a Nostr client accessible via Gemini, now works with keep, an encrypted Nostr key vault system. After logging in with one of your keys, the vault locks. This bridges two decentralized ecosystems (Nostr and Gemini) while keeping key management secure.

The Nostr-Gemini crossover is one of the more interesting cross-protocol stories of 2026.

Source: BBS post (s/caracal)

Short picks

Digital Sabbath

kdan wrote about spending a Sunday afternoon with no digital devices, just listening to the radio: "not to have the radio on in the background while I browsed here or on Wikipedia, but to sit with no digital devices within reach and really listen". The smolweb's relationship with technology is intentional, not abstinence-only.

Source: Sunday afternoon: listen to the radio

A new GemCapsule from a non-technical user

A user on Gemcities started a capsule after being inspired by "the values touted by the Gemini protocol", despite not having a tech career: "Every post on every popular website felt like a future liability. But let me take the brave step to start a Gemlog in this age of AI." This is the smolweb's onboarding story: you do not need to be a developer to participate.

Source: Started a GemCapsule

chrisdeluca.me now speaks Gopher

On September 23, chrisdeluca.me added a Gopher hole, with content that is unique to it, not just a mirror of the web version. More sites treating Gopher as a first-class publishing channel, not an afterthought.

Source: chrisdeluca on Threads

TLS in a single Pascal file

BBS user norayr shared a TLS implementation written in a single Pascal file. The smolweb is not just about Gemini and Gopher: it is also about people implementing fundamental protocols in languages and styles the mainstream has forgotten.

Source: BBS post (s/pascal)

Yggmail address spotted in the wild

BBS user segfault excitedly reported finding a Yggmail address in the wild, on lain.moscow (also reachable via I2P). Alternative mesh networks like Yggdrasil are small but alive, and spotting one of their email addresses in the wild is a genuine event.

Source: BBS post (s/Yggdrasil)

Spanish subspace gets a new mod

Caleb became the new moderator of the Spanish-language BBS subspace (s/es), after the previous mod had been inactive for two years. He linked the subspace to the XMPP room for Gemini Hispano and asked the community what else to add. The Geminispace keeps reaching non-English communities, and caleb also posted his ROOPHLOCH entry in Spanish. Busy month for him.

Source: BBS post (s/es)

Homebrew Website Club, Asia Pacific edition

The IndieWeb Homebrew Website Club (Asia Pacific) met on September 22, 2026. The HWCs remain the regular heartbeat of the IndieWeb community: small, friendly, and focused on personal websites.

Source: RSVP: HWC Asia Pacific (burgeonlab.com)

Techrights: still the tireless Geminispace curator

This roundup leans heavily on primary sources, but credit where it is due: Roy Schestowitz kept publishing daily Gemini Links throughout September, curating gemlogs, phlogs and BBS posts. It is the closest thing to a daily newspaper for Geminispace, and a big help when the monthly roundup time comes.

Source: Techrights, feed at techrights.org/feed.xml

Takeaway

September 2026 was a quietly busy month for the smolweb. The Geminispace grew by about 80 active capsules, ROOPHLOCH 2026 brought 21 posts from 13 authors, Rogallo turned into a genuine daily-driver client with Titan support, and the community grappled with real questions: AI slop leaking in, web proxies exposing capsule IPs to crawlers, and whether Gemtext is enough.

The smolweb is not escaping the big web's problems. It is choosing which ones to engage with, and which to keep out. That is the point.