Add feed of origin to inReplyTo elements?

[calebhailey]

Hi there @scripting (et al) 👋 I'm loving all this activity around rss.chat 👌

I'm working on adding support for source:inReplyTo elements in HyperTexting (https://hypertexting.com) and it occurs to me that these elements could represent a new discovery surface for RSS clients if they carried a link to the feed the source:inReplyTo item originates from.

<source:inReplyTo xmlUrl='https://example.com/rss.xml'>https://example.com/2026/05/16/hello-world.html</source:inReplyTo>

NOTE: I don't have a strong opinion about the attribute name, so I used the OPML Subscription List xmlUrl attribute name here as an example.

If I'm following the source:inReplyTo proposal correctly, source:inReplyTo elements should always point to an item in a feed, even if that item only has a GUID and not a permalink URL; in other words source:inReplyTo should never point to a URL that didn't originate from a feed (e.g. https://apple.com).

If that's true, traditional RSS reader clients that want to add support for source:inReplyTo elements could start by showing a link to open source:inReplyTo URLs in a browser (this sounds kinda clunky to me, but at least you're only one click away from the OP context), but they won't be able to do anything with source:inReplyTo elements that are isPermalink='false'. However, if source:inReplyTo elements carried a link to the originating feed, clients could fetch that feed in order to display non-permalink content (e.g. if the referenced GUID is still accessible in the feed); they could also display "follow" or "subscribe" buttons if the client is not already following the referenced feed. The latter would effectively introduce a new discovery surface for RSS which is pretty exciting!

[calebhailey]

i want a network of equal power nodes

— @scripting on #13

This seems relevant here.