Xstatus

Xstatus is a proposed open standard designed to standardize the representation of user presence and status information across applications, devices, and services. The specification defines a general data model, transport bindings, and extensibility mechanisms intended to enable interoperable presence sharing while supporting user privacy controls. It aims to reduce fragmentation among messaging and collaboration tools by agreeing on common status fields and semantics.

Development of xstatus arose from cross‑project discussions among developers and standards groups in the late 2010s. Public drafts circulated on code repositories and mailing lists, and several independent projects implemented early bindings to evaluate interoperability. However, lack of consensus on the core model and privacy guarantees limited formal ratification and widespread adoption.

The core data model includes a presence state (online, offline, away, do-not-disturb), an optional textual status, a timestamp, and a metadata map for attributes such as device or activity. Privacy controls allow users to set visibility scopes. Extensions use namespaced attributes and versioning to accommodate future features, typically encoded in JSON.

Transport bindings cover REST APIs for publish/subscribe of presence and WebSocket streams for real-time updates. Bindings to existing protocols such as XMPP or ActivityPub are supported to ease integration with older systems. Interoperability depends on agreed semantics for status values, privacy levels, and metadata, which remain areas of ongoing discussion.

As of now, xstatus remains largely experimental. A small number of open-source clients and servers include partial bindings, but no dominant implementation has emerged. Critics cite fragmentation and privacy concerns, while supporters view it as a potential step toward unified cross-app presence.