activitycan

ActivityCan is a term used in software design to describe a portable container or abstraction for recording and transporting activity data across systems. It aims to unify how diverse applications log user actions, process steps, and sensor or system events, enabling easier analytics and cross-application workflows.

A typical ActivityCan model treats each activity as an event with fields such as id, type, timestamp, actor, target, and a properties map for domain-specific data. The model often includes optional provenance, versioning, and privacy controls. Activities are commonly serialized in JSON or similar encodings and transmitted over standard transports such as HTTP, WebSocket, or message buses. The term is not related to the Controller Area Network CAN bus, despite the shared terminology.

There is no formal standard for ActivityCan, and different projects may implement their own variants. It is often described as an interoperability-oriented abstraction inspired by other event-centric patterns. In practice, teams may compare it to or align it with concepts from ActivityStreams or event-log architectures to facilitate cross-system data exchange and unified analytics.

Use cases for ActivityCan range from audit trails and security monitoring to product analytics and cross-application workflow coordination. It supports interoperability and reproducibility of activity data, but its success depends on clear governance, consistent schemas, and attention to privacy and security concerns.

See also: ActivityStreams, ActivityPub, event log, audit trail.