Hi all,
At the recent Summit, we had a long and nuanced discussion about the state
of the XMPP RFCs and whether there is value in updating parts of them,
potentially through the IETF, to better reflect how XMPP is actually
implemented and used today.
To be clear upfront: This is not a proposal to start an IETF working group,
nor a commitment to produce new RFCs. The discussion at the Summit surfaced
enough open questions that it seems worthwhile to first have a focused
scoping and feasibility discussion.
Some of the motivations that were raised:
- The current RFCs do not describe a baseline that results in
interoperable modern implementations
- Discoverability for new implementers is difficult (knowing which XEPs
are "essential")
- The IM landscape has changed significantly since the original RFCs
- External review and feedback could be valuable
- There may be marketing and positioning benefits, but these are
secondary
At the same time, many concerns were raised:
- The sheer amount of work required, and whether we realistically have
the manpower
- Risk of scope creep (e.g., baking too much into RFCs)
- Loss of flexibility compared to the XEP process
- Fear of starting something we cannot finish
- Unclear interaction with compliance suites and the "living standard"
nature of XMPP
- Potential pushback or distraction from other IETF efforts (e.g., MIMI)
Questions that seem worth discussing at this stage:
- Is it useful to think about updating some RFCs (e.g., core, IM), while
leaving the rest to XEPs?
- What would be clearly in-scope vs out-of-scope?
- Is there enough interest and capacity to justify exploring this
further?
- What would be a sensible first step that does not overcommit us?
If you were at the Summit and felt strongly one way or the other, it would
be great to hear your perspective here. If you weren't, fresh viewpoints
are equally welcome.
The goal of this thread is simply to assess whether this topic is worth
pursuing further, and if so, in what very limited and realistic form.
Kind regards,
Guus
I'd like to propose adding a new processing hint to XEP-0334 to support silent/whisper messages - messages that are delivered normally but don't trigger notifications on the recipient's device.
Use Case:
My mother and I communicate via XMPP throughout the day. She frequently participates in screen recordings and video calls (about 1 hour daily) where notification sounds and popups would be disruptive. However, she doesn't want to use DND mode because she needs to remain reachable for genuine emergencies.
The solution we need: the ability to send non-urgent messages silently so she can read them when she next checks her client, without interrupting her work.
User Demand:
This feature is heavily requested across messaging platforms. A quick search shows thousands of users asking "how to send silent messages" or "send without notification" for Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and other platforms. Telegram already implements this as "send without sound." The demand is clear and widespread.
Proposed Addition to XEP-0334:
A <no-notify/> processing hint with the following semantics:
<message to='recipient(a)example.com' type='chat'>
<body>Please look at the following when you have time: ...</body>
<no-notify xmlns='urn:xmpp:hints'/>
</message>
Behavior:
- The receiving client SHOULD NOT trigger audio/visual notifications
- The message SHOULD still be delivered and stored normally
- The message SHOULD appear in the chat history
- The message MAY still update unread counts (implementation-dependent)
- Clients MAY provide UI indication that a message was sent silently
Benefits:
- Allows nuanced communication without forcing binary DND states
- Respects recipient's focus/workflow while maintaining async communication
- Reduces notification fatigue
- Provides sender control over message urgency
- Simple to implement - clients already have notification suppression logic
Backwards Compatibility:
Clients that don't recognize <no-notify/> will simply deliver the message normally, which is acceptable fallback behavior.
This would be a natural extension to the existing hint types in XEP-0334 (no-store, no-copy, store, no-permanent-store) and addresses a genuine gap in XMPP's messaging capabilities.
Thoughts? Is this something the community would support adding to XEP-0334, or would it be better suited as a separate XEP?
Best regards,
L.G.
I'm using an email mask just because I don't want recruiters to get a view of my personal life, please consider the proposal objectively.
Hey all,
Some of you have heard me talk about this at the Summit, but I'd like to
revisit/reexamine our QUIC binding to improve performance of XMPP on low
bandwidth. I'm not sure we'll get to this at the Summit, and there's not
many who want to talk about it so I wondered if this summit topic could
have been an email. (Except then we discussed it anyway)
The primary concerns on low bandwidth - beyond sending fewer bytes on the
wire - are round-trips and head-of-line blocking.
I think XMPP has a good story on round-trips; we're down to very few during
authentication and connection setup, and during normal messaging operation
we don't worry about latency at all.
Head-of-Line blocking, or HoL Blocking, is when - in our case - packet loss
causes the stream to stall until the packet is retransmitted, which is at
least a round-trip away - and can be more due to bandwidth-delay product.
At the same time, we cannot eliminate this entirely (by, say, sending
stanzas over UDP directly) because if we do that we lose the ordering. Out
of order messages can be confusing, and lead to bad misunderstandings.
The rules on this are in RFC 6120, and are rather more complicated than we
normally worry about - normally, we just process everything on a strea, in
order, and this does satisfy the rules. But the rules allow us to process
stanzas in any order we like, as long as
So, what I'm thinking is a way to use the additional channels in QUIC such
that we open multiple channels on both C2S and S2S sessions, which would
form part of the same virtual stream, and we can distribute messages such
that we maintain ordering within messages where we need to, but allows us
to out-of-order (and avoid HOL Blocking) messages sent between unrelated
jids.
This differs to the existing XEP, where each channel maps to a single XML
Stream and XMPP session.
Notes from the Summit:
WEBTRANS would also be of interest, but "raw" QUIC has some advantages as
well, so we probably want both with a uniform approach.
So, my plan is to get an implementation together and a XEP.
Anyone else interested?
Dave.
The XMPP Extensions Editor has received a proposal for a new XEP.
Title: Explicit Mentions
Abstract:
This specification defines a way to explicitly mention a person or
groups of people.
URL: https://xmpp.org/extensions/inbox/explicit-mentions.html
The Council will decide in the next two weeks whether to accept this
proposal as an official XEP.
Hi folks,
There are a few limitations with XEP-0313 which I've been hoping to
address for a while, mostly around giving users more control and
making it easier for operators to comply with various data protection
requirements.
Users have control over most account data in XMPP. However archives
are, generally, read-only.
In particular, user data should generally be deleted upon request.
Currently such requests would have to be manually sent to the service
operator, as there is no in-band method for this yet.
My proposal is to support an in-band 'trim' command, which allows
removal of all archived messages, or up to (and including) a specific
archived message, or deletion of the entire archive. The functionality
is optional and discoverable, so shouldn't affect backwards
compatibility.
This has some limitations. For example, it wouldn't allow selectively
deleting all messages with a specific contact, which is occasionally
requested. Such an operation would leave holes in the archive (which
XEP-0313 forbids to ensure sync points don't get removed). But I'm in
favour of solving what we easily can for now.
There are other things I would like to improve around archiving, such
as exposing retention configuration. But I plan for these to live in
new XEPs.
As XEP-0313 is stable and almost universally implemented, I wanted to
raise awareness of this proposal and seek some consensus from the
community before pushing it forward to Council.
The PR can be found at https://github.com/xsf/xeps/pull/1514
The new section is rendered at
https://matthewwild.co.uk/uploads/xep-0313.html#trim
Regards,
Matthew
Good Morning Council Members,
the next XMPP Council Meeting will take place on, Tuesday, March 31
2026 at 15:30 UTC in xmpp:council@muc.xmpp.org?join
Notice the time zone change. For some people this might now be an hour
later than usual.
The Agenda is as follows:
1) Roll call
2) Agenda Bashing
3) Editors update
• LAST CALL: XEP-0377 (Blocking Command Reports)
• UPDATED: XEP-0461 (Message Replies)
• UPDATED: XEP-0493 (OAuth Client Login)
The two updated XEPs are just minor editorial changes.
4) Items for voting
a) XEP-0045: Add clarification regarding unsetting reserved nicknames
https://github.com/xsf/xeps/pull/1512
5) Pending votes
Marvin, Stephan Paul, Dan, Jerome on XEP-xxxx: Explicit Mentions
(https://xmpp.org/extensions/inbox/explicit-mentions.html)
See the spreadsheet of doom:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14gy_nhuTnqlktakJfLZ2Mc-jblSaG0na0Kh…
6) Date of Next
7) AOB
8) Close
Version 0.1.1 of XEP-0493 (OAuth Client Login) has been released.
Abstract:
This specification details how a third-party can be securely granted
access to an XMPP account without exposing the account credentials,
using OAuth.
Changelog:
* Fix reference to RFC 7628 for SASL OAUTHBEARER (XEP Editor: dg)
URL: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0493.html
Note: The information in the XEP list at https://xmpp.org/extensions/
is updated by a separate automated process and may be stale at the
time this email is sent. The XEP documents linked herein are up-to-
date.
Version 0.2.1 of XEP-0461 (Message Replies) has been released.
Abstract:
This document defines a way to indicate that a message is a reply to a
previous message.
Changelog:
Update the example to use the correct fallback namespace. (mye)
URL: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0461.html
Note: The information in the XEP list at https://xmpp.org/extensions/
is updated by a separate automated process and may be stale at the
time this email is sent. The XEP documents linked herein are up-to-
date.
This message constitutes notice of a Last Call for comments on
XEP-0377.
Title: Blocking Command Reports
Abstract:
This document specifies a mechanism by which reporting information can
be attached to a Blocking Command (XEP-0191) request. It enables
servers to process reports related to blocked entities while remaining
focused on this specific workflow rather than general abuse reporting.
URL: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0377.html
This Last Call begins today and shall end at the close of business on
2026-04-14.
Please consider the following questions during this Last Call and send
your feedback to the standards(a)xmpp.org discussion list:
1. Is this specification needed to fill gaps in the XMPP protocol
stack or to clarify an existing protocol?
2. Does the specification solve the problem stated in the introduction
and requirements?
3. Do you plan to implement this specification in your code? If not,
why not?
4. Do you have any security concerns related to this specification?
5. Is the specification accurate and clearly written?
Your feedback is appreciated!
Hi,
Today I read through the latest revisions of XEP-0377, and a number of
things stood out. I've broken this email into a section per issue.
Namespace versioning
--------------------------
Version 0.4.0 of XEP-0377 contains schema changes without changing the
namespace. This contravenes XEP-0053, which states:
"While the XEP is in the Experimental state, if appropriate and in
consultation with the author(s), the XMPP Registrar shall update the
namespace version number at the end of namespace (e.g., from "0" to
"1"); the XMPP Registrar shall do so only if the protocol defined in
the XEP has been modified in a way that is not backwards-compatible
with an earlier version of the protocol."
Generally, adding previously undefined elements is considered to be a
breaking change that requires a new namespace, especially in a
protocol that is already deployed.
Possible remedies: Given that the current namespace is already
implemented and deployed, I would have preferred to see this XEP
advanced than modified. However, if there is consensus that we really
need these new rules, they could be tacked on in a new namespace such
as 'urn:xmpp:reporting:1#processing'. There is precedent for this
approach in other XEPs, including XEP-0313.
Failing that, we would have to update to 'urn:xmpp:reporting:2' and
update all implementations (and this also is the only way to guarantee
that implementations will honour the processing rules).
Extensibility via elements
------------------------
The new version created a registry to allow new processing options to
be defined. However it does this via elements. For the reasons above,
this simply can't work - the schema would have to be updated every
time a new processing rule is added. Especially once the XEP is
advanced, schemas simply don't change like this. They get coded into
implementations, and implementations would be free to reject
unexpected elements.
Instead, a valid approach would be to define the rules as strings
(URIs are a common choice, but not strictly required) and have these
passed as attribute values or character data.
For example:
<processing xmlns='urn:xmpp:reporting:1#processing'>
<allow>origin</allow>
<allow>third-party</allow>
</processing>
Thoughts on processing rules in general
-----------------------
I get why the processing rules were added. However I really think they
are approaching the problem backwards. As a service operator,
receiving a report that says "here is a problem, but I forbid you from
doing anything about it" is a rather silly situation. It would almost
be better to not receive the report at all.
For a long time, this was why multiple client developers said they
weren't interested in even implementing reporting - because nothing
useful actually happened on the server side, so the reports were at
best logged and at worst discarded.
A better approach is to have the server tell the client what will/may
happen to reports that are submitted (and then give the user the
choice of whether to submit or not). In most online services this
disclosure happens in the Terms of Service and/or Privacy Policy. It
is then up to the implementation and service operator to decide what
(and how much) to share from reports, when to share them, and with
whom. Per various worldwide laws, these things should often already be
disclosed, regardless of the protocol layer in use.
Renaming
------------
This is a more minor point, but I had planned to reuse the reporting
payload in protocols other than XEP-0191: Blocking Command, and this
reuse was definitely on the table at the summit where the protocol was
initially discussed. I think the new title feels like it is
discouraging such reuse, compared to the previous title and contents
(where usage within XEP-0191 was provided as an initial location where
reports should happen).
I intend to submit protoXEPs based on this specification with or
without any of the points in this email being addressed, I only
thought I should provide the feedback as I saw the new changes and
they surprised me.
Regards,
Matthew
