bigbrotr 5.1.0

A modular Nostr data archiving and monitoring system

BigBrotr

Nostr Relay Discovery, Monitoring, and Event Archiving System

Discovers relays across clearnet and overlay networks, monitors health with NIP-11/NIP-66 compliance checks, and archives events into PostgreSQL.

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What It Does

BigBrotr runs a pipeline of five async services that continuously map and monitor the Nostr relay ecosystem:

Seeder ──> Finder ──> Validator ──> Monitor ──> Synchronizer
(seed URLs)  (discover)  (test)    (health)     (archive events)

1. Seeder loads relay URLs from a seed file (one-shot)
2. Finder discovers new relays from stored events (NIP-65 relay lists, kind 2/3) and external APIs
3. Validator tests WebSocket connectivity for each candidate, promoting valid relays
4. Monitor performs NIP-11 info document fetches and NIP-66 health checks (RTT, SSL, DNS, GeoIP, ASN, HTTP headers), then publishes results as kind 10166/30166 Nostr events
5. Synchronizer connects to all validated relays, subscribes to events, and archives them with per-relay cursor tracking for incremental sync

All services expose Prometheus metrics, run behind PGBouncer connection pooling, and support clearnet + Tor + I2P + Lokinet connectivity.

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Architecture

Diamond DAG with strict import direction (top to bottom only):

              services         src/bigbrotr/services/
             /   |   \
          core  nips  utils    src/bigbrotr/{core,nips,utils}/
             \   |   /
              models           src/bigbrotr/models/

• models -- Pure frozen dataclasses. Zero I/O, zero package dependencies, stdlib logging only.
• core -- Pool (asyncpg), Brotr (DB facade), BaseService, Logger, Metrics, Exceptions.
• nips -- NIP-11 relay info fetch/parse, NIP-66 health checks (RTT, SSL, DNS, Geo, Net, HTTP). Has I/O.
• utils -- DNS resolution, Nostr key management, WebSocket/HTTP transport with SOCKS5 proxy.
• services -- Business logic: Seeder, Finder, Validator, Monitor (+ Publisher + Tags), Synchronizer.

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Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose
• (Optional) Python 3.11+ for local development

Deploy with Docker Compose

git clone https://github.com/BigBrotr/bigbrotr.git
cd bigbrotr/deployments/bigbrotr

# Configure secrets
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env: set DB_ADMIN_PASSWORD, DB_WRITER_PASSWORD, DB_READER_PASSWORD, PRIVATE_KEY, GRAFANA_PASSWORD

# Start everything
docker compose up -d

# Watch the pipeline start
docker compose logs -f seeder

This starts PostgreSQL, PGBouncer, Tor proxy, all 5 services, Prometheus, and Grafana.

Endpoint	URL
Grafana	http://localhost:3000
Prometheus	http://localhost:9090
PostgreSQL	localhost:5432
PGBouncer	localhost:6432

Run a Single Service Locally

uv sync --group dev
cd deployments/bigbrotr

# One cycle
python -m bigbrotr seeder --once

# Continuous with debug logging
python -m bigbrotr finder --log-level DEBUG

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Deployments

BigBrotr supports multiple deployment configurations from the same codebase via a single parametric Dockerfile (deployments/Dockerfile with ARG DEPLOYMENT).

BigBrotr (Full Archive)

Stores complete Nostr events (id, pubkey, created_at, kind, tags, content, sig). 7 materialized views for analytics. Tor enabled. All 5 services + Prometheus + Grafana.

cd deployments/bigbrotr && docker compose up -d

LilBrotr (Lightweight)

Stores event metadata only (id, pubkey, created_at, kind, tagvalues). Omits tags JSON, content, and sig for approximately 60% disk savings. No materialized views. Same service pipeline.

cd deployments/lilbrotr && docker compose up -d

Custom Deployment

cp -r deployments/_template deployments/myrelay
# Edit config, SQL schema, docker-compose.yaml
cd deployments/myrelay && docker compose up -d

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Database

PostgreSQL 16 with PGBouncer (transaction-mode pooling) and asyncpg async driver. All mutations via stored functions with bulk array parameters.

Schema

Table	Purpose
relay	Validated relay URLs with network type and discovery timestamp
event	Nostr events (BYTEA ids/pubkeys/sigs for space efficiency)
event_relay	Junction: which events were seen at which relays
metadata	Content-addressed NIP-11/NIP-66 documents (SHA-256 dedup, data JSONB)
relay_metadata	Time-series snapshots linking relays to metadata records (metadata_type column)
service_state	Per-service operational data (candidates, cursors, checkpoints)

Stored Functions (22)

• 1 utility: tags_to_tagvalues (extracts single-char tag values for GIN indexing)
• 10 CRUD: relay_insert, event_insert, metadata_insert, event_relay_insert, relay_metadata_insert, event_relay_insert_cascade, relay_metadata_insert_cascade, service_state_upsert, service_state_get, service_state_delete
• 3 cleanup: orphan_event_delete, orphan_metadata_delete, relay_metadata_delete_expired (all batched)
• 8 refresh: one per materialized view + all_statistics_refresh

All functions use SECURITY INVOKER, bulk array parameters, and ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING.

Materialized Views (7, BigBrotr Only)

relay_metadata_latest, event_stats, relay_stats, kind_counts, kind_counts_by_relay, pubkey_counts, pubkey_counts_by_relay -- all support REFRESH CONCURRENTLY via unique indexes.

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Monitoring

Prometheus Metrics

Every service exposes /metrics on its configured port with four metric types:

Metric	Type	Description
service_info	Info	Static service metadata
service_gauge	Gauge	Point-in-time state (consecutive_failures, last_cycle_timestamp, progress)
service_counter	Counter	Cumulative totals (cycles_success, cycles_failed, errors by type)
cycle_duration_seconds	Histogram	Cycle latency with 10 buckets (1s to 1h)

Alert Rules (4)

Alert	Condition	Severity
ServiceDown	up == 0 for 5m	critical
HighFailureRate	error rate > 0.1/s for 5m	warning
PoolExhausted	zero available connections for 2m	critical
DatabaseSlow	p99 query latency > 5s for 5m	warning

Grafana Dashboard

Auto-provisioned dashboard with per-service panels: last cycle time, cycle duration, error counts (24h), consecutive failures. Validator has additional candidate progress panels.

Structured Logging

info finder cycle_completed relay_count=100 duration=2.5
error validator retry_failed attempt=3 url="wss://relay.example.com"

JSON mode available for cloud aggregation:

{"timestamp": "2026-02-09T12:34:56+00:00", "level": "info", "service": "finder", "message": "cycle_completed", "relay_count": 100}

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Nostr Protocol Support

NIPs Implemented

NIP	Usage
NIP-01	Event model, relay communication
NIP-02	Contact list relay discovery (kind 3)
NIP-11	Relay information document fetch and parse
NIP-65	Relay list metadata (kind 10002)
NIP-66	Relay monitoring and discovery (kinds 10166, 30166)

Event Kinds

Kind	Direction	Purpose
0	Published	Monitor profile metadata
2	Consumed	Deprecated relay recommendation (content = URL)
3	Consumed	Contact list (content = JSON with relay URLs as keys)
10002	Consumed	NIP-65 relay list ("r" tags)
10166	Published	Monitor announcement (capabilities, timeouts)
30166	Published	Relay discovery (addressable, one per relay, full metadata tags)

NIP-66 Health Checks

Check	What It Measures
RTT	WebSocket open/read/write latency (ms)
SSL	Certificate validity, expiry, issuer, cipher suite
DNS	A/AAAA/CNAME/NS/PTR records, query time
Geo	Country, city, coordinates, timezone, geohash (GeoLite2)
Net	IP address, ASN, organization (GeoLite2 ASN)
HTTP	Server header, X-Powered-By

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Configuration

Environment Variables

Variable	Required	Description
DB_ADMIN_PASSWORD	Yes	PostgreSQL admin password
DB_WRITER_PASSWORD	Yes	Writer role password (pipeline services)
DB_READER_PASSWORD	Yes	Reader role password (read-only services)
PRIVATE_KEY	For Monitor	Nostr private key (hex or nsec) for event publishing and RTT write tests
GRAFANA_PASSWORD	No	Grafana admin password

Configuration Files

deployments/bigbrotr/config/
+-- brotr.yaml                  # Pool, batch size, timeouts
+-- services/
    +-- seeder.yaml             # Seed file path
    +-- finder.yaml             # API sources, scan interval (default: 1h)
    +-- validator.yaml          # Validation interval (8h), cleanup, networks
    +-- monitor.yaml            # Check interval (1h), retry per check type, networks
    +-- synchronizer.yaml       # Sync interval (15m), per-relay overrides, concurrency

All configs use Pydantic v2 validation with typed defaults and constraints.

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Development

Setup

git clone https://github.com/BigBrotr/bigbrotr.git && cd bigbrotr
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh  # install uv (one-time)
uv sync --group dev
pre-commit install

Quality Checks

make lint          # ruff check src/ tests/
make format        # ruff format src/ tests/
make typecheck     # mypy src/bigbrotr (strict mode)
make test-unit        # pytest unit tests (2049 tests)
make test-integration # pytest integration tests (requires Docker)
make test-fast        # pytest -m "not slow"
make coverage         # pytest --cov with HTML report
make ci               # all checks: lint + format + typecheck + test-unit
make docs             # build MkDocs documentation site
make docs-serve       # serve docs locally with live reload
make build            # build Python package (sdist + wheel)
make docker-build     # build Docker image (DEPLOYMENT=bigbrotr)
make docker-up        # start Docker stack
make docker-down      # stop Docker stack
make clean            # remove build artifacts and caches

Test Suite

• 2049 unit tests + 8 integration tests (testcontainers PostgreSQL)
• asyncio_mode = "auto" -- no @pytest.mark.asyncio needed
• Global timeout: 120s per test
• Shared fixtures via tests/fixtures/relays.py (registered as pytest plugin)
• Coverage threshold: 80% (branch coverage enabled)

CI/CD Pipeline

Stage	Tool	Purpose
Pre-commit	ruff, mypy, yamllint, detect-secrets, markdownlint, hadolint, sqlfluff	Code quality gates
Unit Test	pytest (Python 3.11--3.14 matrix)	Unit tests + coverage
Integration Test	pytest + testcontainers	PostgreSQL integration tests
Build	Docker Buildx (matrix)	Multi-deployment image builds + Trivy scan
Security	uv-secure, Trivy, CodeQL	Dependency vulns, container scanning, static analysis
Release	PyPI (OIDC) + GHCR	Package + Docker image publishing, SBOM generation
Docs	MkDocs Material	Auto-generated API docs deployed to GitHub Pages
Dependencies	Dependabot	Weekly updates for uv, Docker, GitHub Actions

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Project Structure

bigbrotr/
+-- src/bigbrotr/                    # Main package (namespace)
|   +-- __main__.py                  # CLI entry point
|   +-- core/                        # Foundation
|   |   +-- pool.py                  # asyncpg connection pool with retry
|   |   +-- brotr.py                 # High-level DB facade (stored procedures)
|   |   +-- base_service.py          # Abstract service with run_forever loop
|   |   +-- exceptions.py            # Exception hierarchy (10 classes)
|   |   +-- metrics.py               # Prometheus metrics server
|   |   +-- logger.py                # Structured key=value / JSON logging
|   |   +-- yaml.py                  # YAML config loader
|   +-- models/                      # Pure frozen dataclasses (zero I/O)
|   |   +-- relay.py                 # URL validation, network detection
|   |   +-- event.py                 # Nostr event wrapper
|   |   +-- metadata.py              # Content-addressed metadata (SHA-256)
|   |   +-- service_state.py         # ServiceState, ServiceStateType, ServiceStateDbParams
|   |   +-- constants.py             # NetworkType, ServiceName, EventKind enums
|   |   +-- event_relay.py           # Event-relay junction
|   |   +-- relay_metadata.py        # Relay-metadata junction
|   +-- nips/                        # NIP protocol implementations (I/O)
|   |   +-- nip11/                   # Relay information document
|   |   +-- nip66/                   # Health checks: rtt, ssl, dns, geo, net, http
|   +-- utils/                       # DNS, keys, transport
|   +-- services/                    # Business logic
|       +-- seeder.py
|       +-- finder.py
|       +-- validator.py
|       +-- monitor.py               # Health check orchestration
|       +-- monitor_publisher.py     # Nostr event broadcasting
|       +-- monitor_tags.py          # NIP-66 tag building
|       +-- synchronizer.py
|       +-- common/                  # Shared queries, configs, mixins
+-- deployments/
|   +-- Dockerfile                   # Single parametric (ARG DEPLOYMENT)
|   +-- bigbrotr/                    # Full archive deployment
|   |   +-- config/                  # YAML configs
|   |   +-- postgres/init/           # SQL schema (10 files, 22 functions)
|   |   +-- monitoring/              # Prometheus + Grafana provisioning
|   |   +-- docker-compose.yaml
|   +-- lilbrotr/                    # Lightweight deployment
|   +-- _template/                   # Custom deployment template
+-- tests/
|   +-- fixtures/relays.py           # Shared relay fixtures
|   +-- unit/                        # 2049 tests (mirrors src/ structure)
|   +-- integration/                 # 8 tests (testcontainers PostgreSQL)
+-- docs/                            # Architecture, Database, Deployment, Development, Configuration
+-- Makefile                         # Development targets
+-- pyproject.toml                   # All config: deps, ruff, mypy, pytest, coverage

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Exception Hierarchy

BigBrotrError
+-- ConfigurationError          # YAML, env vars, CLI
+-- DatabaseError
|   +-- ConnectionPoolError     # Transient (retry)
|   +-- QueryError              # Permanent (don't retry)
+-- ConnectivityError
|   +-- RelayTimeoutError       # Connection/response timed out
|   +-- RelaySSLError           # TLS/SSL failures
+-- ProtocolError               # NIP parsing/validation
+-- PublishingError             # Event broadcast failures

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Docker Infrastructure

Container Stack

Container	Image	Purpose	Resources
postgres	postgres:16-alpine	Primary storage	2 CPU, 2 GB
pgbouncer	edoburu/pgbouncer:v1.25.1-p0	Transaction-mode connection pooling	0.5 CPU, 256 MB
tor	osminogin/tor-simple:0.4.8.10	SOCKS5 proxy for .onion relays	0.5 CPU, 256 MB
finder	bigbrotr (parametric)	Relay discovery	1 CPU, 512 MB
validator	bigbrotr (parametric)	Candidate validation	1 CPU, 512 MB
monitor	bigbrotr (parametric)	Health monitoring	1 CPU, 512 MB
synchronizer	bigbrotr (parametric)	Event archiving	1 CPU, 512 MB
prometheus	prom/prometheus:v2.51.0	Metrics collection (30d retention)	0.5 CPU, 512 MB
grafana	grafana/grafana:10.4.1	Dashboards	0.5 CPU, 512 MB

Networks

• data-network -- postgres, pgbouncer, tor, all services
• monitoring-network -- prometheus, grafana, all services (metrics scraping)

Security

• All ports bound to 127.0.0.1 (no external exposure)
• Non-root container execution (UID 1000)
• tini as PID 1 for proper signal handling
• SCRAM-SHA-256 authentication (PostgreSQL + PGBouncer)
• Real healthchecks via /metrics endpoint (not fake PID checks)

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Technology Stack

Category	Technologies
Language	Python 3.11+ (fully typed, strict mypy)
Database	PostgreSQL 16, asyncpg, PGBouncer
Async	asyncio, aiohttp, aiomultiprocess
Nostr	nostr-sdk (Rust FFI via PyO3/uniffi)
Validation	Pydantic v2, rfc3986
Monitoring	Prometheus, Grafana, structured logging
Networking	aiohttp-socks (SOCKS5), dnspython, geoip2, tldextract
Testing	pytest, pytest-asyncio, pytest-cov, testcontainers
Quality	ruff (lint+format), mypy (strict), pre-commit (21 hooks)
CI/CD	GitHub Actions, uv-secure, Trivy, CodeQL, Dependabot
Containers	Docker, Docker Compose, tini

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Documentation

Full documentation is available at bigbrotr.github.io/bigbrotr.

Section	Description
Getting Started	Installation, quick start tutorial, first deployment
User Guide	Architecture, configuration, database, monitoring
How-to Guides	Docker deploy, manual deploy, Tor setup, troubleshooting
Development	Setup, testing, contributing
API Reference	Auto-generated Python API docs
Changelog	Version history and migration guides

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Contributing

See the Contributing Guide for detailed instructions.

1. Fork and clone
2. uv sync --group dev and pre-commit install
3. Write tests for new functionality
4. make ci -- all checks must pass
5. Submit a pull request

Conventional commits: feat:, fix:, refactor:, docs:, test:, chore:

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License

MIT -- see LICENSE.

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Links

• Full Documentation
• Changelog
• Nostr Protocol
• NIP-11: Relay Information Document
• NIP-66: Relay Discovery and Monitoring
• NIPs Repository