The Meme Protocol

Small self-hosted meme gallery matching the stitch_the_meme_protocol desktop mockup direction.

Run locally

npm start

The server listens on http://localhost:8080 by default.

Configuration

PORT: HTTP port, default 8080
HOST: bind address, default 0.0.0.0
DATA_DIR: disk storage root, default ./data
SEED_DEMO_MEMES: set to false to disable generated demo memes on first boot
ADMIN_TOKEN: secret review URL token. If omitted, one is generated at boot and printed in server logs.
OPENAI_API_KEY: enables AI upload moderation. Without it, uploads are queued for admin review.
OPENAI_MODERATION_MODEL: moderation vision model, default gpt-4o-mini
TRUST_PROXY: set to true when running behind a trusted reverse proxy so upload limits use X-Forwarded-For

Uploads accept only square PNG and JPEG images. The server rejects files over 5 MB, images over 6000x6000, and images over 20 million pixels. Accepted uploads are decoded, metadata-stripped, resized down to 1600x1600 if needed, and stored as WebP. Upload caps are 5 per hour per IP, 10 per day per IP, and 100 globally per day. AI-approved uploads publish immediately; ambiguous uploads are queued for the secret admin review page; likely illegal uploads are rejected immediately.

Files are stored under sharded date/hash paths:

data/
  index/memes.jsonl
  memes/YYYY/MM/DD/aa/bb/<sha256>.<ext>
  meta/YYYY/MM/DD/aa/bb/<sha256>.json

Docker

docker build -t meme-protocol .
docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 -v meme-protocol-data:/data meme-protocol

For production, copy .env.example to .env, set real secrets, then run:

docker compose up -d --build

The included compose file binds the app to 127.0.0.1:18080 on the host so a reverse proxy can publish it without exposing the Node container directly.