Social media fades like smoke; blogs stay evergreen.

社交媒体如云烟，而部落格常青。

I open-sourced an anonymous commenting system for blogs: anocus.

The goal: reduce the friction from “I want to comment” to actually posting one.

Even if self-hosted blog is mostly a personal zone, a bit of interaction is always nice.

My previous setup was giscus with which comments are put in GitHub Discussions. The catch is that you must log in with GitHub to comment. Any extra step, even a tiny one, becomes a big blocker. And not everyone has a GitHub account. Most people just pass by and might be willing to leave a quick line, but having to log in? Never mind.

So what I want is simple: no sign-up, just leave a message anonymously, like the old days.

Of course, you need fight bots nowadays — so add a human verification step.

That’s how anocus was done:

• Anonymous comments: no GitHub login required
• Two storage options:
  • GitHub Discussions (keeps the “comments as issues/discussions” manageability like giscus)
  • Cloudflare KV (lighter and more independent)
• Anti-bot: Cloudflare Turnstile
• OAuth under your control: anocus runs the OAuth flow itself, no third parties
• Threaded replies: up to 2 levels. This is limited by the Github Discussions. No such limit with KV.
• Configurable + fully open source: tweak it to fit your site

The goal: reduce the friction from “I want to comment” to actually posting one, as much as possible.

GitHub Repo is here. Feel free to try it, and open issues / PRs.

Like it? Try it by leaving a comment below 👇