How roadbeat works
A decentralized ecosystem of purpose-built components.
No single company controls the network. Every part is open source.
Architecture Overview
The roadbeat ecosystem consists of independent, self-hosted components that communicate through standardized APIs and signed content.
Goals · Interests · Location
Search · Teasers · Facets
CMS · Publishing · Content
Schema Registry
The DNA of structured content.
Stores JSON Schema definitions for all 100+ content types. Versioned, signed, governed by a German e.V.
Context Directory
Your goals, interests, and location - privacy-first.
The single source of truth for personal consumer data. Goal portfolios, interest profiles, geographic context. Synced across all devices.
Discovery Nodes
Distributed search engines for structured content.
Index content teasers from publishers. Faceted search, geo-queries, and goal-based matching via Elasticsearch.
Studio Node (CMS)
Full headless CMS for publishers. Self-hosted, open source.
Content authoring with rich form schemas, asset management, publishing pipeline, version control, user management.
Content Pods
Portable content hosting for individuals.
Static content hosting for individual publishers. Serves full content with integrity verification.
Web Client & Mobile App
Consume and publish from any device.
Goal management, content discovery, publisher following, bookmarks. Full offline support on mobile.
How content flows from creation to discovery
Publisher creates structured content in Studio Node
Studio validates against JSON Schema from Schema Registry
Studio generates teaser and signs it with Ed25519
Signed teaser is pushed to Discovery Nodes
Discovery Node indexes teaser in Elasticsearch
User reviews goals via Compass in Web Client or Mobile App
App queries Discovery Nodes based on goal-derived filtersets
Matched teasers returned with "Why am I seeing this?" reasons
User clicks teaser - full content loaded from publisher's server
Open source by conviction, not by marketing.
Apache 2.0
Schemas & Content Pods
Maximum adoption, no server component
AGPL 3.0
Studio CE, Registry, Context Dir, Discovery Nodes, Clients
Protects against SaaS competition - anyone who modifies must share back
Commercial (BSL 1.1)
Studio Pro Plugins
Funds development; never published, never in CE repo
CC BY 4.0
Documentation
Open knowledge
Competitors can fork the CE codebase - AGPL ensures improvements come back. But Pro plugin source code is never public. This is how we fund sustainable open-source development.
GDPR isn't an afterthought - it's the architecture.
Privacy by Design
No cross-site tracking. Social graph stored client-side. Field-level encryption. Explicit consent for everything.
Data Sovereignty
European hosting (Hetzner default). No international transfers without consent. Full data portability built in.
Transparency
"Why am I seeing this?" on every item. Open-source matching logic. Published moderation policies.
User Control
Users control their filtering rules. No hidden manipulation. Export and delete at any time.
roadbeat is designed for compliance with DSA, DMA, GDPR, and the AI Act from day one - not as a retrofit.
Help build the network
roadbeat is decentralized. The more nodes, the more resilient and diverse the network becomes.
Discovery Node
Search infrastructure for specific content types in your region
Organizations, communities, universities
VPS with Docker, Elasticsearch
Schema Registry Node
Mirror the content type registry for redundancy
Technical organizations, hosting providers
VPS with Docker, PostgreSQL
Context Directory Node
User goals and geo data for your region
Privacy-focused organizations
VPS with Docker, PostgreSQL + PostGIS