The Challenge: Building a Modern Video Platform

Creating a short-form video app like diVine traditionally requires months of development, significant infrastructure investment, and ongoing maintenance. You need video storage, user authentication, real-time feeds, social features, and a responsive mobile-first interface—all while ensuring scalability and performance.

What if you could build all of this in weeks instead of months? That's exactly what happened with diVine, thanks to MKStack—an open source framework designed specifically for building Nostr applications rapidly.

What is MKStack?

MKStack is a production-ready template for building Nostr applications with modern web technologies. It provides everything you need to create decentralized social apps without starting from scratch: Nostr protocol integration, user authentication, media handling, responsive design, and deployment infrastructure.

The entire diVine frontend is built with MKStack, demonstrating that this framework isn't just for simple projects—it's capable of powering real-world applications with thousands of users and demanding performance requirements.

How diVine Uses MKStack

diVine is a perfect example of what's possible with MKStack. The app handles:

• Video Upload and Playback: 6-second looping videos with MP4 and GIF support
• Real-Time Feeds: Home, Discovery, Trending, and Hashtag-based video feeds
• Social Features: Likes, comments, reposts, follows, and user profiles
• Content Discovery: Full-text search, hashtag exploration, and trending content
• Progressive Web App: Installable on mobile devices with native-like experience

All of this was built on top of MKStack's foundation, allowing the diVine team to focus on video-specific features rather than reinventing authentication, relay management, or UI components.

The Role of Nostrify

Behind the scenes, MKStack uses Nostrify—a powerful TypeScript framework for Nostr development. Nostrify handles all the low-level protocol details:

• Event Signing and Verification: Cryptographic operations for secure communication
• Relay Communication: WebSocket connections, subscriptions, and event publishing
• Query Optimization: Efficient filtering and caching of Nostr events
• NIP Implementation: Support for standard Nostr Improvement Proposals

For diVine, this means reliable video event handling, fast feed loading, and seamless integration with the broader Nostr ecosystem—all without writing custom relay communication code.

Shakespeare: Building with AI Assistance

While MKStack provides the technical foundation, Shakespeare makes it accessible to developers of all skill levels. Shakespeare is an AI-powered development environment that lives entirely in your browser—no installations required.

How Shakespeare Works with MKStack

Shakespeare comes pre-configured with MKStack templates, meaning you can start building Nostr apps like diVine through natural language conversations with an AI assistant. Simply describe what you want to build, and Shakespeare generates the code, sets up the infrastructure, and handles deployment.

Edit diVine in Shakespeare

Because diVine is built with MKStack and is fully open source, you can fork the project and start customizing it immediately. The entire codebase is available on GitLab, and you can import it directly into Shakespeare for AI-assisted development.

Clone diVine

Fork the diVine repository and customize it to build your own video platform:

View Source Code

What You Can Build on the diVine Codebase

• Custom Video Platform: Fork diVine to create niche video communities (gaming clips, recipes, tutorials)
• Different Content Types: Modify the video length constraints or add support for images, audio, or text
• Specialized Features: Add custom moderation tools, monetization, or community features
• Experimental UX: Test new interaction patterns, layouts, or discovery algorithms

Because it's built on Nostr, any content created in your fork can still interact with the original diVine community—or you can create a completely separate community on different relays.

Real-World Production Use

diVine isn't a demo or proof-of-concept—it's a production application serving real users with demanding requirements:

• Video Processing: Handles upload, transcoding, and streaming of thousands of videos
• Real-Time Performance: Fast feed loading and smooth video playback on mobile devices
• Decentralized Architecture: Works with multiple Nostr relays including the specialized relay.divine.video
• Progressive Web App: Installable on iOS and Android with offline support

This demonstrates that MKStack isn't just for quick prototypes—it's a viable foundation for serious applications that need to scale and perform.

The MKStack Advantage

Building diVine with MKStack provided several key advantages:

Speed to Market

Instead of spending months building authentication, relay management, and UI components from scratch, the diVine team could focus immediately on video-specific features. The core infrastructure was ready on day one.

Proven Architecture

MKStack is battle-tested across multiple Soapbox projects including Ditto, Bookstr, and other community platforms. The patterns and practices are proven to work at scale.

Community Support

Because MKStack is open source and well-documented, developers can learn from other projects, contribute improvements, and get help from the community. The entire Nostr ecosystem benefits from shared tools.

Future-Proof

As new Nostr Improvement Proposals (NIPs) are adopted, MKStack stays current with protocol updates. diVine automatically benefits from these improvements without major refactoring.

Getting Started with MKStack

Ready to build your own Nostr application? MKStack makes it easy to get started:

What's Next for MKStack?

The success of diVine demonstrates the power of open source tools designed specifically for Nostr development. As the ecosystem grows, MKStack continues to evolve with:

• More Templates: Pre-built patterns for common Nostr app types (marketplaces, blogs, forums)
• Enhanced Media Support: Better handling of video, audio, and image content
• Performance Optimizations: Faster loading, better caching, and improved relay strategies
• Additional NIPs: Support for new protocol features as they're standardized

Join the Movement

diVine shows what's possible when modern web technology meets decentralized protocols. Whether you're building a video platform, social network, marketplace, or something entirely new—MKStack provides the foundation to make it happen quickly and reliably.

The tools are open source, the protocol is permissionless, and the community is ready to help. What will you build?

Additional Resources

• MKStack Tutorial: Vibe Coding for Everyone
• Shakespeare Act 2: Build Freely
• Nostr 101: A Beginner's Guide
• MKStack Documentation
• Nostrify Framework
• Try diVine