Reply posts

A reply post links back to another page as its conversational parent. On micro.blog and across the IndieWeb this in-reply-to relationship lets your post be shown as a reply, and lets webmentions be categorised correctly by the site you are replying to.

Marking a post as a reply

Add an in-reply-to value to the post’s YAML front matter:

---
in-reply-to: https://example.com/their-post
---

Great point — here's my reply.

in_reply_to (underscore) is accepted as well. Micropub clients can send the standard in-reply-to property — either a plain URL or an embedded h-cite object — which Lamb stores the same way. Only one reply target is kept: a list collapses to its first entry.

Remove the value from the front matter and re-save to turn the post back into a normal post.

What it does

• On the post page and in listings a small “In reply to …” line is shown above the content, linked to the parent and marked up with u-in-reply-to so Webmention receivers treat it as a reply.
• Atom feed: emits <thr:in-reply-to ref="…" href="…" /> (the http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0 thread extension).
• JSON feed: emits _microblog.in_reply_to_url (the micro.blog reply convention).
• Both feeds also carry the same “In reply to …” line inside the item’s HTML content, because the two metadata fields above are extensions most readers ignore, and services that thread replies look for the u-in-reply-to markup itself.

Editing a reply over Micropub

A Micropub client sees the reply target in a q=source response as the in-reply-to property, and can change it with an update:

• replace sets a new target (an empty value list clears it);
• add sets the target on a post that has none;
• delete removes it, either as a whole property or by naming the current value.

Because a post stores a single target, adding a second one is refused with invalid_request rather than silently overwriting or dropping it.

Replying to a page is the most common kind of webmention, and Lamb sends them automatically — there is nothing to configure. The link in your reply is picked up and the parent is notified on the next /_cron run.

Related

• Webmentions: Send and receive mentions; replies are the most common webmention type.
• Micropub: Publish replies from a Micropub client with the in-reply-to property.
• Post types: Statuses, pages, and other post formats.