Introducing the PrivateDataPod Developer Center

Build a Solid App
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Hey everyone,

We’ve been quietly building a developer platform on top of PrivateDataPod and wanted to share it with the Solid community.

Developer Center → developers.privatedatapod.com

What it is

The Developer Center is a hosted platform for building, testing, and publishing Solid applications — without managing any infrastructure. One of the things we think is worth calling out: your deployed app lives inside your Private Data Pod, not in our database. The hosting infrastructure just serves it from there.

What it offers

:rocket: Pod-native app hosting
Upload your built app as a ZIP and it goes live at your-app.apps.privatedatapod.com within seconds. Your app files are stored directly inside your Solid pod at yourname.privatedatapod.com — you own them. We provision CloudFront CDN, TLS, and DNS automatically, but the authoritative source is always your pod. You can view, download, or delete your app files any time from your pod browser. We don’t hold your code.

First app is free; Pro gives you up to five.

:white_check_mark: Solid compliance checker
When you deploy or update an app, we run it through an automated compliance scan. It checks your ZIP against 14 rules across three categories:

  • Required files - index.html, client-id.json, PWA manifest and icons
  • Solid authentication - correct use of @inrupt/solid-client-authn, no unauthenticated pod requests, no deprecated API calls
  • Solid data patterns - JSON-LD storage, specific @type (not generic Thing), publicTypeIndex registration, getSolidDatasetWithAcl() misuse, LDN inbox setup

You get an annotated report with a 0–100 score and plain-English descriptions of what to fix. The checker runs entirely in the browser, your code never leaves your machine.

:package: Starter template
The Templates tab links to a production-ready starting point with Solid OIDC auth, pod read/write, type index registration, and a local mock mode already wired up. Clone it, build your feature, npm run build, ZIP, upload.

:open_book: Step-by-step docs
An integrated quick-start guide covers everything from prerequisites to a live URL, including how the pod-backed deploy flow works.

:globe_with_meridians: Community app directory
Submit your app for inclusion in the public directory. Submissions are reviewed for compliance before listing — a distribution channel for the Solid ecosystem beyond GitHub.

The bigger idea

Most Solid app hosting setups involve a separate deployment pipeline that has no relationship to the user’s pod. Your pod is your data store; your app lives somewhere else on S3 or Netlify or Vercel.

We wanted to try something more consistent: the app itself is a resource in your pod. You control it the way you control any other pod resource — it’s under your WebID, it’s yours to move or delete, and it can have ACLs. The CDN just reads from there. This feels more in the spirit of Solid than treating the pod purely as a user-data backend.

Status

The platform is live and in active development. Free hosting is available to anyone with a PrivateDataPod account (also free). Feedback very welcome — especially on the compliance check rules. Missing checks? False positives? Things that are too strict or not strict enough?

Happy to answer questions about how any of it works under the hood.

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