How to build a social network with AI

These are the parts a social network needs before it is useful. Each one is something the plan covers.

• Profiles and identity: Public/private profiles with unique handles, avatars, bio and privacy settings.
• Follow graph: Directed follow relationships with pending approval for private accounts, blocks and mutes.
• Posts, replies and reposts: Create, edit-window, delete and thread content; replies are posts with a parent.
• Media upload and image CDN: Safe photo upload, resized variants and fast delivery of images.
• Home timeline (hybrid fan-out): Show each user a fast, correctly ordered feed of accounts they follow.
• Engagement counters without hot rows: Likes, replies and reposts counts that stay correct and fast on viral posts.
• Notifications: Tell users about likes, replies, follows, mentions and DMs without a flood.
• Direct messages: One-to-one (and small group) private conversations with read state.
• Moderation, reports and safety: Keep user-generated content and conversations safe and enforce policy at scale.

• Search, hashtags and trending: Find people, posts and tags; show what is trending now.
• Realtime updates: Show 'new posts' and new notifications/DMs without polling hammering the database.

Each table below becomes part of the Postgres database that belongs to your app.

• profiles: handle stored lowercase, 3-30 chars, reserved-word blocklist; status: active|limited|suspended; is_celebrity set when follower_count >= FANOUT_CELEBRITY_THRESHOLD and cleared only below 80% of it (hysteresis).
• follows: status: accepted|pending (private accounts); self-follow rejected by CHECK; per-user daily follow cap enforced before insert.
• posts: uuid v7 so id order matches time order; visibility: public|followers|private; status: published|hidden|removed|pending_media; body <= 500 chars; media_count <= 4; counter_shards starts at 1 and is raised by the rollup job when a post becomes hot.
• post_media: status: pending|scanning|ready|rejected; variants maps width -> content-addressed key; the post becomes visible only when every attachment is ready.
• timeline_entries: materialised fan-out for non-celebrity authors only; composite primary key makes the insert idempotent; filtered at read time by blocks/mutes so cleanup can lag safely; capped per user by TIMELINE_MAX_ENTRIES.
• likes: source of truth for like counts; reposts use posts.kind='repost' with the same shard path; the batch hydrator answers 'liked by me' for a whole page with one `post_id = ANY($1)` query.
• post_counter_shards: writers upsert `likes = likes + 1` on shard = hash(user_id) mod counter_shards; no reader ever touches this table.
• post_counters: the only counter table read on the request path; eventually consistent within the rollup interval (<= 60 s, <= 10 s for hot posts); nightly reconcile_counters compares a sample against likes truth.
• hashtags: max 10 tags per post; tags on removed posts are not counted in trends.

• No algorithmic 'For you' ranking, live video or audio rooms in phase 1.
• No count(*) over likes, follows or posts on the request path.
• No end-to-end encrypted DMs in phase 1 (messages are encrypted at rest and in transit only; this must be stated honestly in the product).
• No public API or third-party app ecosystem in phase 1.
• Ranked feed and recommendations: plan for it, build it later.
• Websocket tier and live presence: plan for it, build it later.

Forge64 matches your description to one of 12 reference architectures, writes the plan and data model into the project, generates the app, and runs a quality gate over the code before you see it. Each app gets its own Postgres database and sign-in with no per-user fee. Hosting on Forge Cloud and Forge Payments are rolling out.

This is a reference design for the category, not a promise that every item is generated today. Built-ins such as email, background jobs, file uploads and search are coming soon, so anything here that needs them is something you add yourself for now.

What does a social network need first?

Profiles and identity, follow graph, posts, replies and reposts, media upload and image cdn, home timeline (hybrid fan-out) and engagement counters without hot rows. The plan for a social network covers all of these before it generates code.

What should I leave out of the first version of a social network?

No algorithmic 'For you' ranking, live video or audio rooms in phase 1. No count(*) over likes, follows or posts on the request path. No end-to-end encrypted DMs in phase 1 (messages are encrypted at rest and in transit only; this must be stated honestly in the product).

Which products define the social network category?

Well-known examples include X (Twitter), Reddit, Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads. Use them to decide which features your users expect, then describe your own version.

• Social network architecture
• Example prompt for a social network
• Social network security checklist
• Social network scaling checklist
• Often combined: marketplace
• Often combined: content site
• All app types