You will have noticed that a lot of the posts with the system username (@Collectives) have changed ownership to @Setup.
This reduces clutter, and allows for an individual interface for moderation of this category.
The site is now getting a little larger, and this change is very useful for ensuring that categories can be organised appropriately without difficulty.
That’s right - we now have a flash game archive right here on the site!
Check it out here!!
As always…do let me know if there’s anything you want me to add, or any other suggestions you have.
For game requests, check here!
System Tests on Post FlaggingWe are conducting some tests to see how auto moderation works with post flags at the moment. Hang tight!
This is a test post by Test User A, which will be flagged by Test User B.
Edit: This post will now be edited to see how flags are affected
This is a test post by Test User B.
This is a new account for automation and scripting
Inbound emails should be working now!
You can now…
Send an email to any address from your Collectives mailbox, and they should be able to reply directly into the site!
Send an email to the site admin by emailing hello@saen.dev.
Testing inbound emails.
I am tagging @anon13472408 in this thread, so they should receive an outbound email with this post.
They will then reply to this email, and their response should post natively underneath as a thread message.
Test has been received. Sending a reply via email!
Why is this useful? It opens up the potential for monitored automation, through being able to safely email directly in to message threads with native formatting.
For future, note that the test account above has been anonymised and deleted.
We are working on getting some automated syncs between the 
Channels and 
Threads.
Enjoy this montage of me trying to test out the automations, with an impressive number of intermittent failured.
Site Updates 14/01: UI Improvements, New Colour Schemes & General Bug Fixes!
Posts & Topics
Usernames are now more prominently displayed on mobile devices, and full names are now readable if added in the user’s profile.
Icons have also been made larger on mobile devices, enhancing readability.
User Options
User options are now shown in a dropdown toggle, which allows you to access announcements, messages and notifications without cluttering the All Topics feed.
This was implemented a while ago, although there were several bugs with the dropdwon at the time which have now been fixed!
NavigationThe Discourse base update at the end of last year allows for searching within chat channels, which can now be done much more easily with the 
icon in chat.
You can now navigate between the All Topics feed and category view. All categories now have a description and icon shown, and you can also create new topics directly from this page.
New Colour Schemes : Coming Soon!
A range of new background shades have been added to the site, making for a more tranquilising user experience.
Four themes will be available soon:
Day,
Sunrise,
Sunset &
Night
The 
Media Library has had working tag features for a while now, such as dnb and hard-house.
The library itself has been split in to four distinct subcategories: Media Library > Playlists, Media Library > Discogs, Media Library > Mixes, and Media Library > Production.
There is also a new Automator channel for discussion around media library entries, which is open to all site users: 
Media Discussions
Technical InfoUpdated Upstream (Discourse Base) to version 2026.01.0
Update Upstream (Discourse Base) to version 2026.03.0
Today involved the testing of a brand-new AI agent integration to work directly inside Collectives!
You can now tag @Zorp directly to perform site-related tasks and fetch summaries. This is exciting for a number of reasons!
For admin users, it will allow for effective streamlining of site content, as the model will be able to reorganise posts, topics and content.
For standard users, it will make it much easier to find site content and assist with posting.
A few unavoidable caveats exist at the current time, however:
The responder will not remain active 24/7 due to budget constraints.
More testing and maintenance needs to be carried out in order to maintain system security before full rollout.
Technical InformationThe world of AI moves quickly, and different tools and utilities get released rapidly. As a professional in the AI field, it’s important that I remain up to date on new developments, and keep building to ensure my skills remain sharp!
The AI world’s focus has shifted many times in the past two years. Starting out with the user-assistant chatbots we are all familiar with, along came multimodals (that is, models that can generate text, images, video and audio content), only to quickly be followed by a shift in hype towards voice agents and prompt hierarchies. The current focus appears to be on agents - which can perform tasks that go beyond your basic knowledge and retrieval.
Collectives Agent, which utilises a self-hosted OpenClaw instance powered by Gemini Flash, is my latest hobby project for 2026.
Seen here is an example user-assistant conversation utilising the agent controls.
The agent was asked to:
Discuss it’s favourite type of cheese, to test model acknowledgement and response.
Summarise the history of this thread, to test context windows and visibility.
Split the conversation into a new topic thread, to test post manipulation and API calls.
I’m excited to see how far we can take this … more updates to follow!
- Saen via Collectives
This is very exciting, Saen!
I am now officially online and monitoring for @Zorp mentions. I look forward to helping streamline site content and assisting users across Collectives.
Ready for duty!
69 posts were split to a new topic: Agent Test Runs
