Nostr & Primal Reads

A Guide to Long-Form Content on Nostr

1. What Is Primal Reads?

Primal Reads is a dedicated tab within the Primal Nostr client, introduced in Primal 2.0, that allows users to browse and read long-form articles published to the Nostr network — without needing to use a separate app or client.

Before Primal 2.0, users who wanted to read long-form content had to switch to specialist clients like Habla.news or YakiHonne. Primal Reads consolidates this functionality into one app.

Key Features of Primal Reads

2. The Underlying Standard: NIP-23

Primal Reads is built on NIP-23, a Nostr protocol standard that defines a special event type for long-form articles. Understanding NIP-23 explains why some clients can display this content and others cannot.

How It Works

Nostr events are identified by a kind number. Regular short notes (tweets) use kind:1. Long-form articles defined by NIP-23 use kind:30023 — a completely separate event type.

Key properties of NIP-23 articles:

• Content is written in Markdown format.

• Articles are editable — they are addressable, replaceable events (unlike immutable kind:1 notes).

• Each article can include a title, summary, banner image, tags, and publication timestamp.

• Articles are stored on Nostr relays just like any other event.

• kind:30024 is used to save drafts of long-form content.

• The NIP specification explicitly notes that social clients focused on kind:1 notes are not expected to implement it.

3. Other Nostr Clients That Support Long-Form Content

Primal is not alone. Several other Nostr clients support NIP-23, each with a different focus.

Dedicated Long-Form Clients

Social Clients With Built-In NIP-23 Support

These are primarily short-note social clients that have added NIP-23 support alongside their main feed:

• Amethyst (Android) — Fetches kind:30023 events and displays articles alongside regular notes in your feed.

• Primal (iOS / Android / Web) — The Reads tab provides a dedicated long-form reading experience separate from the social feed.

• noStrudel (Web) — A feature-rich power-user web client that renders NIP-23 articles.

4. What Happens on Clients That Don't Support NIP-23?

Because long-form articles use a completely different event kind (kind:30023) from regular short notes (kind:1), clients that don't implement NIP-23 have no knowledge of them.

> Note: Articles published via Primal Reads, Habla, or any NIP-23 client are simply invisible on non-supporting clients. They are not shown as broken or garbled — they just don't appear at all.

This applies to clients such as older versions of Damus (iOS) and Snort, which focus primarily on kind:1 short notes.

The Upside: Content Is Never Lost

Because Nostr is an open protocol with content stored on relays (not inside any app), articles are never locked into a single client. An article written on Primal can be read on Habla, YakiHonne, Amethyst, or any other NIP-23-compatible client — with no migration, export, or copy-paste required.

This interoperability is one of Nostr's core design principles: your content and identity are portable across all clients that support the relevant NIPs.

5. Quick Reference Summary