Parties & anonymous actors

Two different things that both look like "not a user":

	means	in the payload
anonymous	the actor is genuinely unknown	actor: null — the renderer supplies its own label
party	a named participant with no model in your app	an ordinary entity, type: "storyfeed.party", real label, url: null

Never conflate them: a null actor is missing information, a party is present information.

Parties

$party = Storyfeed::party('Stripe');

Storyfeed::record(ActivityVerb::Sync, object: $invoice, actor: $party);

Parties work in any role — actor, object, target, or context:

Storyfeed::activity(ActivityVerb::Notify, $invoice)
    ->target(Storyfeed::party('Accounts Payable'))
    ->publish();

party() resolves-or-creates by name, so repeated calls reuse the row.

Scoped attribution

Inside a job or console command there is no authenticated user. Scope a block:

Storyfeed::as('System', function () {
    Storyfeed::record('sync', object: $invoice);
});

A string becomes a party; a model is used directly. An explicit ->actor() still wins inside the scope, and the previous resolver is restored even if the callback throws.

App-wide fallbacks

'parties' => [
    'fallback' => null,      // e.g. 'System' — a name for otherwise-anonymous publishes
],

'actor_resolver' => null,    // an invokable class; null = the authenticated user

With no fallback, unresolvable publishes are anonymous — which is honest, and what you want if "System" would be a guess.

Morph alias

Parties are stored under storyfeed.party (configurable via morph_alias) and resolved independently of your app's morph map, so enforceMorphMap() can never break them.