SPF Record Syntax: Mechanisms, Qualifiers, Modifiers, and Macros(dmarcguard.io)
41 pointsby meysamazadAug 3, 2026

3 Comments

dan_sbl•Aug 3, 2026
> SPF record syntax follows one shape:

The first six words do not scream "human written" to me.

ksajadi•Aug 3, 2026
That’s obvious. But a genuine question: why does it matter? This seems to be a detailed reference document for a very technical purpose (and SEO juice for the company I guess).
teddyh•Aug 3, 2026
If that’s what you want, you would be better served by RFC 7208: <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7208/>
ddevnyc•Aug 3, 2026
The overall structure of the document is no different than any other tech reference or RFC that I've read over the decades
kronk•Aug 3, 2026
True. It's a 25 minute read instead of 1hr+
TZubiri•Aug 3, 2026
I could tell before opening the link, but the pill tags and neon color palette are also a huge signal.
trollbridge•Aug 3, 2026
Comes up 99% AI-generated on Pangram.
YesThatTom2•Aug 3, 2026
SPF flattening is difficult to get correct and then you have to check it every so often to update it.

DNSControl automates this. https://docs.dnscontrol.org/language-reference/domain-modifi...

(It’s open source)

jedberg•Aug 3, 2026
I'm sorry this page needs to exist, it's partly my fault. I created the first "large scale" SPF record (for eBay and PayPal), and agreed that this was the best way to do it. I guess the people after me agreed too, because 20 years later it's still pretty much the same shape as when I made it!

But I don't have any regrets, the format was pretty straightforward and offered a lot of flexibility. The biggest issue was the parsing libraries handling all of the "include" statements correctly.

trollbridge•Aug 3, 2026
Eh, SPF is one of the few things I don't hate about modern e-mail. Pretty easy to figure out / tweak / parse. I like dealing with it way more than MTA-STS.