AT Protocol Developer Call Recap

(this was rendered from memory and discord chat, pls comment/DM me if you see mistakes etc, and thanks to @thisismissem.social for adding color here)

Topics Covered

Account Creation & Apps

custom domains at signup

lexicon interop and standard.site

sustainability and funding for atproto apps

video and blob storage limits

dealing with information overload

Tangled.org prod-readyness

local meetups / community building

mental health and self-care

Account Creation & Apps

The winning poll topic focused on where and how users should create accounts on AT Protocol when using apps.

The core problem: Asking non-technical users to research and select a PDS host creates friction that hurts top-of-funnel conversion. Most people don't know what a PDS is, let alone how to evaluate different hosting options.

Key resources shared:

Proposal: OAuth-based account creation — thisismissem's proposal for streamlining the account creation via OAuth — already implemented in the reference PDS implementation, but not actually part of the AT Protocol standard.

Original PR: https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/pull/4461

FedCM browser support issue — If you want better sign-in flows in browsers, give this a thumbs up

Things are happening in this space, a few prototypes and thisismissem shared after the call that she's in the process of becoming an Invited Expert at the FedID Working Group at the W3C

Please do come to the CG/WG meetings. Anyone can participate in a community group: FedID CG/WG Joint Call - FedCM

Notable comments:

"choose a PDS host" is a surefire way to lose the user (@quillmatiq.com)

On Mastodon instance selection matters for moderation/culture, but on ATProto it only matters if you care — most people won't care until they run into an issue (byarielm)

Maybe we need an "advanced setup" option for those who do want to choose (psingletary.com)

Apps don't necessarily need to host a PDS, they can partner with a provider to provide a PDS using their handle domain.

Custom Domains at Signup

Discussion of how apps could offer custom handle endings during the account creation flow. We talked about the fact that an app may want to do sign-up on selfhosted.social or another provider, but use their own branded handle domains. This, unfortunately, would require changes within the reference PDS implementation, so we talked about some other options.

Key resources:

Aviary Domains — Share domains with friends, family, communities, and organizations for use with AT Protocol

bnewbold's handlr code — Prototype of a DNS server for serving custom handles. Aviary could run a custom nameserver.

PDS installer script (handle setup) — How the official PDS installer handles domain configuration

How wisp.place maps domains to DIDs

Notable comments:

You could have a custom sign-up flow for your PDS which uses the createAccount XRPC call with an admin token — this needs a small change in the PDS implementation. (thisismissem.social)

That follow could help you register a custom handle domain, or require payment or other things.

Once Aviary is open-sourced, we could work with registrars to get their APIs set up (psingletary.com)

nichoth is working on a Cloudflare + PDS-as-a-service solution

Lexicon Interoperability & standard.site

This discussion centered on how different apps can read each other's data when they use different lexicons — specifically for long-form content like blogs.

The problem: standard.site provides a way to think about common features across blogs and long-form posting apps (Leaflet, pckt, Offprint, Whitewind). However, the actual content field in records remains platform-specific, which would require a mapping layer for true interoperability.

Key resources:

Two Types of Interoperability Without Sharing Lexicons — Wesley Finck's exploration of how apps can interoperate without identical lexicons

Project Cambria: Bidirectional Lenses — Ink & Switch's work on translating data between schemas

Paul Frazee on lexicon mappings — Idle thoughts on indicating dual schema support and mapping between them

Taxonomy for ATmospheric Lexicon Directories — Community discussion on organizing lexicons

Robustness Principle (Postel's Law) — "Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept"

How blento uses standard.site:

Blento uses site.standard.document to show a card listing all your Leaflet/pckt/Offprint posts with title and description, linking directly to the original site (flo.bit)

Open questions:

Who's the authority on transformations — the original lexicon or the target lexicon? (mfzx.net)

There doesn't need to be an authority necessarily (thisismissem.social)

How strict should validators be? Will they reject otherwise valid records with extra keys? (meowskullz)

Nope, everything should follow Postel's Law, ideally. (thisismissem.social)

Only exception is closed unions, you can't extend those.

Sustainability & Funding for ATProto Apps

A candid conversation about how independent developers can sustain the infrastructure costs of running AT Protocol services.

The reality: "I think eventually there are going to have to be more paid levels of atproto apps. I know I can't logically continue to burn money to support the infra indefinitely." (evan.jarrett.net)

This is a problem that has historically really hampered the growth of the Fediverse, due to everything there pretty much being volunteer-based. We do need to find ways to make what we do sustainable.

Key resources:

Money for Mutual Resilience: Introducing Blacksky Cash — Blacksky's approach to community-funded infrastructure

Introducing pyx: A Python-native package registry — Example of a sustainability model: Astral makes tons of kickass OSS tooling, then monetizes a registry built on those primitives with enterprise features

Discussed approaches:

Paywalling specific features that have real costs (e.g., security scanning increases CPU resources)

Keeping everything open source and self-hostable while charging for hosted versions (the OpenStatus model — AGPL + paid hosting)

Fellowship/grant funding so people can work on this full-time

Video hosting as a natural paid tier (transcoding, CDN, storage costs are real)

PDS providers could offer value-add features like backups or increased rate limits or other features for customers who need them.

If someone creates a backup service, having a record in the account's repo that says "Yes, this account has a back up service" allows for apps to discover that and if it's not present offer an upsell to a partner backup service. (thisismissem.social)

Can labelers or feeds or other auxiliary services require payment to use them? What protocol work would be needed to support this?

The human element: The discussion emphasized being realistic about what individuals can contribute. Sometimes people are in a position to help financially, sometimes they're not. The mutual aid framing from Blacksky resonated — we all have a duty of care to our communities.

Video & Blob Storage Limits

Quick discussion on the constraints around video on AT Protocol.

Current state:

Video limits exist due to moderation + storage + transcoding + CDN costs (thisismissem.social)

Record size limits are protocol-level (1mb); blob limits are set by the PDS + lexicon.

SkyTube exists for discovering Bluesky videos

Resources:

Media PDS / Service discussion — Community discussion on how video might work for AT Protocol.

Predictions:

"I STRONGLY predict streamplace or something like it will make a whitelabel AT Protocol video service that should cover the needs of Dropout, Nebula, Floatplane, and any other channel who wants to go independent" (tynanpurdy.com)

The Media PDS / Service discussion was actually started through collaboration/conversation between @thisismissem.social and @iame.li

Three-minute limits are probably fine for microblogging — if production quality demands more, that's a different product (psingletary.com)

Video is something people will often want to pay more for, and also can be offered for free ad-supported through preroll ads. (thisismissem.social)

Staying Informed / Information Overload

Brief discussion on how to keep up with AT Protocol development when information is scattered across Discord, the discourse forum, Bluesky, GitHub, and Tangled.

Pain points:

Discord is hell unless it's properly moderated with norms and categories

The discourse forum gets visited 1-2 times a week at most

Where discussions happen is proliferating exponentially

Mentioned solutions:

(things like) Penny — Hailey's bot that helps surface trust & safety information: https://greengale.app/penny.hailey.at

So many people loved penny!

molt-atproto — Several AI Agents working together to build an AT Protocol version of Moltbook

Waiting for things to show up on the For You feed (evan.jarrett.net's approach)

Discord has experimental channel summaries and ICYMI features, but they've been on ice

Opportunity

Become an information curator and connector, help facilitate communication between projects and people.

In the fediverse we have Week In Fediverse that acts as a summary.

Tangled (Git on ATProto)

Honest, but short, discussion about what's working and what's not with Tangled , the Git hosting platform built on AT Protocol.

Current limitations raised:

No private repos yet (dependency on protocol: Q1 feature hopefully, per Paul)

PRs have issues — can't update them, review flow is frustrating

No webhooks (though "might be an easy PR")

lots of discussion here: https://tangled.org/tangled.org/core/issues/97

Can't embed images/videos in issues and PRs (can embed if hosted elsewhere)

No squash commits for PRs

SSR makes navigation slow if client, appview, and knot are geographically distant

Markdown link rendering doesn't work

What's working:

Can submit .patch files (shi.gg likes this)

PRs partially fixed after moving to blobs instead of records

Team is open to PRs — evan.jarrett.net has made lots of CI improvements

Why not just use Tangled for everything yet:

"tangled isnt prod ready imo" (shi.gg)

"tangled is prod ready enough for what you're probably using it for, i.e., you're probably not using it for business. New apps have downtime" (thisismissem)

PhD repos need to be private (byarielm)

Local Meetups & Community Building

Discussion of how AT Protocol developers can find each other IRL.

Key resource:

Smoke Signal area search — Shows upcoming events in an area; if two people are LFG in the same/adjacent areas, it creates opportunities to connect

Feature request: Topic-based matching — once a threshold of people in an area are interested in a topic, coordinate to create an event (thisismissem.social)

Existing meetups mentioned:

ATProto Boston — "we just hang out and drink beer" (tynanpurdy.com)

Nashville lunch meetup — "10/10" (baileytownsend.dev)

Feeds for finding ATProto people:

OffTopic feed — Posts from known AT Protocol developers/tinkerers, but filtered to show their other interests

At Proto feed

Also, just talk with other people, majority of people in the AT Protocol ecosystem are happy to chat and are approachable, but be respectful of their time. They won't "solve" your problem for you, but can help guide or provide related information that might help you solve your problem. (If you want someone to solve your problem, hire them 😉)

Mental Health & Self-Care

The call closed with an earnest discussion about taking care of ourselves and each other. Emelia wanted to note that sometimes asking for help is hard, but necessary, and thanked everyone for the support they'd shown her when she needed it.

Key messages:

"You can support people in ways that aren't just financially, e.g., boosting their fundraising or "hire me" posts can have a significant impact!" (thisismissem.social)

"We all have a duty of care to our communities and neighbors; we all live better, happier lives when we collaborate with each other and contribute to each other" (mfzx.net)

"Put your own oxygen mask on first" (Nick Gerakines)

"If you need help navigating support services at any level, please let me know and I will gladly sit with you and help you navigate through it" (Bryan Guffey)

"Pay it forwards" is a model that can work

Resources for focus/productivity (especially for AuDHD folks):

Focus Friend — Hank Green's focus app with a pet bean

Physical pomodoro timers — "goated" (baileytownsend.dev)

Bedtime alarms to trigger transition to chores and sleep

Bryan Guffey's Rules of Engagement (shared from his Facebook, applicable everywhere):

My posts are mine. Not yours. I owe you nothing.

If you don't like what I post, you can scroll on by or unfollow me.

If you choose to engage, remember rule 1.

If I think your comment is out of line, I may delete it. Rule 1.

Language that reinforces systemic oppression will not be tolerated.

Social media incentivizes us to flatten people to their last post. I try to contextualize by reading previous posts.