Tech Talk: Frontpage link aggregator

Welcome to ATProtocol Development's first tech talk, and thank you to Tom Sherman from Frontpage for being our first presenter.

Join Tom for a presentation about building Frontpage on ATProtocol: Making a Lexicon for link aggregation and the experience of working with the protocol. Tom will present and we'll have time for live discussion and Q&A. This is a technical talk, so we expect some familiarity with ATProtocol concepts, but all are welcome, including users curious about new protocol apps.

You can RSVP on Smoke Signal, an ATProtocol social events protocol. We'll be hosting a Smoke Signal tech talk the week after. The calendar page here has both a link to our Luma as well as an embedded Smoke Signal calendar owned by the @atprotocol.dev account.

Please register to join us live to get the Zoom link for Thursday, August 29th, at 9am PST, 12pm EST, 1800 CEST.

Register for Frontpage Tech Talk

Video

Thanks to Tom and the Nor.Dev crew for building this and walking us through their process!

Here are the slides from the talk:

Frontpage-Intro-TalkFrontpage-Intro-Talk.pdf3 MB.a{fill:none;stroke:currentColor;stroke-linecap:round;stroke-linejoin:round;stroke-width:1.5px;}download-circle

Plus the Excalidraw live version.

Chatlog

00:23:40 Laurens Hof: Nice shirt tom 00:23:52 will: huge snub 00:23:57 jake.saterlay: Reacted to "huge snub" with 😂 00:24:07 Alex Scotton: Reacted to "huge snub" with 😂 00:24:10 Damien Sedgwick: Reacted to "huge snub" with 😂 00:24:12 timothy: Reacted to "huge snub" with 😂 00:25:26 Boris Mann: https://frontpage.fyi/ 00:25:35 Boris Mann: You can sign in with an ATProto app password 00:26:50 Damien Sedgwick: Muted Boris 00:27:00 Paul Frazee: I see it 00:27:01 will: I see it 00:27:04 Damien Sedgwick: I can see it also 00:27:32 Boris Mann: But I tricked everyone into chiming in 00:27:47 Paul Frazee: Reacted to "But I tricked everyo..." with 👍 00:27:50 Boris Mann: Excalidraw slides, very cool 00:32:49 Paul Frazee: all tech decisions are mutable 00:35:18 Paul Frazee: drainpipe 👀 00:35:26 Ryan Barrett: firehose filtering: https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/discussions/2418 00:35:38 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "drainpipe 👀" with 💯 00:37:22 Boris Mann: “every change on HTTP -- all apps on the Internet” 00:37:33 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "“every change on HTT..." with 😎 00:37:36 Boris Mann: Key — this is what I am thinking about, what I call “proto apps” 00:37:37 Paul Frazee: drainpipe is hitting two things that we ran into: filtering to an app’s interested messages interface that works with serverless (nextjs backend) 00:37:51 will: written in rust too 00:38:07 Drew: Reacted to "written in rust too" with 👀 00:38:13 Paul Frazee: lot of app devs are nextjs/serverless brained rn so solving that interface issue for serverless is quite clutch 00:38:15 Boris Mann: We’ll get GitHub links for the post 00:38:32 Paul Frazee: do people still say clutch 00:38:46 Ryan Barrett: elder millenials unite 00:38:49 timothy: https://github.com/likeandscribe/unravel 00:38:49 Boris Mann: Stop trying to make clutch a thing, Paul 00:39:03 will: https://github.com/likeandscribe/unravel

https://github.com/likeandscribe/unravel/tree/main/packages-rs/drainpipe 00:39:06 Paul Frazee: Reacted to "elder millenials uni..." with ✊ 00:39:11 jon: Conceptually, it seems to me, (Relay + Drainpipe) = customi Relay 00:39:11 Paul Frazee: Reacted to "Stop trying to make ..." with 😂 00:39:12 Boris Mann: I also want that Fly.io stuff, including PDS on Fly 00:39:31 timothy: It’s a monorepo, btw 00:39:37 Paul Frazee: ooooh we got an answer for you on the read-after-write lag 00:39:48 Paul Frazee: oh maybe you do too 00:39:50 Ryan Barrett: https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/read-after-write 00:39:56 Boris Mann: Replying to "It’s a monorepo, btw"

Yep … would like it split out. Lot of people would like to not dedicate an entire VPS to a PDS 00:39:57 Paul Frazee: yeah we got a better answer now 00:40:02 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "yeah we got a better..." with 👍 00:40:28 Laurens Hof: Reacted to "elder millenials uni..." with ✊ 00:40:56 Paul Frazee: yes the two writes is the move we’re picking up 00:41:18 Laurens Hof: Ohh is this why I got errors recently when I was posting on frontpage? 00:41:47 will: errors could be just tom deleting the db as usual 00:41:55 Laurens Hof: Reacted to "errors could be just..." with 😂 00:42:30 timothy: Reacted to "errors could be just..." with 😂 00:42:35 jake.saterlay: Reacted to "errors could be just..." with 😂 00:43:31 Bryan Newbold: Reacted to "Conceptually, it s..." with 👍 00:43:46 Damien Sedgwick: Reacted to "errors could be ju..." with 😂 00:45:21 Ryan Barrett: multi-tenant 00:45:48 Boris Mann: Preferences vs….. forking? 00:46:05 Boris Mann: Going to ask about forking / extending lexicons. Composable Lexicon? 00:47:32 jon: Rudy, these two paths to community remind me of your early thoughts on a BlackSky community in “The Moderation Post” … you didn’t have an AppView on your list of what might be needed, and I remember thinking “hmm I wonder if it will turn out to need an AppView as well” 00:49:07 Laurens Hof: Reacted to "Rudy, these two path..." with 👍 00:49:19 Boris Mann: Bryan talked about this https://bsky.app/profile/bnewbold.net/post/3l2jhuf4jpm27 00:49:39 Paul Frazee: 2 kinds of compatibility: interpretation of lexicons across each others’ apps correlation of records (establishing the canonical link) which are being used for a shared comments section 00:50:47 Laurens Hof: Bluesky mirror would help with how I try to use frontpage 00:53:00 Boris Mann: at:// 00:54:16 Ryan Barrett: editing app.bsky post records doesn't hurt anything in the bsky.app client, we do it, the edits just don't show up (yet) 00:54:37 Paul Frazee: 📈 00:54:57 Boris Mann: “Atmosphere” — this is so NOT happening as a phrase 00:55:10 Paul Frazee: ITS HAPPENING BORIS 00:55:15 will: 👏 00:55:27 Laurens Hof: ATmosphere is so good tho 00:55:36 Nicolas Gimenez (ZKorum): 👏 00:55:42 jon: I totally disagree, Atmosphere is great! 00:55:46 Ryan Barrett: almost as bad as "fediverse" 00:55:55 Laurens Hof: My baseline is ‘fediverse’, so I think everything is good 00:55:56 Ryan Barrett: 🦆 00:55:57 jon: Much better thanfediverse! lol 00:56:07 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "Much better thanfedi..." with 😁 00:56:45 jake.saterlay: wow what a brilliantly implemented avatar 00:56:54 timothy: Reacted to "wow what a brilliant..." with 😂 00:56:57 timothy: Reacted to "wow what a brilliant..." with 👏 00:57:04 will: Reacted to "wow what a brilliant..." with 😂 00:57:11 Damien Sedgwick: Reacted to "wow what a brillia..." with 😂 00:57:13 Damien Sedgwick: Reacted to "wow what a brillia..." with 👏 00:57:24 Nick Gerakines (he/him): 10,000 god help us 00:57:26 Tom: Design is definitely v0 (in more ways than one) 00:57:50 timothy: Not again, he didn't 00:57:57 Paul Frazee: I think that’s a pretty solid design for a v0 00:58:14 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "I think that’s a pre..." with 👍 00:58:28 Laurens Hof: Reacted to "I think that’s a pre..." with 👍 00:58:59 will: Reacted to "I think that’s a pre..." with 👍 00:59:05 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Reacted to "I think that’s a ..." with ➕ 00:59:10 Ryan Barrett: labels? labelers? 00:59:16 Damien Sedgwick: oh my posts being unfairly moderated. 00:59:51 jon: Replying to "labels? labelers?"

That’s a really interesting idea. Would it be easy to repurpose Ozone to work on Frontpage? 01:00:11 Genco: Thoughts on almost every atproto identity being owned by Bluesky PBC? Especially since you raised other centralisation concerns 01:00:21 Ryan Barrett: Replying to "labels? labelers?"

hopefully! seems like the hope with labels, labelers/mod services, etc is that they apply to the whole ecosystem and protocol, not just bsky.app 01:00:23 Alex Scotton: Replying to "oh my posts being un..."

deserved 01:00:27 jake.saterlay: Reacted to "deserved" with 😂 01:00:34 Damien Sedgwick: I actually had this problem recently on Reddit. The answer was coming up on google but clicking the link came back with 'This post has been deleted' - So frustrating! 01:00:38 timothy: Reacted to "deserved" with 😂 01:01:35 Alex Scotton: Will the Q&A be on the recording? 01:01:46 Nick Gerakines (he/him): lol w h o d o e s 01:01:49 Boris Mann: @Alex Scotton yes it will be 01:01:53 Alex Scotton: Reacted to "@Alex Scotton yes it..." with ❤️ 01:02:00 Damien Sedgwick: Reacted to "lol w h o d o e s" with 😂 01:02:15 Boris Mann: The DWeb Principles are a good outline what I consider DWeb / Web3 https://getdweb.net/principles/ 01:02:16 Alex Scotton: Replying to "@Alex Scotton yes it..."

Awesome, thanks for hosting! Tom, this is cool - well presented 01:02:26 Damien Sedgwick: Reacted to "deserved" with 😂 01:02:34 will: wrapping my head around the whole architecture (pds etc) was the hardest part 01:02:45 jake.saterlay: Replying to "wrapping my head aro..."

+1 01:02:48 Boris Mann: Technically, I think of it as data structures, cryptography, and distributed systems 01:02:59 timothy: We made our own wireframe of the architecture and still don’t fully understand it 01:03:03 Boris Mann: Replying to "wrapping my head aro..."

Ideally this is why we do more of these. Need to do an ATproto 101 01:03:03 Alex Scotton: Replying to "wrapping my head aro..."

+2 01:03:16 Nick Gerakines (he/him): For later: Have you done any cost analysis on if severless is going to be managable in the long term with projected network growth? 01:03:16 Alex Scotton: Replying to "wrapping my head aro..."

@Boris Mann please do this.. ELI5 01:03:17 Hilary Baumann - FascinationDesign.com: Reacted to "Ideally this is why ..." with 👍 01:03:41 will: Replying to "wrapping my head aro..."

have like 3 images pinned in our discord just in case we forget 😅 01:04:24 Laurens Hof: (Side note since half the bsky team is in chat: is the notification ‘x followed you back’ new? Its nice) 01:04:25 Paul Frazee: we’ve got a new atproto website coming up, working on a lot more intro resources 01:04:33 Hilary Baumann - FascinationDesign.com: Reacted to "we’ve got a new atpr..." with 👍 01:04:35 Laurens Hof: Reacted to "we’ve got a new atpr..." with 👍 01:04:40 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Reacted to "we’ve got a new a..." with 🎉 01:04:45 Paul Frazee: Replying to "(Side note since hal..."

yeah like, last month or two 01:04:54 Nicolas Gimenez (ZKorum): Reacted to "we’ve got a new a..." with 🎉 01:04:58 Boris Mann: Ryan is @snarfed and builder of Bridgy 01:04:58 will: Reacted to "we’ve got a new atpr..." with 🎉 01:04:59 will: Reacted to "we’ve got a new atpr..." with 👍 01:05:05 Paul Frazee: Reacted to "Ryan is @snarfed and..." with 🔥 01:05:10 Laurens Hof: Reacted to "yeah like, last mont..." with 👍 01:05:10 will: Reacted to "Ryan is @snarfed and..." with 🔥 01:05:12 Rudy Fraser: Reacted to "we’ve got a new atpr..." with 👍 01:05:59 timothy: Reacted to "we’ve got a new atpr..." with 👍 01:06:00 timothy: Reacted to "we’ve got a new atpr..." with 🎉 01:07:44 Damien Sedgwick: we are degenerates 01:07:49 will: he's snubbed me again 01:07:50 Max Saal: Reacted to we are degenerates with "❤️" 01:07:51 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Reacted to "we are degenerates" with 😂 01:07:52 Boris Mann: Replying to "we are degenerates"

Web3 01:08:00 timothy: We play padel together 01:08:06 Genco: Replying to "Thoughts on almost e..."

all but 36565 - and 24812 of those is plc spam with pds https://uwu 01:08:10 Damien Sedgwick: Reacted to "We play padel toge..." with 😂 01:08:15 will: Reacted to "We play padel togeth..." with 😂 01:08:21 Paul Frazee: one very specific way this relay / commercial services question manifests is: how much do we want to put into the relay api (making it protocol) vs how much is separate commercial services (like drainpipe) 01:08:37 Boris Mann: Replying to "one very specific wa..."

Yes exactly 01:08:37 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "one very specific wa..." with 👍 01:08:44 dan: Reacted to "one very specific wa..." with 👍 01:09:08 jake.saterlay: who 01:09:09 will: 🥹 01:09:16 Tom: Reacted to "🥹 " with 😎 01:09:17 Paul Frazee: Replying to "one very specific wa..."

I’ve been in about 4 meetings in the past 2 weeks about this topic so it’s a good time to talk about this! 01:09:18 jon: Reacted to "one very specific wa..." with 👍 01:09:32 timothy: Reacted to "🥹 " with 😎 01:09:40 timothy: Reacted to "we are degenerates" with ❤️ 01:09:40 timothy: Reacted to "we are degenerates" with 😂 01:10:37 Damien Sedgwick: Do not tarnish me with your serverless brush. 01:10:42 timothy: Don’t host your psql db on Vercel on the free plan. This is why we were down recently. 01:10:48 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Good problems to have lol 01:10:57 Alex Scotton: Reacted to "Don’t host your psql..." with 😂 01:11:13 Damien Sedgwick: Reacted to "Don’t host your p..." with 😂 01:11:21 timothy: PDS stuff could probably be a GitHub template, I guess 01:11:37 Boris Mann: Reacted to "PDS stuff could prob..." with 👏 01:12:30 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "Do not tarnish me wi..." with 😎 01:12:45 Boris Mann: Video with Bryan on the PLC Directory https://atprotocol.dev/bluesky-and-did-plc/ 01:13:34 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "Video with Bryan on ..." with 👍 01:16:04 Ryan Barrett: also Bluesky team can (and should) eventually give users on plc.directory their rotation keys. those users aren't stuck without their keys forever 01:16:55 Ryan Barrett: omg paul 01:17:06 Boris Mann: NO ONE MENTION RDF 01:17:36 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "NO ONE MENTION RDF" with 💯 01:18:31 Nicolas Gimenez: How do we make data from different Lexicons communicate with each other? In other words Frontpage <--> bluesky integration and other appviews? 01:18:32 Paul Frazee: Replying to "NO ONE MENTION RDF"

mk ultra activation phrase for me 01:18:42 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "How do we make data ..." with 👍 01:18:44 Laurens Hof: Reacted to "How do we make data ..." with 👍 01:18:44 Paul Frazee: Reacted to "How do we make data ..." with 👍 01:18:55 Tom: WebAuthN? 01:19:00 Boris Mann: Yeah, composability. “Link” type in Smoke Signal <> Frontpage 01:19:25 Boris Mann: Replying to "WebAuthN?"

Different layer. Tools on the outside. Like passkeys. 01:19:26 Genco: yes! my point was very much that what paul mentioned about being able to move from an adversarial pds is only possible when you control your keys and constantly watch the plc 01:19:28 Alex Scotton: Thanks everyone, gotta leave (I was meant to 10 mins ago, but too fascinating) 01:19:38 Tom: Reacted to "Different layer. Too..." with 👍 01:19:41 jake.saterlay: Reacted to "Thanks everyone, got..." with ❤️ 01:19:49 Tom: Reacted to "Thanks everyone, got..." with ❤️ 01:20:02 Ryan Barrett: Replying to "How do we make data ..."

https://bsky.app/profile/bnewbold.net/post/3l2jhuf4jpm27 is the current best practice, Boris linked to it earlier 01:20:06 Nick Gerakines (he/him): 2 keys ... for now 01:20:11 Laurens Hof: Reacted to "Thanks everyone, got..." with ❤️ 01:20:17 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "yes! my point was ve..." with 👍 01:20:23 Genco: (which is also controlled by the pds for 6 million users) 01:20:36 Paul Frazee: Replying to "2 keys ... for now"

pray we do not add another 01:20:57 Boris Mann: RDF solves this 01:21:09 will: Replying to "How do we make data ..."

I was thinking of a lexicon directory where you can view other people's lexicons etc 01:21:12 Paul Frazee: Replying to "yes! my point was ve..."

yes that’s what the “recovery key” is for, the idea is that you can store that on paper and pull it out when needed if your pds betrays you 01:21:29 Paul Frazee: Reacted to "RDF solves this" with 🔥 01:21:31 Ryan Barrett: Replying to "RDF solves this"

bad boris! bad! 01:21:32 Paul Frazee: Reacted to "Thanks everyone, got..." with ❤️ 01:21:44 Ryan Barrett: Replying to "RDF solves this"

no treat for you 01:21:47 Boris Mann: Replying to "RDF solves this"

Don’t worry. I crushed a LOT of RDF dreams at DWebCamp 01:21:51 Genco: yes, what i was saying was that close to no one is holding their rotation keys, and there is close to no tooling around it 01:21:55 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "Don’t worry. I crush..." with 😁 01:21:56 Boris Mann: Replying to "RDF solves this"

“It hasn’t worked for 10 years, why should it start working” 01:22:19 will: we had this talk last night about a schema registry essentially 01:22:23 Nicolas Gimenez: I think probably interop will stem from actual use-cases between appviews 01:22:25 Paul Frazee: Replying to "yes! my point was ve..."

yeah fair. hopefully that’s just a matter of time 01:22:28 Laurens Hof: Reacted to "mk ultra activation ..." with 😂 01:23:03 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "yes, what i was sayi..." with 👍 01:23:27 Laurens Hof: The good news is that the atmosphere is already ahead of fed as this point 01:23:53 Laurens Hof: As the link-aggregator people don’t talk to each other at all 01:24:04 Nick Gerakines (he/him): +1 Smoke Signal's first major rev and reset was a lexicon update to bring it closer to {"text": "event description ..."} 01:24:08 Rudy Fraser: Or com.atproto itself 01:24:27 Damien Sedgwick: ATmosphere 01:24:33 Nicolas Gimenez: Just thank you for the amazing presentation! 01:24:53 Boris Mann: https://lu.ma/ag1uwvss 01:24:55 will: lovely space to be a dev 01:24:56 Bryan Newbold: strong analogy to software libraries for Lexicons: there is tension around "in std library or not", and when language ecosystems converge on matrue popular libs or not 01:25:12 Nick Gerakines (he/him): on the record fits with atproto 01:25:16 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "lovely space to be a..." with 👍 01:25:18 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "strong analogy to so..." with 👍 01:25:44 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "on the record fits w..." with 😆 01:25:45 timothy: Nice to get on the AToll 01:25:47 dan: Reacted to "on the record fits w..." with 😆 01:25:52 Rudy Fraser: Reacted to "lovely space to be a..." with 👍 01:26:01 Boris Mann: We’re saving the chat and will share it as well 01:26:16 Nicolas Gimenez: Reacted to "We’re saving the ..." with 👍 01:26:23 Bryan Newbold: Reacted to "We’re saving the ..." with 👍 01:27:17 Genco: ooh this is also how video works right 01:27:31 Tom: Super cool! 01:28:31 Ryan Barrett: YES 01:28:36 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Rich text over html scrubbing and sanitizing any day. 01:28:38 Ryan Barrett: markup ftw 01:29:42 Genco: lexicon resolution would be really cool! 01:29:52 Ryan Barrett: Reacted to "lexicon resolution w..." with 👍 01:31:39 Ryan Barrett: shades of XML etc 01:31:59 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Reacted to "shades of XML etc" with ➕ 01:32:04 Nick Gerakines (he/him): Reacted to "lexicon resolution..." with ➕ 01:32:57 Nicolas Gimenez: Reacted to "shades of XML etc" with ➕ 01:33:00 Paul Frazee: I was moving super fast there so I hope all that made sense 01:33:03 Nicolas Gimenez: Reacted to "lexicon resolution..." with 👍 01:33:09 timothy: Well done, Tom 01:33:11 timothy: Legend 01:33:15 Paul Frazee: awesome stuff tom 01:33:15 Nicolas Gimenez: 🙏 01:33:16 Ryan Barrett: congrats Tom! Frontpage is awesome! 01:33:18 dan: thanks to boris for organizing too! 01:33:19 Ryan Barrett: and thank you Boris!!! 01:33:22 Tom: You you all so much, lovely group of folks! 01:33:23 Max Saal: Thanks so much all! My first time on an atprotocol call, interesting stuff

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ATProtocol Dev is a blog, newsletter, and event series following the development of protocol apps building on top of ATProtocol, which powers the Bluesky micro-blogging network and an emerging set of open social apps.