Atmosphere Roundup

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Notes

• This is mostly intended as a resource that I can point people towards as an introduction to atproto, not for folks who’ve already consumed the koolaid
• I’ve been excited about the potential of atproto for awhile, initially by the data portability aspect, but more recently I’m digging the idea that it’s essentially a giant public datastore that you can work with for projects

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What is the Atmosphere? A community.

What is it not? Bluesky.

That said, Bluesky is a decent starting point for most people. An account there serves as a portable digital identity that you can take elsewhere later. Steve Klabnick has an excellent article, Too many words about DIDs, if you’d like to do a deeper dive. There are other providers starting to creep out of beta, I’ll mention them later.

After you’ve created that identity, you don’t even need to actually use Bluesky. You can just use the id to access different applications which store their data in the Atmosphere. Some do their own things, some are more of a mashup with Bluesky data.

Here’s are some examples of what you can do with that identity, and a few nerdier links. No real endorsements, these are mostly the things I’ve used so far. There seems to be new apps cropping up daily.

Apps

I’m calling these apps in the sense that they have a usable mobile application. There are also AppViews, which are a different thing in the Atmosphere.

• Grain – sort of like if Instagram and Flickr had a baby (planning to get old insta photos on here but still pretty alpha import)
• Popfeed – sort of like Letterboxd
• Spark – a bit Tiktok, a bit Vine, a bit Insta
• Streamplace – this is like Twitch or live YouTube

Web Apps

These are more traditional websites that tap into the Atmosphere.

• mu.social – this might classify more as an AppView, it’s essentially bluesky with additional features, different labellers, and an option for a little companion on your social journey.
• rpg.actor – store all your role playing character data, or just collect cute fashion accessories for your character
• tangled.org – this is like Github
• sifa.id – this is like LinkedIn

Other Providers

We’re starting to get a bit technical here, but if you’d rather host your data outside of bluesky, you can use an alternative Personal Data Server (PDS). If you’re a technically minded person, you could roll your own, but you’re responsible for maintaining it.

• Blacksky – supporting black and latin communities
• Eurosky – data hosted in Europe
• Northsky – a community service cooperative for the 2SLGBTQIA+ and other marginalized communities
• selfhosted.social – run by the pds.dad
• Witchsky – the sky is an obvious place for witches

Nerd Tools

If you’d like to dive more into the records that these applications generate, you can go pretty deep. Under the hood, everything is basically linked JSON files.

• PDSls – inspect records, PDSs, or just stare at the firehose in amazement
• sonde.blue – anotherer record inspector
• synchhub.to – sync Github to Tangled
• Taproot – AT Protocol explorer

Own your identity

It’s relatively easy to use a domain name for your identity. The scary part is setting a TXT record via DNS. You can also use .well-known stuff on your server, which is an option with the WordPress plugin below.

Using your own domain means you own your identity and that makes it easier to switch between providers in the future.

Standard site

If you own your own domain and have a blog setup, you can start adding site records to the atproto network. Might seem obvious to say, but standardizing data means it’s easier to display in different places. I haven’t really explored any of the standard.site reader views yet but it has RSS vibes.

• standard.site – a bit nerdy at the moment, but the root of things, and has a list of platforms where it’s implemented, a number of blogging platforms to explore
• ATmosphere plugin for WordPress – relatively easy to use integration, which can also port in likes and replies
• Publishing on the Atmosphere with standard.site – good writeup from Declan Chidlow, on how to integrate it into your site (also a good technical read if you’ve made it this far)

I’ve added it to my own site, and backfilled a few records. You can see the data popup as little cards on Bluesky, similar to the ones for open graph.

That’s it for now.