







Great question. My biggest takeaway: we need to come to an agreement on how to advertise PDS/service capabilities. MOST of the PDS implementations I'm testing support community.lexicon.service.describe, which works v well. #atproto
Scooter
So what were your major takeaways?
Sep 15, 2026 at 1:55 PM
Embracing ATProto, part 1: Setting up a PDS
In this series of posts, I'll explore my journey into setting up my workflows and services for atproto. The first step is setting up my PDS. Let's start with a bit of explanation for all this lingo.

What does a PDS implementation entail? · bluesky-social atproto · Discussion #2350
This is an informal overview of what a PDS does and what a "full" implementation covers. A few folks are working on independent PDS implementations, either as earnest real-world infrastru...

What is required to make a PDS implementation?
This Github thread from July 2024 had a long answer by Bryan Newbold that is included below:
Public Hosted PDS options - created by HilaryBaumann.com
Make the PDS Your Own: Customization and Metrics - AT Protocol
Branding, observability, and a session-list fix in the newest reference PDS

Make the PDS Your Own: Customization and Metrics - AT Protocol
Branding, observability, and a session-list fix in the newest reference PDS

One thing I hope to see after this is more than just the reference implementation of it. An Atmosphere Account ecosystem where PDS providers compete on UX, features, and extensions can be a whole new brand of competition in the open social web, and everyone should lean into it.
Anuj Ahooja
"We plan to add basic account management functionality directly to the PDS reference implementation." LFG.
Introducing the Micro.blog PDS: manton.org/2026/08/11/introducing-the-mi…
Shower thought idea: What about expanding the role of the PDS for account management? E.g. when signing up on atproto with any app/service for the first time, redirect to the already existing account interface (`/account/`) already present on reference PDS, making this flow mandatory to support.
One thing I've been toying with, instead of talking about "PDS" and cryptic nonsense like that is: Atmosphere Service Provider, like an ISP but for the social internet. Part of the motivation is that "Sign in with Atmosphere" only works if people have seen that before.
B. Prendergast
Log in with Blacksky Log in with Bluesky Log in with Eurosky Log in with Gander Log in with Northsky Log in with Pckt Log in with Social Selfhost Log in with Wsocial Log in with hello you still there??? OR… Sign in with #Atmosphere 🌀 wecanjustdothings.leaflet.pub/3mlv5oijn5s2q
Since I don’t have time to dig into this yet, question: if I build a service that relies on this (say, @squire.quest) what happens to users with a PDS that doesn’t support this implantation yet. What’s the planned experience?
dad (aka miguel)
oh shit, offprints about to pop off atproto.com/blog/atproto-spaces-alpha
I think we need a "PDS as a Service". There are a bunch of little apps I'd love to make, but I don't want to have to host a PDS for each of them for anyone who doesn't already have an account. But I'd be fine with allowing them to register to a PDS with my app's domain and pay a fee per sign up.

Pilcrow's auth book
lucid-softworks/pds
PDS — a teaching port of the Bluesky personal data server