also, I kinda feel like calling the things that consume atproto data "apps" does a disservice to understanding what they are / how they work / what their potential is. But that is a partially-formed hot take I can't fully defend yet.

Imagining atproto as a post-app protocol starts with materializing the social filesystem – decomposing apps and their data into materials and instruments. For the time being, this guestbook is a good example where the display element is a material and the sign element is an instrument.

This is partly why I think atproto needs a more convincing vision about being a post-app protocol. A future where atproto is a bunch of apps and each app governs their own lexicon diminishes a lot of its potential in the long-term.

some thoughts on atproto as a post-app paradigm

some thoughts on atproto as a post-app paradigm

What I am learning from this outage is that if you were naive enough to believe that the atproto overview docs and architecture diagrams presented a true view of how bits of software rely on each other (🤚) you have a very distorted view of how how the network actually works.

ATProto explainer thread from a non-Bluesky app/service’s perspective

Every lexicon, every "app" on ATProto is a "yes and" waiting for your contribution to the vision. We're all first party developers.

the point of atproto is to make locked-open apps. apps which are constrained such that they cannot be e.g. bought by billionaires and ruined. yes, doing non-atproto things "enables app developers to do more". yes, non-atproto is "more intuitive" and "it sucks" when you hit atproto's limits.

while the permissionlessness vector of atproto will certainly enable new things we can't imagine the pattern of "____ but on atproto" is key for taking our daily lives back. a framing i prefer is "i can now do {boringDailyLifeThing} without {shittyExtractiveApp}"

@atpota.to and @dame.is, we were talking about making an ATProto-powered app directory on the community forum and someone found your atproto.garden and some records lying around. Are you interested in sharing your lexicons or talking about what a simple directory lexicon might look like?

My "Introduction to #ATProto" blog post that I've been working on for some time is ready 🙂 It goes through things like records, lexicons, DIDs, then PDS/AppView etc. and how it all works together. Let me know if anything is wrong! More parts later, with the Fedi comparisons & misconceptions etc.