Building on AT Protocol and Exploring the Atmosphere

Lately I’ve been diving deeper into the AT Protocol and the broader Atmosphere ecosystem, experimenting with how apps interact with user data. There are two main paradigms for handling posts and records:

Option 1 – PDS Proxies All Traffic:

In this model, the client logs into the user’s PDS and sends all traffic through it. That means:

The client writes records directly to the PDS.

The PDS can intercept and modify traffic to apps.

There’s no opportunity for server-side computation within the transaction’s lifetime.

The main downside here is timing: the client sees a 200 OK before the record is fully indexed, so user actions may not appear immediately. Additionally, some tricks, like injecting recent posts into threads, require building application logic into the PDS itself.

Option 2 – App Server Speaks to PDS:

Here, the client talks to the app server, which in turn talks to the PDS. This solves the timing issues: the client sees actions immediately, and server-side computation is fully possible. It also makes building custom behaviors simpler since the server can orchestrate requests without relying on clever PDS hacks.

Between the two, Option 2 feels more intuitive and practical from a technical perspective, especially when building responsive client apps that interact with AT Protocol storage.

My Personal AT Protocol Journey

I decided to put these ideas into practice on my own personal website. Previously, my blog lived in a GitHub repo, which my site fetched and rendered dynamically—a functional but clunky setup. With AT Protocol, I can do better.

I registered a DID, and now all my posts are stored under that DID. Currently, my records live on the Bluesky server, but I plan to migrate to a PDS eventually. By accessing the server endpoints directly, I can fetch posts straight from my AT Protocol storage, eliminating the need for GitHub entirely.

Breaking the chains of GitHub!

This setup also gave me a chance to explore how collections work and how to navigate them without a central index (yet). It’s been a great way to understand the network more deeply and build a personal site that is truly integrated with AT Protocol.