Browsing Bluesky

Access Bluesky content through public APIs and real-time firehose. Supports optional authentication for personalized feeds. Includes account analysis for categorization.

Implementation

Add skill directory to path and import:

import sys
sys.path.insert(0, '/path/to/skills/browsing-bluesky')  # or use .claude/skills symlink path
from browsing_bluesky import (
    # Core browsing
    search_posts, get_user_posts, get_profile, get_feed_posts, sample_firehose,
    get_thread, get_quotes, get_likes, get_reposts,
    get_followers, get_following, search_users,
    # Trending
    get_trending, get_trending_topics,
    # Account analysis
    get_all_following, get_all_followers, extract_post_text,
    extract_keywords, analyze_account, analyze_accounts,
    # Authentication utilities
    is_authenticated, get_authenticated_user, clear_session
)

Authentication (Optional)

Authentication enables personalized feeds (like Paper Skygest) that require knowing who's asking.

Setup

1. Create an app password at Bluesky: Settings → Privacy and Security → App Passwords
2. Set environment variables:

   export BSKY_HANDLE="yourhandle.bsky.social"
   export BSKY_APP_PASSWORD="xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx"
   

Behavior

• Transparent: All functions work identically with or without credentials
• Automatic: Auth headers are added opportunistically when credentials exist
• Graceful: Failed auth silently falls back to public access
• Secure: Tokens cached in memory only, never logged or persisted

Check Auth Status

if is_authenticated():
    print(f"Logged in as: {get_authenticated_user()}")
else:
    print("Using public access")

# Clear session if needed (e.g., switching accounts)
clear_session()

Research Workflows

Investigate a Topic

Use search_posts() with query syntax matching bsky.app advanced search:

• Basic terms: event sourcing
• Exact phrases: "event sourcing"
• User filter: from:acairns.co.uk or use author= param
• Date filter: since:2025-01-01 or use since= param
• Hashtags, mentions, domain links: #python mentions:user domain:github.com

Combine query syntax with function params for complex searches.

Monitor a User

1. Fetch profile with get_profile(handle) for context (bio, follower count, post count)
2. Get recent posts with get_user_posts(handle, limit=N)
3. For topic-specific user content, use search_posts(query, author=handle)

Discover What's Trending

Recommended workflow — trending API first, firehose for deep dives:

1. Quick scan with trending topics (~500 tokens)

topics = get_trending_topics(limit=10)
# Returns: {topics: [{topic, display_name, description, link}, ...],
#           suggested: [...]}

2. Rich trends with post counts and actors

trends = get_trending(limit=10)
for t in trends:
    print(f"{t['display_name']} — {t['post_count']} posts ({t['status']})")
# Each trend includes: topic, display_name, link, started_at,
#   post_count, status, category, actors

3. Targeted exploration of selected trends

posts = search_posts(trend["topic"], limit=25)

4. Optional: Firehose for velocity monitoring or long-tail discovery

Prerequisites: Install Node.js dependencies once per session:

cd /home/claude && npm install ws https-proxy-agent 2>/dev/null

data = sample_firehose(duration=30)  # Full firehose sample
data = sample_firehose(duration=20, filter="python")  # Filtered sample

Returns dict with keys:

• window: {startTime, endTime, durationSeconds} — sampling time range
• stats: {totalReceived, totalPosts, postsPerSecond, filter, languages} — volume metrics and language breakdown
• topWords: [[word, count], ...] — top 50 words (count >= 3)
• topPhrases: [[bigram, count], ...] — top 30 bigrams (count >= 2)
• topTrigrams: [[trigram, count], ...] — top 20 trigrams (count >= 2)
• entities: [[entity, count], ...] — top 25 handles/hashtags (count >= 2)
• samplePosts: [{text, altTexts, hasImages}, ...] — first 50 matching posts

Read Feeds and Lists

get_feed_posts() accepts:

• List URLs: https://bsky.app/profile/austegard.com/lists/3lankcdrlip2f
• Feed URLs: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xxx/feed/feedname
• AT-URIs: at://did:plc:xxx/app.bsky.graph.list/xyz

The function extracts the AT-URI from URLs automatically.

Explore a Thread

Fetch full thread context for a post with parents and replies:

thread = get_thread("https://bsky.app/profile/user/post/xyz", depth=10)
# Returns: {post: {...}, parent: {...}, replies: [...]}

Find Quote Posts

Discover posts that quote a specific post:

quotes = get_quotes("https://bsky.app/profile/user/post/xyz")
for q in quotes:
    print(f"@{q['author_handle']}: {q['text'][:80]}")

Analyze Engagement

Get users who engaged with a post:

likes = get_likes(post_url)
reposts = get_reposts(post_url)

# Accepts both URLs and AT-URIs
likes = get_likes("at://did:plc:.../app.bsky.feed.post/...")

Read Embed Images

Every parsed post carries an images field — a list of {alt, url, transcription} dicts, one per embed image. The legacy image_alts: list[str] field is preserved (non-empty alts only).

When alt text is missing and the image content matters, opt in to model transcription via the transcribe parameter on any post-fetch function (get_user_posts, search_posts, get_feed_posts, get_thread, get_quotes):

# Routine/bulk work (zeitgeist, inbox review, news scans) —
# gemini-2.5-flash-lite is the recommended default. Cheapest production
# model anywhere ($0.10/$0.40 per 1M tokens), ~95% accuracy on dense
# screenshots in May 2026 benchmarks:
posts = get_user_posts("ayourtch.bsky.social", limit=40, transcribe="gemini-lite")

# Token-perfect transcription, still cheap:
posts = get_user_posts(..., transcribe="gemini-flash")

# Frontier model with thinking_level=minimal — for cases where the image
# content needs reasoning, not just transcription:
posts = get_user_posts(..., transcribe="gemini-3.5-flash")

# Anthropic single-vendor option (note: empirically weaker prompt-following
# than Gemini on dense transcription — Haiku tends to summarize rather
# than transcribe):
posts = get_user_posts(..., transcribe="haiku")

# Interactive sessions where image is part of the active task and you want
# conversation context to inform interpretation (only available on Anthropic):
thread = get_thread(post_url, transcribe="opus")

# Default (no transcription) — current behavior preserved:
posts = get_user_posts("ayourtch.bsky.social", limit=40)

Policy is invariant across all callers: images with non-empty alt text are never transcribed (the author already described the image; trust it). Only images with missing or empty alt are sent to the model. Network or API failures leave transcription as None; callers degrade silently.

Cost/quality empirics (May 2026, n=3 dense terminal screenshots, single run each — sample size is small, treat as directional):

Requires either ANTHROPIC_API_KEY (or API_KEY in /mnt/project/claude.env) for the haiku / opus aliases, or CF AI Gateway credentials in /mnt/project/proxy.env for the gemini-* aliases. Transcription only fires when the parameter is set, so callers without the relevant credentials can simply pick a different alias or leave the feature off.

Explore Social Graph

Navigate follower/following relationships:

followers = get_followers("handle.bsky.social")
following = get_following("handle.bsky.social")

# Returns lis