Off Protocol

Off Protocol

By BlueskyTechnology
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Off Protocol episodes

  • Crab Bisque-y

    After a month of travel and special episode livestreams, Jim and Alex are settling in for a bit of a return to normalcy. Highlights include a new top-level domain proposal, an community-driven surey of the ecosystem, a preview of what spaces could look like in the Bluesky app, and more.

    Links & Resources

    • Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider on Bluesky’s .bsky TLD application
    • TechCrunch: Bluesky wants to give you your own domain on the open web
    • Bryan Newbold's at:// URI scheme draft
    • Where We’re AT 2026
    • Post-alpha plans for permissioned data
    • EmDash 1.0
    • Cloudflare: EmDash’s plugin registry
    • Bluesky Head of Product Alex Benzer shared a thread with some thoughts on spaces in the Bluesky app
    • The Tolerance Group
    • Blacksky polls
    • Brookie’s polls
    • Graze's midterms election feed app
    • MySky feed infrastructure
    • Mapping web pages to canonical AT records
    • FOSDEM 2027 atproto devroom proposal
    • Atmosphere community events

      • The archive for this episode, including a generated transcript, is available at https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-10-09-crab-bisque-y.

      Off Protocol is a production of the Bluesky developer relations team. For more about AT Protocol and an archive of this show, head to atproto.com.

      Our theme music was composed and produced by Saleem Reshamwala.

      Catch our livestream every other Wednesday at stream.place/atproto.com.

      40 min
    • The Only Moat is Taste

      If the AT Protocol is going to succeed, it's going to upend decades of assumptions about building on the web, including how businesses find customers and make money. Ricardo Méndez is a technologist, privacy advocate, and investor in early stage startups who has been working with decentralized technology for years. Ricardo is a very clear thinker about the hard problems of building a tech business, and his blog at numergent.com is a must read.

      Links & Resources

      • Ricardo J. Méndez on Bluesky
      • Ricardo's blog, Numergent
      • Project vs. Product, Startup vs. Business
      • A taxonomy of Atmosphere applications
      • Winesky

        • The archive for this episode, including a generated transcript, is available at https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-10-02-the-only-moat-is-taste-ricardo-m-ndez.

        Off Protocol is a production of the Bluesky developer relations team. For more about AT Protocol and an archive of this show, head to atproto.com.

        Our theme music was composed and produced by Saleem Reshamwala.

        Catch our livestream every other Wednesday at stream.place/atproto.com.

        53 min
      • Stroopwafels for Everyone!

        Planning is underway for the next Atmosphere Conf and the organizers — Boris Mann, Guido Jansen, and Ms. Boba — joined the livestream to announce the location (beautiful Amsterdam), dates (April 29–May 2), and the new website at atmosphereconf.org. They also had news to share about a new organization that's going to be overseeing the conference and other community governance.

        Links & Resources

        • ATmosphereConf 2027
        • RSVP for ATmosphereConf 2027
        • Subscribe to ATmosphereConf News
        • Erin Kissane's "People In Protocols"
        • atmosphere.community
        • Off Protocol, "Slowly, Then Quickly: What AtmosphereConf Made Visible"

          • The archive for this episode, including a generated transcript, is available at https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-09-28-stroopwafels-for-everyone-boris-mann.

          Off Protocol is a production of the Bluesky developer relations team. For more about AT Protocol and an archive of this show, head to atproto.com.

          Our theme music was composed and produced by Saleem Reshamwala.

          Catch our livestream every other Wednesday at stream.place/atproto.com.

          37 min
        • Make Your Own Thing

          In the age of aspirational influencers, million-dollar podcast hosts, and so, so many newsletters, it's sometimes hard to imagine the very idea of making a career out of writing on the internet was once considered controversial. John Gruber has been writing at Daring Fireball for nearly a quarter of a century and managed to turn his unique and incisive takes on technology, the internet, and Apple Computer into not just a career but a framework for countless writers, podcasters, producers — an entire economy.

          He joins Jim to talk about those early days and what they might have in common with a post-platform internet, the slow boil of Markdown, and, of course, Apple.

          Links & Resources

          • Daring Fireball
          • John on Bluesky at gruber.foo
          • Independent Days
          • Dive Into Markdown
          • Aaron Swartz's atx
          • Dean Allen's Textile (archived)
          • Github Flavored Markdown
          • "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste"
          • The Standard Site community lexicon project for long form writing on atproto
          • At.pm, a toolkit for building atproto apps in Perl

            • The archive for this episode, including a generated transcript, is available at https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-09-11-make-your-own-thing-john-gruber.

            Off Protocol is a production of the Bluesky developer relations team. For more about AT Protocol and an archive of this show, head to atproto.com.

            Our theme music was composed and produced by Saleem Reshamwala.

            Catch our livestream every other Wednesday at stream.place/atproto.com.

            1 hr 34 min
          • A Bad Idea Until You Think About It

            Paul Frazee, Bluesky's CTO, and Daniel Holmgren, the Head of Protocol at Bluesky, each published a blog post within minutes of each other last week exploring some of the big ideas of the protocol. It was a classic blog-off, so we decided to settle it on the livestream this week, after the regular news roundup.

            Links & Resources

            News roundup

            • Off Protocol on VoxPort
            • "The atproto Spaces Alpha is Live"
            • Sign up for the atproto-spaces enabled PDS
            • The atproto NYC Community Day recap
            • Talks from atproto NYC available on Streamplace
            • Troposphere
            • Sri's IRL atproto apps from atproto NYC
            • Sam Goto's FedCM demo
            • "Working to Decentralize FedCM"
            • Bluesky's proposed notifications redesign
            • Ten-minute videos on Bluesky
            • A new Bluesky setting to hide your posts from Discover
            • Leaflet's paid memberships pilot
            • Graze joins Flipboard
            • Roomy teams up with Modal
            • Germ launches voice notes
            • Tim Disney's vision for Skyreader
            • Keith Kurson's atmoBB
            • Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider's AMA on Off Protocol
            • Chicago Public Media building on atproto with Roundabout
            • All the latest meetups on Atmosphere Community

              • The blog-off

              • Paul Frazee, "SELECT * FROM internet.blogposts"
              • Daniel Holmgren, "Reintroducing Spaces"
              • An early thread from Paul explaining some of the atproto fundamentals
              • "Solving for scale in open networks" Paul's talk at this year's Local-First Conf

                • The archive for this episode, including a generated transcript, is available at https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-09-04-a-bad-idea.

                Off Protocol is a production of the Bluesky developer relations team. For more about AT Protocol and an archive of this show, head to atproto.com.

                Our theme music was composed and produced by Saleem Reshamwala.

                Catch our livestream every other Wednesday at stream.place/atproto.com.

                48 min
              • Not Just Us: An AMA with Toni Schneider

                About six weeks ago, Toni Schneider dropped the "interim" from his job title to take on the role of Bluesky CEO full time. He's now ready to answer questions from the atproto ecosystem, starting with a crowd favorite: when are we getting an edit button?! (Turns out, it's complicated.)

                From there, Toni dove into strategy on everything from moderation to AI. The biggest set of questions was centered on how to build sustainability around an open protocol and how to make that easier for everyone from creators to builders.

                Links & Resources

                • Toni's profile on Bluesky
                • Toni's blog at toni.org
                • The AMA question thread
                • Introducing Bluesky Protocol Services
                • The Atproto Spaces alpha launch post
                • Bulletin, Bluesky's spaces demo app
                • Secret Sky
                • Alex Benzer's thread on adding an edit button

                  • The archive for this episode, including a generated transcript, is available at https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-08-26-toni-schneider-ama.

                  Off Protocol is a production of the Bluesky developer relations team. For more about AT Protocol and an archive of this show, head to atproto.com.

                  Our theme music was composed and produced by Saleem Reshamwala.

                  Catch our livestream every other Wednesday at stream.place/atproto.com.

                  48 min
                • Own Your Own Destiny: An AMA with Jim Calabro

                  Jim Calabro is the head of Bluesky's platform team and is therefore ultimately responsible for managing the infrastructure of the largest node on the atprotocol network. He also led the engineering effort to rebuild the Jetstream developer service to make it easier to get started with new atproto apps.

                  Jim joined the livestream to answer your questions about these topics and more.

                  Links & Resources

                  • Northsky's social app is live
                  • The HOPE conference
                  • Jim's profile on Bluesky
                  • AMA question thread
                  • The new BPS website, including Jetstream

                    • The archive for this episode, including a generated transcript, is available at https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-08-24-jim-calabro-ama.

                    Off Protocol is a production of the Bluesky developer relations team. For more about AT Protocol and an archive of this show, head to atproto.com.

                    Our theme music was composed and produced by Saleem Reshamwala.

                    Catch our livestream every other Wednesday at stream.place/atproto.com.

                    48 min
                  • Waterwheel Logic

                    Eve Osman arrived in the atproto ecosystem after having been "in tech for too long," soon becoming a prominent contributor to Northsky, "a safe and sustainable platform for the 2SLGBTQIA+ and other marginalized communities."

                    Eve has been a contributor to the work around permissioned data. This episode was recorded just after she launched Eskahlay, a new software consultancy for building sustainable social tools for communities.

                    Links & Resources

                    • Eve on Bluesky
                    • Eve’s website
                    • Northsky
                    • A model for addressing privacy on atproto
                    • Twinkl
                    • Why Eskahlay exists

                      • The archive for this episode, including a generated transcript, is available at https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-08-17-waterwheel-logic-eve-osman.

                      Off Protocol is a production of the Bluesky developer relations team. For more about AT Protocol and an archive of this show, head to atproto.com.

                      Our theme music was composed and produced by Saleem Reshamwala.

                      Catch our livestream every other Wednesday at stream.place/atproto.com.

                      58 min
                    • Shinkansen Mindset

                      Toni Schneider's interview on The Verge's Decoder podcast gives Jim and Alex a chance to once again revisit the (good, healthy!) tensions at the heart of the Bluesky app and atproto. Plus all the latest news, releases, and updates.

                      Links & Resources

                      • Toni Schneider's interview on The Verge's podcast
                      • Attie Quests announcement
                      • Brittany Ellich's Jimothy explainer
                      • Semble's MCP server launch
                      • Daniel Holmgren and Bryan Newbold's IETF presentation
                      • Paul Frazee's Local First talk writeup
                      • Erin Kissane on launching Cloud Atlas
                      • Cloud Atlas Open Collective
                      • Blacksky mobile beta for iOS and Android
                      • tng, a Tangled CLI in Swift
                      • Bailey Townsend's Lexidraw
                      • Scott Lanoue's atproto-account-driven GrapheneOS fork
                      • Dan Abramov on Syntax.fm, "The Open Web's Second Chance"
                      • Dan Abramov on UIT Inside
                      • Leaflet's HTML embed feature
                      • Hilary Baumann, "What is Standard Site? Next-gen RSS"
                      • atproto NYC Community Day at the Recurse Center, sponsored by Leaflet
                      • Atmosphere community events calendar

                        • The archive for this episode, including a generated transcript, is available at https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-08-06-shinkansen-mindset.

                        Off Protocol is a production of the Bluesky developer relations team. For more about AT Protocol and an archive of this show, head to atproto.com.

                        Our theme music was composed and produced by Saleem Reshamwala.

                        Catch our livestream every other Wednesday at stream.place/atproto.com.

                        48 min
                      • Designing for Uncertainty

                        Ethan Marcotte coined the term "responsive web design" back in 2010 and instantly gave a name to the loose collection of technologies that were fundamentally changing how the web was being built. A decade later, he brought that same insight to another revolutionary force within the industry, the workers themselves.

                        Either one of these would be an invaluable contribution to how the web gets built and Ethan's sharp intuitions grounded in moral clarity offer some valuable lessons to the exciting, if still uncertain, early days of the Atmosphere.

                        Links and Resources

                        • The Dao of Web Design by John Allsopp
                        • The original Responsive Web Design article
                        • Announcing the then-redesigned BostonGlobe.com, one of the first large scale responsive designs
                        • Ursula Franklin's Massey lectures, which were later collected as The Real World of Technology
                        • Ethan's book on the labor movement within the tech industry, You Deserve a Tech Union

                          • The archive for this episode, including a generated transcript, is available at https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-08-03-designing-for-uncertainty-ethan-marcotte.

                          Off Protocol is a production of the Bluesky developer relations team. For more about AT Protocol and an archive of this show, head to atproto.com.

                          Our theme music was composed and produced by Saleem Reshamwala.

                          Catch our livestream every other Wednesday at stream.place/atproto.com.

                          45 min

                        About Off Protocol

                        From the publisher's feed

                        Conversations about AT Protocol and the open social web with the people working to build a better internet. Brought to you by the Bluesky DevRel team.