Bluesky: support account migration

[snarfed]

Specifically, let people migrate an existing Bluesky account into BF to become a bridged account, or an existing bridged Bluesky account out of BF to become a normal Bluesky account that they can log into and use.

Big project! AP corollary is #330. Background:

• https://atproto.com/guides/overview#account-portability
• https://docs.bsky.app/blog/self-host-federation#account-migration

[tesaguri]

Is the plan to allow using an atproto data repository as a bridged account and a "normal" account at the same time, or is it going to be mutually-exclusive, that is, you won't be able to manually write your own atproto records into the data repository while it's used as a bridged account?

[snarfed]

There isn't a plan for this yet, it's honestly pretty unlikely, but if it does happen, it'd be the latter. I definitely don't plan to support bridged accounts that can also be used "manually" like normal accounts.

[snarfed]

Now that goat can migrate Bluesky accounts, this might already be possible. I'd love to hear how it goes if anyone wants to try!

Sadly the "easy" way requires logging into the source PDS, which Bridgy Fed doesn't support, but the "manual" way doesn't: https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3l5ii332pf32u#:~:text=Manual%20Account%20Migration

[rossabaker]

I haven't tried it, but I'm studying the fire escapes. The part of the manual process that looks most troublesome to me is:

Retrieve the token ($PLCTOKEN) from email, then request a signed version of the PLC params:

# old PDS
goat account plc sign --token $PLCTOKEN  ./plc_unsigned.json > plc_signed.json

I don't think BF has our email? Would this step need to be exposed as a command to the bot, both to avoid the login and to get the token delivered?

[Tamschi]

[…] Would this step need to be exposed as a command to the bot, both to avoid the login and to get the token delivered?

Yes, I think that's the case. I'm not sure this is feasible to do via DM, since most software doesn't let you attach arbitrary files there.
Maybe if fetching the "recommended" DID parameters from the new PDS doesn't require authentication, then Bridgy fed could get that file directly.

Alternatively, I think Bridgy Fed could expose a recovery key to the user for them to sign the PLC operation offline.
I'm really not sure how to look for instructions on that, though, and how it integrates in this process here.

[snarfed]

Yes! Thanks, you're both right.

For now, if anyone wants to do all of the manual migration steps up to the PLC DID doc update, I'll happily do that update manually. After that, if there's enough demand for this, I can implement the methods that goat needs to do it automatically.

[Tamschi]

cc @alien-sunset I'm not sure if you're subscribed here, but would that work for you?
This way you could take control of the current bridge account on another PDS and post to it directly when botsin.space shuts down.

[alien-sunset]

Thanks, but I’ve already set up a new account and coded the bot to post directly to Bsky (which took way too long, I am NOT a good coder 😅)