Playing around with the Bluesky Python SDK

The Python SDK for the Bluesky app is nice! You'll want to some brief reading on how the API for the AppView works versus AtProto Reference. Fundamentally the data is all stored in PDSes that are aggregated by a Relay which streams a firehose for different apps to consume. For the Bluesky app, the PDS host is https://bsky.social.

One of the best ways to understand the different data structures underlying any given account is to use this app and play around with it using your account.

Getting Started

1. Get your bluesky username and password and add them to a .env file (see the .env.example file for structure)
2. pip/uv install dependencies from pyproject.toml

Follower/Following Graph

1. Run python get_followers.py / uv run get_followers.py - You can change the number of followers/follows you'd like by passing max_items for either
2. Try some more endpoints!

Getting Started with CAR files

CAR files make up the key export format for PDS repositories. All repositories are public and anyone can download them without authentication by public endpoint.

CAR stands for Content Addressable aRchives and similiar to a tar file.

1. Run python get_car.py / uv run get_car.py - This gets all of the blocks in your CAR file - take a look at the first several to get an idea of the data structure.