at:// pizza thoughts

mini-proposals, guides, ruminations, and other AT stuff

The AT-URI Syntax Mess

Why AT URIs are not valid under IETF RFC-3986, what the impact is, and some possible ways forward.

The AT-URI Syntax Mess
bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
June 29, 2026
6

Giving Labels More Context

A small tweak to the labeling system to allow richer context and annotations

Giving Labels More Context
bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
June 26, 2026
2

Firehose cursors could be improved somewhat

Some very in-the-weeds papercuts with event stream sequence numbers, and some ideas to address them

Firehose cursors could be improved somewhat
bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
June 03, 2026
1

Lexicon Service Docs

Riffing on some ways to make network services more legible to humans and machines

Lexicon Service Docs
bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
April 06, 2026
1

Expanding the Lexicon Language

Proposes some small additions to lexicon schema language.

Expanding the Lexicon Language
bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
April 03, 2026
6

Blob AT-URIs

mini-proposal for referencing atproto blobs in AT-URIs

Blob AT-URIs
bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
March 01, 2026
1

Community Spaces on AT Protocol

Scaled-down design patterns

Community Spaces on AT Protocol
bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
February 04, 2026
6

Go Lexicon Struct $type

Hacking in 'const' output behavior

Go Lexicon Struct $type
bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
December 12, 2025
2

Big Indexing

A couple of weeks ago at Eurosky I talked to some friendly Erlang hackers who wanted to get involved with AT development. The AT network is a big data-intensive distributed system, and it is the sort of thing the BEAM runtime is well-suited for. I know Chad Miller has been using Gleam for parts of Slices, and services like relays, jetstream, and the forthcoming tap tool could all be re-implemented using Erlang-y tools. But I think these tools, written in Go, are already in a pretty good place: they are efficient enough, are not too hard to operate (IMO), and have capacity to scale. hose.cam lists 9 full-network relays from 7 distinct parties.

bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
December 06, 2025
2

Record Versioning

The people, they want post editing!

Record Versioning
bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
November 13, 2025
1

What's a Pizza thought?

When I first started working at Bluesky, the team was all remote and I worked out of a rented office. I'd almost always procrastinate lunch and end up walking to a nearby bakery for a late afternoon slice of pizza. Inevitably i'd end up thinking over little protocol warts and design challenges. Sometimes these related to current work priorities, but often they were tangential or just small things that bothered me.

What's a Pizza thought?
bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
November 13, 2025

AT Namespaces for Community Spaces

How should public community-controlled spaces be represented in atproto?

AT Namespaces for Community Spaces
bryan newbold (⛱️ sabbatical mode)
October 11, 2025
4

at:// pizza thoughts