Browsing Bluesky

---
name: browsing-bluesky
description: Browse Bluesky content via API and firehose - search posts, fetch user activity, sample trending topics, read feeds and lists, analyze and categorize accounts. Supports authenticated access for personalized feeds. Use for Bluesky research, user monitoring, trend analysis, feed reading, firehose sampling, account categorization.
metadata:
  version: 0.6.0
---

# 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:

```python
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, authenticated_identity,
    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:
   ```bash
   export BSKY_HANDLE="yourhandle.bsky.social"
   export BSKY_APP_PASSWORD="xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx"
   ```

### Which account reads

Two credential pairs are recognised, and the prefix is the only difference:

| Pair | Identity |
|---|---|
| `MUNINN_BSKY_HANDLE` / `MUNINN_BSKY_APP_PASSWORD` | `muninn` — preferred |
| `BSKY_HANDLE` / `BSKY_APP_PASSWORD` | `owner` — used when no Muninn pair is set |

`BSKY_IDENTITY=muninn|owner` picks one outright, and a pair named that way is
never substituted for: asking for `muninn` with no Muninn pair set reads as
public rather than quietly reading as the owner. An unrecognised value raises.

This matters because a booted container holds **both** pairs. Until
2026-08-28 the unprefixed one won, so every authenticated read — the following
timeline, and the mutes, blocks and labelers that shape all of them — came back
as the account owner with nothing in the output saying so, from a skill
documented as read-only that was nonetheless holding an app password carrying
write scope on his account. On a machine with only the documented `BSKY_*`
pair, nothing changes.

### 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. A misspelled
  `BSKY_IDENTITY` is configuration, not auth failure, and raises instead
- **Secure**: Tokens cached in memory only, never logged or persisted

### Check Auth Status

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

# Which pair answered — a handle alone does not say whether it was chosen
# or simply the only one set.
authenticated_identity()   # {'identity': 'muninn', 'handle': ..., 'did': ...}

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

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

#### 2. Rich trends with post counts and actors

```python
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

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

```python
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:

```python
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:

```python
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:

```python
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`):

```python
# 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):

| Alias | Latency | $/image | Chord-token recall |
|---|---|---|---|
| `gemini-lite` | ~8s | ~$0.001 | 95% |
| `gemini-flash` | ~10s | ~$0.003 | 100% |
| `gemini-3.5-flash` | ~10s | ~$0.014 | 100% |
| `haiku` | ~7s | ~$0.008 | 18% (summarizes) |
| `opus` | ~20s | ~$0.12 | 91% |

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:

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

# Returns list of actor dicts with handle, display_name, did, description, etc.
```

### Find Users

Search for users by name, handle, or bio:

```python
users = search_users("machine learning researcher")
for u in users:
    print(f"{u['display_name']} (@{u['handle']}): {u['description'][:100]}")
```

## API Endpoint Notes

- **Public AppView**: `https://api.bsky.app/xrpc/` for unauthenticated reads
- **PDS**: `https://bsky.social/xrpc/` for authenticated requests
- **Trending**: `app.bsky.unspecced.getTrends` (rich) and `app.bsky.unspecced.getTrendingTopics` (lightweight)
- **Firehose**: `wss://jetstream1.us-east.bsky.network/subscribe`
- **Endpoint routing** is automatic - authenticated requests go to PDS, public requests go to AppView
- **Rate limits** exist but are generous for read operations

## Return Format

All API functions return structured dicts with:
- `uri`: AT protocol identifier
- `text`: Post content
- `created_at`: ISO timestamp
- `author_handle`: User handle
- `author_name`: Display name
- `likes`, `reposts`, `replies`: Engagement counts
- `links`: Full URLs extracted from post facets (post text truncates URLs with "...")
- `image_alts`: Alt text from embedded images
- `url`: Direct link to post on bsky.app

Profile function returns: `handle`, `display_name`, `description`, `followers`, `following`, `posts`, `did`

## Account Analysis

Analyze accounts for categorization by topic. Fetches profile and posts, extracts keywords, and returns structured data for Claude to categorize.

### Analyze a User's Network

```python
# Analyze accounts you follow
results = analyze_accounts(following="yourhandle.bsky.social", limit=50)

# Analyze your followers
results = analyze_accounts(followers="yourhandle.bsky.social", limit=50)

# Analyze specific handles
results = analyze_accounts(handles=["user1.bsky.social", "user2.bsky.social"])
```

### Single Account Analysis

```python
analysis = analyze_account("user.bsky.social")
# Returns: {handle, display_name, description, keywords, post_count, followers, following}
```

### Keyword Extraction Options

Stopwords parameter filters domain-specific noise:
- `"en"`: English (general purpose, default)
- `"ai"`: AI/ML domain (filters tech boilerplate)
- `"ls"`: Life Sciences (filters research methodology)

```python
results = analyze_accounts(following="handle", stopwords="ai")
```

**Requires**: `extracting-keywords` skill with YAKE venv for keyword extraction.

### Filtering Accounts

```python
results = analyze_accounts(
    following="handle",
    exclude_patterns=["bot", "spam", "promo"]  # Skip accounts matching these
)
```

### Paginated Following/Followers

For large account lists beyond the 100 limit of `get_following`/`get_followers`:

```python
all_following = get_all_following("handle", limit=500)  # Handles pagination
all_followers = get_all_followers("handle", limit=500)
```

### Account Analysis Output

Each analyzed account returns:
```python
{
    "handle": "user.bsky.social",
    "display_name": "User Name",
    "description": "Bio text here",
    "keywords": ["keyword1", "keyword2", "keyword3"],
    "post_count": 20,
    "followers": 1234,
    "following": 567
}
```

Claude uses bio + keywords to categorize accounts by topic without hardcoded rules