Building a Video Feed on AT Protocol

This week I began working on building a web application using the new decentralized social media technology, AT Protocol, developed by BlueSky. I chose to pursue this as my next project for a couple of reasons. First, because I believe it will allow me to integrate many of the most important skills and technologies that employers seek. After a month of searching for a job, I have become somewhat of an expert in that regard. Secondly, developing skills in an emerging technology gives me a unique skillset, which can help me stand out.

One shift I've had in determining what projects I should focus on is moving towards projects that are easily showcase-able, and develop a variety of skills, with an emphasis on fundamentals. While my long term goal is going into ML/AI, right now it's more important for me to cast a wide net, instead of restricting myself to projects that are tunnel visioned on one skill. Furthermore, working on fundamentals means there will be more content out there that can speed up the learning process.

While I'm still fleshing out the specifics of my plan, it goes something like this: build an app on AT Proto that allows users to view/upload videos. This allows me to develop web development skills, such as building a frontend, and backend technologies such as authorization flows and databases. I can then deploy my app using cloud technologies like AWS or Google Cloud. At this point, my plan becomes a bit fuzzy, but because of the way AT Protocol works I should be able to obtain large amounts of data using the protocol's Firehose. Using this, I can develop my data engineering skills, data analysis skills, or even use the data for a machine learning project. I don't have a concrete plan yet because I'm still learning how the protocol works, but I've already learned a lot and come up with ideas within my first week of diving into the world of AT Proto.

What I've Done so Far

This week I started building the app, following along with BlueSky's quick start guide. My goal was, to develop an understanding of AT Protocol, so I avoided copy-pasting code from their example and tried to understand all of the code I was using myself. I also tried to avoid using code from BlueSky that I thought I wouldn't need at first, to force me to think critically about what each piece of code does. Understanding the code was crucial when it didn't work as expected, requiring me to make adjustments.

The first step was to allow users to authenticate. This required me to build a frontend that I could use to interface with the app, and a backend that would authorize the app to read/write to the user's PDS (Personal Data Server). It took me a little while, but I was able to accomplish it this week. In a nutshell, how it works is when the express.js server is launched, the AT Proto OAuthClient is created with a database storing the users session info and the state. The app is given the context, which contains the database, logger and authorization client, which allow different components to have access to them. A router is created and it begins to listen on the designated port for any requests. The router handles whenever the server receives a request.

My Next Step

Now that I've set up the authentication process, I plan to deviate from what the example app does (post user statuses), and allow users to post/view videos. However, accomplishing this will require me to deepen my understanding of AT Proto. For example, records must have a defined lexicon, or structure, so I will need to determine if I will create my own custom lexicon, or uses someone else's. Using an existing lexicon will allow data posted on my app to be used by other apps, and vice versa. However, there doesn't appear to be a standard video lexicon in the space currently, meaning my decision won't be easy.

Conclusion

Choosing and building a project can feel overwhelming for someone with limited experience– much like the job search process itself. However, the more time I spend on this journey the more comfortable I feel with ambiguity, and less overwhelmed I feel diving into unexplored territory. I am moving forward with consistency and patience in mind.