Automation of the Bluesky account(s)

[joyeecheung]

Converted from nodejs/admin#932 - Bluesky has a free API and an Node.js SDK which I think we can explore, it would be nice for the community to curate content and submit them here via GitHub PR, reviewed here, then get published to the official Bluesky account via automation.

I asked a while back on Bluesky about what automations other projects use, it seems the most popular one is https://github.com/myConsciousness/bluesky-post - however on a closer look it seems only the post function would be useful for our use case, but the Node.js SDK of AT protocol provides handy functionalities like repost/quote post/reply/like etc. and it only takes a couple of lines to do it. For example I have some toy snippets here where you can see how simple it is to do things https://github.com/joyeecheung/bluesky-playground/ - so I wonder if we should just maintain our own GitHub actions here to automate actions on the official Bluesky account.

We could also consider publish our actions to the GitHub marketplace when we have something that works well, and share it with other projects that want to automate their official accounts similarly. I think it would be lovely if the Node.js project can contribute some stuff back to the Bluesky ecosystem (which runs on Node.js, I love how meta it is).

[AugustinMauroy]

why not having a posts dir in this repo with md file that will automatically make a post. It reduces the foundation's workload.
It could also allow contributors to pass on announcements more easily, such as new content in the learn section. Or a post to discover a new feature (post separate from the release).

[joyeecheung]

@AugustinMauroy I think that's included in the OP already (i.e. post automation) :)

[joyeecheung]

Some ideas besides post/repost/quote post/reply:

• I see people have started at-mentioning nodejs.org. We should ideally have some automation to pipe the notifications to some slack channel so that those don't go unnoticed (maybe pipe DMs to a private channel, too?)
• When new collaborators join we can have some automation to add them to a starter pack (if they have Bluesky in their GitHub profile)

[joyeecheung]

I created an app password for the nodejs.org account and saved it to the TSC 1Password. Will add it to this repo later for future GitHub actions when I figure out the right place to save it.

Meanwhile, I worked out some snippets to perform post, repost, quote post and reply. I haven't done anything for proper embedding (thumbnails, images, etc.) yet. But I think they are probably fine to be sent over to this repository now. Will do that later.

https://github.com/joyeecheung/bluesky-playground/tree/main

[joyeecheung]

Managed to develop something: see https://bsky.app/profile/pixel-voyager.bsky.social which is sending post/reply/quote post/reposts from PRs merged in https://github.com/joyeecheung/bluesky-playground/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed - there are currently no docs, no tests, but I can add some as I PR them in here..

[targos]

I see people have started at-mentioning nodejs.org. We should ideally have some automation to pipe the notifications to some slack channel so that those don't go unnoticed

Maybe, but I'm afraid this will be extremely noisy. Many people at-mention the account instead of writing "Node.js", not to really to get our attention

maybe pipe DMs to a private channel, too?

Currently, nobody can DM the account

[mhdawson]

Many people at-mention the account instead of writing "Node.js", not to really to get our attention

We might want to document how we prefer people engaging with the Node.js account somewhere. Not sure if people would necessarily see it but it might help.

[joyeecheung]

I haven't read through https://github.com/bluesky-social/feed-generator yet but my hunch is that we can just implement a simple algorithm to generate a feed that include all the at-mentions of nodejs.org, and whoever interested in adding that feed to their bluesky tabs can just do so.