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Open Social

Overview

Open Social is community management infrastructure for applications built on the AT Protocol (the protocol behind Bluesky). It provides a REST API that lets your application create and manage communities, each backed by a real ATProto identity.

What is Open Social?

Section titled “What is Open Social?”

Open Social gives your ATProto application the ability to:

  • Register your app and obtain an API key for programmatic access
  • Create communities that are full ATProto accounts with their own DID, handle, and data repository
  • Manage membership with support for open, admin-approved, and private community types
  • Store records in community repositories using ATProto’s data model
  • Control access with admin roles and permission checks

How It Works

Section titled “How It Works”

Architecture

Section titled “Architecture”

Open Social is an Express.js API server backed by PostgreSQL. It acts as a bridge between your application and the AT Protocol, managing community PDS accounts on your behalf.

Your App  ──▶  Open Social API  ──▶  AT Protocol (PDS)
              (REST + API Key)       (Community accounts)

Authentication

Section titled “Authentication”

There are two authentication modes:

  1. OAuth Session — Used for end-user login flows through the web app. Users authenticate with their ATProto handle via OAuth.
  2. API Key — Used for programmatic access from your application. Pass your key in the X-Api-Key header.

Most API endpoints that your app will call use API Key authentication. See Authentication for details.

Communities as ATProto Accounts

Section titled “Communities as ATProto Accounts”

Each community created through Open Social is a real ATProto account. This means:

  • Communities have their own DID (decentralized identifier)
  • Communities have a handle (e.g., my-community.opensocial.community)
  • Community data is stored in a PDS repository using standard ATProto records
  • Membership, admin roles, and profiles are all ATProto records

Base URL

Section titled “Base URL”

The Open Social API is available at:

https://api.opensocial.community:8443

All API endpoints documented in this site are relative to this base URL.

Health Check

Section titled “Health Check”

You can verify the API is running with:

Terminal window
curl https://api.opensocial.community:8443/health

Next Steps

Section titled “Next Steps”