I built free, no-code Bluesky feeds for dev topics (Postgres, Redis, Docker) — no login, no LLM

The Bluesky protocol enables developers to create custom feeds, which are servers that determine what posts appear when someone opens them. Building such a feed typically involves setting up a database, a hosting bill, and registering an app.bsky.feed.generator record, which is a complex process. However, author Rowan Adeyemi has developed a solution called feedbuilder, which simplifies this process.

Users can input a few keywords, and feedbuilder will generate a real, pinnable Bluesky feed for them without requiring any login, code, or large language models (LLMs). The feed is hosted on a single Cloudflare Worker.

Feedbuilder works by utilizing Bluesky's GET /xrpc/app.bsky.feed.getFeedSkeleton endpoint, which requires the feed's identifier and a limit parameter. Instead of subscribing to a firehose, querying a database, or indexing posts, feedbuilder queries Bluesky's app.bsky.feed.searchPosts with the provided keywords at request time and returns the matching post URIs. This approach eliminates the need for a heavy-weight indexer and storage system.

The main trade-off of this method is that the fed posts are the most recent and relevant ones based on the search results, rather than being ranked according to a specific algorithm. However, this method also offers the advantage of being transparent and deterministic. Users can see exactly why a post matched the feed's keywords, without any token costs or hallucinations associated with LLMs.

The author encourages users to try out the dev-topic feeds (Postgres, Redis, Docker, Grafana, and ClickHouse) and suggests making their own feeds for missing topics.