Overview

Read Bluesky without an account: profiles, feed catalog searches, trending topics and the feeds behind them, custom and author feeds, threads, and quote posts. Paste a bsky.app link or @handle anywhere one is asked for, and add an optional app password to unlock full-text post search.

Tools

Resources

All resource data is also reachable via tools. Use bsky_get_profile for programmatic access or bsky://profile/{actor} to inject profile context directly.

Capability reference

bsky_search_posts _tool

• Bluesky refuses post search without a signed-in account, so this tool is registered only when BLUESKY_IDENTIFIER and BLUESKY_APP_PASSWORD are set — without them it is absent from tools/list (see Post search)
• Searches run as that account through its PDS; the first search logs in, the session is reused and refreshed, and a rejected login is not retried. Failures surface as search_auth_failed (the login or its renewal was rejected), search_login_limited (the account's daily login limit is used up — the error names when searching resumes), or search_refused (Bluesky refused the search)
• Filters: author and mentioned account (handle or DID, also as @handle or a bsky.app profile URL — mentions matches rich-text mentions only), two-letter language code, hashtag (with or without #), linked domain (bare hostname, leading www. dropped) or exact url (in text links or link cards), since/until, and top/latest sort; up to 100 results per call via opaque cursor pagination
• since/until compare against each post's sort time — the earlier of createdAt and indexedAt — to the whole second, inclusive; a date alone is 00:00:00 UTC, so until: "2026-01-01" covers all of 2025-12-31
• Identifier, language, domain, URL, and date inputs are pattern-validated locally before the upstream call. A three-letter language code ("fil", "eng") is rejected, since Bluesky search ignores one and returns unfiltered results; the code is sent lowercased, and later subtags are accepted but ignored upstream (en-US filters as en)
• When Bluesky rejects a parameter, its own explanation is surfaced via the upstream_rejected_filter error reason instead of a bare status code; a cursor it can't decode fails as invalid_cursor, after one request
• hitsTotal is Bluesky's estimate, never an exact count: below 10,000 it is an upper bound on what paging returns (Bluesky counts before dropping posts it won't return), and exactly 10,000 — the cap — means "at least that many"; truncated/shown/cap are keyed on the returned cursor, which Bluesky omits once nothing more matches
• A page that would pass the 48,000-byte response budget on either surface is searched again at the limit that fits and returned whole — budgetCapped: true, with hitsTotal and the cursor from that one response
• Embeds normalize to a type-discriminated union (images, external, record, video, unknown); a quoted post carries its own attachments up to 3 nesting levels, with omittedEmbeds counting what went deeper and recordKind naming a quote that's deleted, blocked, detached, or not a post
• Moderation labels are surfaced as-is, unfiltered

Post tools preserve optional rich-text facets separately from the original text: UTF-8 byte ranges (inclusive byteStart, exclusive byteEnd) and complete link URIs, mention DIDs, and tags. Unrecognized feature variants and additional upstream fields remain visible as literal metadata on both channels. Quoted posts retain their own facets within the existing embed-depth bound. Both response channels include this metadata in the response budget; bsky_get_post_quotes omits the queried target's facets together with its restated text.

bsky_get_feed _tool

• Takes a feed generator AT-URI (at://<handle-or-did>/app.bsky.feed.generator/<rkey>) or its bsky.app page (https://bsky.app/profile/<handle-or-did>/feed/<rkey>, with any trailing /, ?…, or #… ignored); a trend's feedUri works as-is, and Discover is at://did:plc:z72i7hdynmk6r22z27h6tvur/app.bsky.feed.generator/whats-hot
• A handle owner costs one extra lookup (resolveHandle), a DID owner none; any other collection, such as a post AT-URI, is rejected before the upstream call
• A post the feed pinned to its top carries pinned: true; a repost carries repostedBy/repostedAt
• Up to 100 posts per call, paginated via cursor; truncation is disclosed on the cursor, since a feed can return fewer than limit with more behind it
• A page that would pass the 48,000-byte response budget is asked for again at the limit that fits and returned whole, marked budgetCapped: true; a ranked feed reranks on every request, so its posts and cursor still come from one response
• feed_not_found (no such feed or handle), feed_unavailable (the feed's generator did not answer — not retried, so a down feed fails fast), feed_requires_login (a personalized feed)
• Always unauthenticated, even when search credentials are set

bsky_get_profile _tool

• Accepts a handle or DID, also as @handle or the account's bsky.app page (https://bsky.app/profile/<handle-or-did>); returns displayName, handle, DID, bio, pronouns, website, follower/following/post counts, avatar, moderation labels, and pinned post AT-URI
• website and pronouns are absent when the account set neither; optional links carries ordered profile buttons separately from website, with each record's URI/CID, complete destination URL, optional title/icon, and moderation labels (val, src?, cts?). An omitted array stays omitted and an explicit empty array stays empty; the profile resource returns the same fields
• verification carries Bluesky's full verification state — verifiedStatus and trustedVerifierStatus (valid, invalid, or none, passed through verbatim) and every verification a trusted verifier issued, with its issuer, validity, date, and record AT-URI; absent when Bluesky sent none
• The bio renders as a markdown blockquote in content[], since it's account-authored text that can carry its own markdown structure
• actor_not_found when the handle doesn't resolve — resolve the handle with bsky_search_actors first
• The primary handle↔DID resolver — use before tools that require a DID or AT-URI when only a handle is known

bsky_get_author_feed _tool

• Takes a handle or DID, also as @handle or the account's bsky.app page
• filter: posts_with_replies, posts_no_replies (default, excludes replies), and posts_and_author_threads include reposts; posts_with_media (the actor's own posts with images or video, no link cards) and posts_with_video return none
• include_pins: true adds the profile's pinned post, marked pinned: true, first on the first page — in addition to limit, and whether or not it matches filter
• Reposts carry repostedBy and repostedAt; author always names who actually wrote the post
• Under the filters that include reposts, limit counts them too, so a heavily-reposting account can return far fewer of its own posts than the limit suggests; originalPosts/reposts report the actual split whenever a repost is present
• Up to 100 posts per call, paginated via cursor; a page that would pass the 48,000-byte response budget is asked for again at the limit that fits (the pin not counted), marked budgetCapped: true, and its cursor resumes at the first post left out
• actor_not_found when the handle or DID doesn't resolve; invalid_cursor, after one request, when Bluesky can't decode the cursor passed (it answers those with HTTP 500, which is otherwise retried)

bsky_get_post_thread _tool

• Takes a post AT-URI or its bsky.app page (https://bsky.app/profile/<handle-or-did>/post/<rkey>, trailing /, ?…, or #… ignored)
• Replies only — quote posts live under bsky_get_post_quotes
• depth (reply levels, default 6, max 10 — Bluesky's own ceiling, however deep the request) and parent_height (parent chain height, default 80, max 100)
• A node returning fewer replies than its own replyCount carries truncated: true, unreturnedReplies (an upper bound, not an exact shortfall), and truncationReason ("depth" — fetch that node's AT-URI to continue, or "unavailable" — no request closes the gap)
• When the parent chain stops at parent_height short of the conversation root, the topmost node carries parentChainTruncated: true — recoverable by fetching that node's AT-URI as its own thread
• A thread that would pass the 48,000-byte response budget keeps the target, then parents nearest-first, then replies level by level, and cuts between whole posts: budgetCapped and budgetOmitted (posts left out) in enrichment, budgetOmittedReplyUris on the target, budgetOmittedReplies on a kept reply, and budgetOmittedParents on the topmost parent kept — fetching those AT-URIs reads everything left out
• Surfaces the author's reply gate when set (who may reply) and the AT-URIs of any replies the author hid; deleted posts return notFound: true and blocked posts blocked: true
• Reply depth renders on the author heading (### ↳2 Name) rather than by indentation, so a deeply nested reply never crosses into a markdown code block
• invalid_at_uri and post_not_found errors when the AT-URI doesn't resolve; AT-URIs come from the uri field of any returned post
• A feed generator AT-URI (app.bsky.feed.generator) is rejected before any request as uri_is_feed, pointing to bsky_get_feed

bsky_get_post_quotes _tool

• Takes a post AT-URI or its bsky.app page; any other collection is rejected before the upstream call
• A DID-authority post costs one request; a handle costs one extra lookup (resolveHandle), since getQuotes answers a handle authority with an empty list
• Every result quotes the same post, so each result's embed keeps only that post's AT-URI and CID, its recordKind when it's unreadable, and any media the quoting post attached — the queried post's text and attachments aren't repeated on every item
• Up to 100 quotes per call; sort: latest (default) is newest first, and sort: top is descending like count as ordered by Bluesky. The applied sort is returned on both surfaces; pass cursors back with the same post and sort. Truncation is disclosed on the cursor, since pages often come back short of limit with more behind them
• A page that would pass the 48,000-byte response budget is asked for again at the limit that fits, marked budgetCapped: true, and its cursor resumes at the first quote left out
• quoteCount is an upper bound on what this returns — Bluesky's counter keeps quotes that have left the index
• post_not_found when the post doesn't exist or its handle doesn't resolve (an empty first page is checked with one getPosts); invalid_cursor after one request for a cursor Bluesky can't decode

bsky_search_actors _tool

• Returns ranked profiles with handle, DID, displayName, bio, and pronouns when set — no follower, following, or post counts and no website, which only bsky_get_profile returns
• Each account carries its two verification statuses (verification.verifiedStatus, verification.trustedVerifierStatus) when Bluesky sent them, which tells a verified account from a look-alike handle; who issued the verification is on bsky_get_profile
• Bio renders as a markdown blockquote in content[], since it's account-authored text
• Up to 100 results per call, paginated via cursor; pages often hold fewer than limit and still continue, and the last page carries no cursor
• invalid_cursor, after one request, when Bluesky can't decode the cursor passed (it answers those with HTTP 400)
• Use before bsky_get_profile or bsky_get_author_feed when you have a name but not a confirmed handle

bsky_search_feeds _tool

• Searches the provider’s public feed catalog metadata, not post text; returns feedUri, displayName, optional description, and creator DID/handle with optional display name, in provider order
• Always keyless, even with post-search credentials configured; pass a returned feedUri directly to bsky_get_feed to read its posts
• query is required; limit defaults to 25 and caps at 100 through the shared clamping policy. Pass the opaque cursor with the same query; cursor presence alone signals continuation, even on an empty page
• Uses unstable app.bsky.unspecced.getPopularFeedGenerators, which may change or disappear; catalog_unavailable recovers through bsky_get_trending. This is discovery, not comprehensive enumeration
• Feed names, descriptions, and creator identity render as quoted third-party data; supplied blank values and omitted fields stay distinct

bsky_get_follows _tool

• direction: followers (who follows the actor) or following (who the actor follows)
• sort: latest (Bluesky's default — most recent follows first) or top (Bluesky's own ranking of prominent accounts, not a follower-count order); pass a cursor back with the same sort
• Takes a handle or DID, also as @handle or the account's bsky.app page
• Returns paginated profiles (handle, DID, displayName, bio, pronouns when set, verification statuses) plus the subject's own profile summary, which carries its statuses too
• No follower, following, or post counts and no website on this view, for the list or the subject — resolve with bsky_get_profile when they matter
• Up to 100 per page, paginated via cursor. A cursor can lead to an empty page when the remaining accounts no longer resolve, which the response reports as the end of the list
• actor_not_found when the handle or DID doesn't resolve

bsky_get_trending _tool

• Returns topics with display name, Bluesky's one-sentence story summary (description), post count, category, status (e.g. hot, cooling, stale), start time, and up to 5 representative accounts driving each topic
• Each trend is backed by a feed generator: feedUri is that feed's AT-URI, parsed from the trend's link, and bsky_get_feed reads its posts; topic is the feed's record key, not a search term
• No cursor — returns the current snapshot up to limit (default 10, max 25, Bluesky's own maximum); truncated means more topics are trending than limit, so it never appears at 25
• Uses app.bsky.unspecced.getTrends, an unstable endpoint Bluesky may change without notice

bsky://profile/{actor} _resource

• Returns the same fields as bsky_get_profile in injectable-context form — displayName, handle, DID, bio, pronouns, website, follower/following/post counts, avatar, moderation labels, pinned post AT-URI, full verification state
• Addressable by handle or DID via {actor}, with or without a leading @ (bsky://profile/@bsky.app)
• actor_not_found when the handle doesn't resolve

Features

Built on @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core: stdio and Streamable HTTP transports, pluggable auth (none / jwt / oauth), swappable storage (in-memory, filesystem, Supabase, Cloudflare KV/R2/D1), structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing.

Bluesky-specific:

• Nine of ten tools read api.bsky.app without credentials; bsky_search_posts runs through an optional app-password session and is left out without one
• Shared links as input — @handle and a bsky.app profile URL wherever an account is asked for, a bsky.app post or feed URL wherever that post or feed is, each rewritten to the handle, DID, or AT-URI it names before the request
• Single BlueskyService wrapping the AT Protocol AppView, with a 15s per-request timeout, retry on transient upstream failures (up to 3 retries, 500ms base delay — never for a login, or for a failure already mapped to a tool error), and a versioned User-Agent
• No HTML in any error — a block page from Bluesky's edge is dropped from the error data, leaving the status
• Embed normalization — raw nested AT Protocol embed objects flattened into a clean type-discriminated union
• Moderation labels surfaced verbatim and unfiltered
• AT Protocol identifier types (handle, DID, AT-URI) explained at first encounter in each tool's description

Agent-friendly output:

• AT-URIs on every post — chain bsky_search_feeds or bsky_get_trending → bsky_get_feed → bsky_get_post_thread without extra steps
• Verification on every account an agent picks or cites — post authors on all five post tools, actor search, and the follow graph carry Bluesky's verifiedStatus / trustedVerifierStatus on the author's DID line; bsky_get_profile adds who issued each verification
• Discriminated embed union — type: "images" | "external" | "record" | "video" | "unknown" lets callers branch on data instead of parsing $type strings; an unmapped lexicon type arrives as unknown with its raw $type rather than vanishing
• Third-party text rendered as markdown blockquotes — post bodies, bios, alt text, and link-card text render as >-prefixed blockquotes in content[], so a post's own heading or code fence never merges with the server's structure; values that render inline (display names, pronouns, topic names) have line breaks folded to spaces for the same reason. Inside both, the Markdown and raw HTML a CommonMark renderer would act on — emphasis, links, images, code, lists, headings, tags, entities — is escaped, so user text displays as written; URLs stay copyable and structuredContent carries every string unmodified. Each quote ends before the next line the server writes, so a rendering client never folds a post's counts or labels into it
• Bounded truncation disclosure — thread and pagination shortfalls (truncated, unreturnedReplies, parentChainTruncated, hitsTotal at its 10,000 cap) are reported as bounds rather than measurements
• A 48,000-byte response budget per surface on every post-returning tool, measured on the rendered output and cut only between whole posts — pages are re-requested at the limit that fits so their cursor still continues where they end, threads mark the posts they left out by AT-URI, and budgetCapped says when either happened; a response that fits is unchanged

Getting started

Public Hosted Instance

Connect directly — no installation required:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bluesky-mcp-server": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://bluesky.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Self-Hosted / Local

Add the following to your MCP client configuration file. No API key required; add BLUESKY_IDENTIFIER and BLUESKY_APP_PASSWORD to env to enable post search.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bluesky-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "bunx",
      "args": ["@cyanheads/bluesky-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with npx (no Bun required):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bluesky-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/bluesky-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with Docker:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bluesky-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run", "-i", "--rm",
        "-e", "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=stdio",
        "ghcr.io/cyanheads/bluesky-mcp-server:latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

For Streamable HTTP, set the transport and start the server:

MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http MCP_HTTP_PORT=3010 bun run start:http
# Server listens at http://localhost:3010/mcp

Prerequisites

• Bun v1.4.0 or higher (or Node.js v24+).
• No API key or account required for anything but post search. See Post search to enable it.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/bluesky-mcp-server.git

2. Navigate into the directory:

cd bluesky-mcp-server

3. Install dependencies:

bun install

4. Configure environment (optional):

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env to override any framework defaults

Configuration

This server requires no API keys. Everything below is optional.

See .env.example for the full list of optional overrides.

Post search

Bluesky refuses app.bsky.feed.searchPosts without a signed-in account, so bsky_search_posts is registered only when BLUESKY_IDENTIFIER and BLUESKY_APP_PASSWORD are both set. Setting one without the other fails startup with a message naming the missing variable.

• Use a dedicated account with a standard (non-privileged) app password — create one under Settings → Privacy and security → App passwords. The server never needs DM access.
• Search runs as that account for every caller. The AppView leaves out posts from accounts in a block relationship with it, in either direction; it does not apply mutes. On a shared instance, anyone can block the account and drop their posts from its results.
• Logins are scarce. Bluesky limits createSession to about 10 per day per account, so the server logs in on the first search — never at startup — reuses the session, refreshes it when the access token expires, and logs in again only when the refresh is rejected. A rejected login is not retried until the process restarts. When Bluesky answers a login or refresh with 429, every search fails as search_login_limited without a request until the ratelimit-reset time it names (15 minutes when it names none), then logs in again.
• Credentials and tokens stay in memory; they never appear in logs, errors, or tool output, and no other tool sends them.

Running the server

Local development

• Build and run:

  shCopy

  # One-time build
  bun run rebuild
  
  # Run the built server
  bun run start:stdio
  # or
  bun run start:http
  

• Run checks and tests:

  shCopy

  bun run devcheck   # Lint, format, typecheck, security
  bun run test       # Vitest test suite
  bun run lint:mcp   # Validate MCP definitions against spec
  

Docker

docker build -t bluesky-mcp-server .
docker run --rm -p 3010:3010 bluesky-mcp-server

The Dockerfile defaults to HTTP transport, stateless session mode, and logs to /var/log/bluesky-mcp-server. OpenTelemetry peer dependencies are installed by default — build with --build-arg OTEL_ENABLED=false to omit them.

Project structure

Development guide

See CLAUDE.md for development guidelines and architectural rules. The short version:

• Handlers throw, framework catches — no try/catch in tool logic
• Use ctx.log for request-scoped logging, ctx.state for tenant-scoped storage
• Register tools in src/mcp-server/server-surface.ts and resources in src/index.ts
• Wrap external API calls: validate raw → normalize to domain type → return output schema; never fabricate missing fields

Contributing

Issues are welcome. Run checks and tests before submitting:

bun run devcheck
bun run test

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE for details.