Discovery as a Process Enhancer

It’s 3am and I can’t sleep. Getting over being sick and losing sleep over my puppy’s discomfort—poor boy was sick too—my mind’s just UP, and it’s annoying. But there’s only so much doom-scrolling I can do before I feel like I’m wasting my time, so I’m doing a bit of writing based on a common theme in my Bluesky feed: lots and lots of new shit sprouting in the atproto universe.

It’s wild how explosive dev tooling can be. A project launches with some extendable aspect and if the project succeeds, the ecosystem is eventually flooded with plugins, extensions, integrations, etc. Underlying the flood—or perhaps driving it—are all the utilities and libraries developers build to ease the process of building the plugins/extensions/whatever of the project.

ATproto is an easy example. The protocol was established, Bluesky was built, and there innumerable projects being launched on top of it. But before we had Semble or Margin or Tangled, we had all those utility sites and services spring up, easing exploration and understanding of the protocol. And beneath those? More utilities and libraries to ease the production of them.

When I first started using Bluesky, there were a handful of atproto clients available, and a couple offshoot apps for images and video—attempts to mimic apps like Instagram and TikTok. Now, there are innumerable clients, tooling to bootstrap your own client, innumerable services being dreamed up and built over the protocol, and tooling to quickly scaffold new ideas. “Here’s a concept, but let’s make it social.” There’s a lot to discover.

Another example: I love Obsidian. I use it for everything. Every major project gets its own vault, preconfigured with a set of plugins specific to the work I’ll be doing in the vault. And there are so many plugins! And so many more waiting in the wings to be added to the community list! The tooling for Obsidian plugin development is such that anyone can go from zero to plugin rather quickly, especially if you’re unconcerned with distribution.

Which brings me to the point: plugins, extensions, and integrations not only provide utility for improving your workflow or extending your project, but also provide potential for altering or enhancing your project as a whole. When I first started using Obsidian, and started diving into the plugins, I had no idea how they would shape the way I work. I poked around and selected a few I found interesting, and before I knew it, I went from using Obsidian as a notes receptacle to a full blown content management system using plugins like Task Genius. I started creating “context libraries” for books and papers when researching stories I write, using plugins like Note Definition for creating a personal dictionary relevant to the library’s context. I designed workflows for my writing using plugins like Longform. And I use Templater and Dataview for everything.

When I downloaded Obsidian, I was just looking for an attractive and functional notes app. What it became is an indispensable part of my creative work and projects management. Discovery enhanced my process exponentially, and all because I did a little digging when I first started using the app.

So what’s my process going to look like with atproto, now that innumerable services are popping up? I have no idea. 3am blogs on Leaflet are now a thing for me, apparently. I made a quip about bookmarks on my personal page regarding Semble, and while I posted it in jest, I might just incorporate it into my online-life.

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I have no idea where I’ll end up or what I’ll end up using, but damn is it fun and interesting to explore and discover.