Red Dwarf#

Red Dwarf is a Bluesky client that does not use any AppView servers, instead it gathers the data from Constellation and each users' PDS.

huge thanks to Microcosm for making this possible

useQuery#

Red Dwarf has been upgraded from its original bespoke caching system to Tanstack Query (react query). this migration was done to achieve a more robust and maintainable approach to data fetching and caching and state synchronization. ive seen serious performance gains from this switch!

all core data fetching logic is now centralized in src/utils/useQuery.ts and exposed as a collection of custom react hooks. theres two basic types of custom hooks, the use-once, and the inifinite query ones (used for paginated requests like feed skeletons and listrecord)

UniversalPostRenderer#

its a mega component rooted in my Masonry "TestFront" project. its goal is simple: have one component render everything. it has several shims to normalize different post data formats into a single format the component can handle. unlike TestFront, it has no animations, though some weird component splits might linger from the old version.

to adapt TestFront's bsky-api-based UniversalPostRenderer to Red Dwarf's model of fetching records directly from each user's PDS and then querying constellation for backlinks, i wrap it in UniversalPostRendererATURILoader, which handles raw record and backlink fetching. to bridge the gap between bsky api shapes like PostView and the raw record, i use UniversalPostRendererRawRecordShim. this way, the core UniversalPostRenderer remains the same between TestFront and Red Dwarf (with the only difference being in the red dwarf version the framer motion animations are removed).

Microcosm#

Constellation#

the beating heart of Red Dwarf, the backlink index that provides contextual information not available from direct PDS queries. Every post's likes, replies, and reposts all come from constellation. Unfortunately i wasnt using tanstack query at the time (compared to its intensive use in the old version of ForumTest) so it is not using any caching

Slingshot#

though Red Dwarf was made before Microcosm Slingshot existed, it now uses Slingshot to reduce load from each respective PDS server. Slignshot

PassAuthProvider#

a really bad app-password auth provider, inherited from TestFront and used in all my projects from TestFront to ForumTest (im very good at naming things). in ForumTest, its been superseded by the OAuthProvider. i havent backported it here and maybe soon, although oauth makes it slightly more annoying to do development because it requires a tunnel so maybe someday if i managed to merge the password and oauth logins to provide both options

Custom Feeds#

they work, but i havent implemented a simple way of viewing arbitraty feeds. currently it either loads discover (logged out) or your saved feeds (logged in) and its not a technical limitation i just havent implemented it yet

The Following Feed and List Feeds#

they wont work at all they need an appview or any feed server in place of a following feed you can just use any custom feed that implements the following feed, like mine (Fresh)

and for list feeds, you can just use something like graze or skyfeed to input a list of users and output a custom feed

Tanstack Router#

it does the job, nothing very specific was used here

im planning to use the loader system on select pages to prevent loss of scroll positon and state though its really complex so i havent done it yet but the migration to tanstack query is a huge first step towards this goal