The Bluesky team has created another app, and this time it’s not a social network, but an artificial intelligence assistant that allows you to design your own algorithm, create custom feeds, and one day code your own app.
At the weekend’s Atmosphere conference, Bluesky’s former CEO, Jay Grabernow director of innovation, and Paul Frazee, CTO of Blueskyfirst introduced the AI application, called Attie. Conference attendees will become initial beta testers of the new experience, which leverages Anthropic’s Claude to create a social agent app based on Bluesky’s underlying protocol, the AT Protocol (or atproto for short).
“It’s a new product, it’s not part of the Bluesky app,” explains interim CEO Toni Schneider in an interview. (In addition to his CEO role, Schneider is a partner at Bluesky backer True Ventures.) “We’ve launched a lot of things within Bluesky: starter packs and custom feeds, and all that kind of stuff. This is a standalone product and it’s the first one Jay’s new team has built.”
With Attie, anyone will be able to create their own personalized feed simply by typing commands in natural language, just as if they were chatting with any other AI chatbot. To use the app, people will log in with their Atmosphere login (that is, their login for any app running on atproto, which includes Bluesky). Attie will immediately understand what you’ve been talking about, what kinds of things you like and more, because Bluesky and the broader ecosystem are open systems that share data between applications.
You can ask Attie questions, like what posts you’d like to see or repost, and you can use the app to select your own personalized feed, personalized to you.
“You control it, you shape it, without having to write code or know how to configure these feeds,” Schneider says. “It’s the beginning of many more people being able to build on the atmosphere.”
He further adds: “It’s an AI product, but it’s an AI product that’s very people-centric… We think AI is a very powerful technology, but we want to make sure that we use it to create things that really benefit people.”
Technology event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
At launch, Attie can be used to create and view these feeds, which will then be available in Bluesky or any other atproto app. Eventually, the plan is to allow Attie users to code their own social apps, as well as create tools for other people.
Schneider says Graber and her team started working on the app a few months ago, around the same time she decided to go back to building, rather than running, the company.
“I think she realized there was a lot more she wanted to build, and just doing the CEO job kept her busy and she felt like she wanted more time,” Schneider tells TechCrunch. “As more time has passed and she’s freed herself up, I think it’s become clear that this is her happy place. She’s an incredible leader and visionary, and we want her to build more things and not worry about running the company,” he says.
Graber says that today, major platforms use AI to serve themselves, not their users, by trying to increase the time people spend in their apps, collecting data and controlling their algorithms.
“We believe AI should serve people, not platforms,” Graber said in his Attie announcement. “An open protocol puts this power directly in the hands of users. You can use it to create your own feeds, create software that works the way you want, and find signals in the noise.”
Graber’s decision to once again focus on protocol and product was followed by the company’s announcement that now has $100 million in additional financing from a round that closed last year. The team hopes the news serves as a signal to the community at large that Bluesky will still be around.
“It means we have more than three years of runway, which is fantastic. That means stability and security for the rest of the ecosystem,” Schneider tells TechCrunch. It also means the Bluesky team has time to address the biggest challenges ahead, including adding privacy controls to the protocol and finding a way to monetize the social network. 43.4 million users.
However, one thing that Schneider assures us is not in the works is any crypto integration, despite financial backing from multiple crypto investors. That’s something that had worried some Bluesky users, who feared the app would be rife with crypto scams or become a payment tool.
“It’s the type of investors who were attracted to cryptocurrencies because of their decentralization, and they were investing in things built on the blockchain that were super decentralized,” Schneider says of Bluesky’s supporters in the crypto space. “This is a decentralized social network, so it suits those who invest in believing in the platform and the opportunity of the ecosystem.”
Instead, the company can experiment with other means of monetization. The team has not yet decided whether Attie will ultimately require a fee, as it is just a private beta at the moment. Other ideas being considered include subscriptions and hosting services for those who want to host their own communities on the protocol.
Schneider, former CEO of Automattic, the home of publishing platform WordPress.com, sees Atmosphere’s potential as similar to WordPress in this regard.
“At the center (of the Atmosphere) is a completely open system, so anyone can participate,” he says. “You can have all these independent, decentralized pieces that work together. With WordPress, that became a huge ecosystem with billions of dollars (over $10 billion a year now) flowing through it.”
Schneider continues: “So it has become very large, even though it is completely decentralized. And this is what we hope, that Atmosphere will have a similar ability for many of these applications and services to coexist, work together and build an ecosystem.”
