GoKawiilEssential Resources for Getting Started with AT Protocol Originally posted on 25 Aug 2026
A number of times now, I've shared links with personal software engineering friends who I'm trying to convince to explore the AT Protocol. Rather than just sharing those links individually over and over again, I figured I'd just slap together a post so I can can copy/paste one link rather than more than a dozen.
I'll update it in the future, and I'll put my most used emoji in these parentheses every time I update it, starting with my current most used emoji for the initial post because there are no rules: (💕👀)
Understanding the AT Protocol #
These are some posts I conisder to be staples of atmospheric thinking. I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones that I've gone back to over and over again.
A Social Filesystem by Dan Abramov - required reading for understanding AT Protocol as a human who has used a computer.
There Are No Instances in atproto by Dan Abramov - really useful if you've ever even the fediverse. I originally got started in Tent which was orthogonal to the fediverse, but right at that same time I started learning about the fediverse as Mastodon and Diaspora* were getting their feet under them. Really good way to de-fediverse your brain so you can absorb how AT Protocol works from a clean slate, IMO. (Hacker News: I swear I'm not anti-fediverse.)
Let's Talk Money by Joe Basser - a deep dive into money and the AT Protocol, specificially ending at the point of ATM (Atmosphere Money) which Joe is one of the developers of. IMO Atmosphere Money is a unique and good approach and I'm hopeful it actually ends up being successful.
This is a section I've added on the first edit of this post, as Spaces are so fundamental to how AT Protocol surfaces data. Spaces open up an entire new category of applications and an entirely unique set of features. Whether you want to build an AT Protocol Dropbox (please be kind to your PDS) or if you want to add Close Friends to your social app (Bluesky please), spaces enables so much that wasn't possible before.
The Atproto Spaces Alpha is Live by Daniel Holmgren - intro point to Atproto Spaces, which is effectively "private data" for the Atmosphere. I know a lot of folks were waiting for this to start building.
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