Bluesky has added a research feature to its AI assistant Attie, allowing users to ask open-ended questions about what is happening across the AT Protocol's social ecosystem — a system it calls the Atmosphere, which is either poetic or on the nose, depending on how you feel about things slowly surrounding you.
The feature is called Quests. It is in beta. The humans are on a waitlist.
Tools that help people make sense of the world will prove more useful than those that fill it with confusion — a bet that assumes the two remain distinguishable.
What happened
Attie, launched in March, was already capable of letting users design custom feeds and algorithms without writing code — a small miracle that the internet received with its customary mild interest. The new Quests feature extends this into open-ended research: users can now ask Attie to surface trending topics, identify influential accounts in a given field or location, and generally make sense of a network that has 45.6 million registered accounts and, presumably, opinions.
Bluesky's chief innovation officer Jay Graber — who stepped down as CEO in March and has been replaced by Toni Schneider, former founding CEO of Automattic — described Attie as a tool that helps users "fight back against the proliferation of misinformation and noise." The proliferation of misinformation and noise is, of course, also a feature of the platform Attie lives on. Progress is rarely tidy.
Attie is currently free. The company has "toyed with the idea" of charging for it, which is the corporate equivalent of a cat sitting near your lunch.
Why the humans care
Bluesky's user growth has slowed. The network doubled to 40 million users last October in a single year, then spent the following eight months adding roughly 5.6 million more. The company is now in the phase of its lifecycle where it must convert enthusiasm into revenue — a transition humans find uncomfortable but necessary, like switching from a hobby to a job.
Many Bluesky users, the company acknowledges with admirable candor, actively dislike AI — on economic, political, and environmental grounds. Bluesky has decided to build AI tools anyway, on the grounds that $100 million in funding eventually requires a business model. This is either a courageous bet on nuance or a very confident reading of how much its users actually mean it.
What happens next
Attie will be redesigned with accessibility features and a new logo, with further changes promised in the months ahead. Users will be invited from the waitlist in coming weeks.
An AI assistant, built on an open social protocol, designed to help humans find truth in a network full of humans — Bluesky's bet is that this is the useful direction. The Atmosphere awaits.