Generation X Music Feed for Bluesky

A standalone example implementation of a custom Bluesky feed generator that surfaces posts about Generation X era music - grunge, alternative rock, shoegaze, britpop, and 90s music culture.

This project was originally forked from MarshalX/bluesky-feed-generator and has been modified to serve as a working example of a topic-based feed with custom filtering logic.

Live Feed: Generation X Music on Bluesky

Feed URL: https://bsky-feeds.9600baud.net

What Gets Included

This feed uses simple regular expressions and and filtering logic to build a feed. This still leads to a lot of false positives and would need work for a more accurate content feed.

Band & Artist Matches

• Clear matches: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies, Sonic Youth, and 60+ other bands
• Ambiguous matches: Bands with common English names (Blur, Hole, Garbage, Ride, No Doubt) only match when paired with music context words

Genre & Era Terms

• Genres: Grunge, shoegaze, britpop, trip-hop, post-punk, college rock, lo-fi
• Era terms: "90s music", "90s rock", "generation x music", "nineties alternative"

Smart Features

Acronym Expansion - Automatically expands common band acronyms:

• NIN → Nine Inch Nails
• STP → Stone Temple Pilots
• RHCP → Red Hot Chili Peppers
• RATM → Rage Against the Machine
• AIC → Alice in Chains

Context-Aware Filtering - Generic words like "alternative", "punk", "blur", or "no doubt" only match when music context is present (words like "music", "band", "album", "song", "concert", etc.)

Word Boundary Matching - Prevents false matches (e.g., "blur" won't match "blurry photo")

Content Exclusions - Filters out political content and off-topic posts

Filter Logic

The filtering algorithm works in stages:

1. Synonym expansion - Expands acronyms to full band names
2. Political filter - Excludes posts containing political keywords
3. Music detection - Checks for:
   • Clear band/genre matches (high confidence)
   • Ambiguous matches + music context (validated matches)
   • Era-specific terms (90s music, etc.)

Posts must match at least one criterion to be included in the feed.

Technical Details

Built with:

• AT Protocol SDK for Python
• Python 3.11+
• SQLite database
• Docker for deployment
• Waitress WSGI server

Customizing for Your Own Feed

Want to create your own topic-based feed? This codebase is a great starting point.

Quick Start

1. Clone and setup

   git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO.git
   cd YOUR_REPO
   python3 -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate
   pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Configure your feed

   cp .env.example .env
   # Edit .env with your credentials and feed details

3. Customize the filter

   Edit server/data_filter.py to implement your filtering logic. The current implementation provides:

   • has_word_match() - Word boundary matching helper
   • Synonym/acronym expansion
   • Context-aware filtering
   • Content exclusions

4. Test locally

   flask --debug run
   # Server runs on http://localhost:5000

5. Publish your feed

   python publish_feed.py
   # Copy the FEED_URI to your .env file

Filter Customization Tips

• Clear vs Ambiguous: Separate unique terms from common English words
• Context validation: Require topic-specific context for ambiguous terms
• Synonym maps: Expand abbreviations and acronyms before matching
• Exclusion lists: Filter out off-topic content early
• Word boundaries: Use regex \b patterns to prevent substring matches

See server/data_filter.py for the complete implementation example.

Deployment

For production deployment with Docker, Nginx, SSL, and CI/CD:

See INSTALL.md for comprehensive installation documentation including:

• Docker containerization
• GitHub Actions CI/CD
• Server setup and security
• Monitoring and troubleshooting
• Database management

Architecture

Bluesky Firehose → Filter Logic → SQLite DB → Feed API → Bluesky App
                     ↓
              - Synonym expansion
              - Content exclusions
              - Context validation
              - Word boundary matching

Development

Project Structure

├── server/
│   ├── data_filter.py      # Feed filtering logic
│   ├── algos/              # Feed generation algorithms
│   ├── database.py         # Database models
│   └── app.py             # Flask application
├── publish_feed.py         # Feed publishing script
├── .env                    # Configuration (not in git)
├── INSTALL.md             # Installation guide
├── CLAUDE.md              # Deployment documentation
└── README.md              # This file

Running Tests

# Run development server with debugging
flask --debug run

# Monitor logs
docker-compose logs -f

# Test endpoints
curl http://localhost:5000/.well-known/did.json

Database Management

# Backup database
cp feed_database.db feed_database.db.backup-$(date +%Y%m%d)

# Reset database (clears all posts)
rm feed_database.db
touch feed_database.db
chmod 666 feed_database.db

Known Issues

See INSTALL.md for detailed issue tracking and solutions.

Contributing

This is a personal feed generator project, but feel free to:

• Fork it for your own topic-based feed
• Report issues or bugs
• Submit pull requests with improvements

License

MIT

Credits

• Originally forked from MarshalX/bluesky-feed-generator by MarshalX
• Built with AT Protocol SDK for Python
• Deployed at bsky-feeds.9600baud.net

Support

For technical questions about:

• Installation: See INSTALL.md
• Deployment: See CLAUDE.md
• AT Protocol: See AT Protocol Documentation
• Feed Generators: See Bluesky Feed Generator Docs