Fixtures #

Test accounts on pds.e0n.sh, which serves handles under both .mnwb.me and .pds.e0n.sh, and the records that seed them. goat writes those, so there is no CLI of ours to build — it now lives at github.com/bluesky-social/goat rather than under indigo/cmd, which is where go install still sends people.

Passwords belong in 1Password and never in this file. DIDs are public identifiers, so each one gets recorded below once its account exists.

The cast #

mnwb.me is the authoring domain, so the personas live there, each named for a path it exercises rather than for itself.

The first account accumulates data whose DID has to survive. The personas exist to be deleted, which is why only one of them is worth naming carefully.

Seeding #

goat account login -u liliana.mnwb.me -p <app password>
just seed liliana.mnwb.me

records/<collection>/<rkey>.json is the whole layout: the directory names the collection and the filename is the record key, so a record needs nothing of its own to say where it goes. Every key is a fixed TID, which is what makes a second seed replace the first rather than doubling it, and the lexicon check holds the files to their schemas so a broken one is found before a seed is.

An at-uri carries the account, and a container is referenced by one, so the files write the DID of the primary author below and just seed rewrites it to whichever account it is given. Seeding that account therefore rewrites nothing.

What a handle may be #

Three to eighteen characters before the service domain, no dot inside it, and not one of the 1,030 reserved names the PDS ships in packages/pds/src/handle/reserved.ts. dev, test and sandbox are all on that list, which is why the personas are named after people.

com.atproto.admin.updateAccountHandle is the only endpoint waiving the reserved check, so a reserved name is still reachable: create the account under a free one and move it afterwards.

A handle outside the service domains — elliot.e0n.sh, say — cannot be set at creation, because the PDS verifies that the handle resolves to the account's DID and no DID exists yet. Publish _atproto.<handle> as a TXT record holding did=… first, then goat account update-handle.

Creating one #

docker exec pds goat pds admin account create \
  --handle liliana.mnwb.me --email … --password …

The invite code generates itself, so PDS_INVITE_REQUIRED costs nothing here. goat pds admin account delete <did> clears an account off the PDS, but its PLC entry stays public permanently — a DID can be tombstoned, never withdrawn. So keep the cast small and reuse it.

Resetting #

pds.e0n.sh announces itself to https://bsky.network, so an account here is an account on the public network: the relay carries whole repos, which means app.manaweb.* records ride the firehose alongside anything Bluesky reads.

Delete the accounts, then wipe the disk — never the other way round. goat pds admin account delete <did> drops the repo and sequences an event saying so, which is what lets relays and AppViews let go of it. Wiping pds_data first skips that: the directory still points every DID at this server, which no longer holds their repos, so those reads start failing against a relay that believes otherwise. Reusing a DID afterwards is worse than orphaning it, because a repo whose revision restarts below what the relay already holds reads as a fork.

Recreating an account is therefore a new DID and a new identity, not the same one back. docs/atproto.md covers what survives a reset and what a rotation key is for.