This is the home forum 🏡 the sample forum for what an atmoBB forum looks like, the testbed (it'll sometimes run ahead of main), and a place to talk about the internet. If something breaks here first, that's why.

This whole project is built on atproto, which I really think is what makes it so possible. It means you could build your own forum in another language, point it at the same lexicons, and have it just work. Members would bring their profiles and post history with them. You wouldn't be asking anyone's permission or migrating anything. You'd be building on the atmosphere 🚀.

I've been describing this to people: you could vibe code your own forum overnight. Everything the protocol gives you – identity, data ownership, federation – comes for free. You're just writing the UI on top of it.

The notifications story is the clearest example of what that actually means in practice. I shipped the entire notification system in an afternoon. I didn't build push, email, Telegram, or Bluesky DMs. I leaned on atmo.pub – a shared notification infrastructure for atproto apps – and wired atmoBB up as a sender. Members approve the forum once, pick their channels on atmo.pub's side, and I'm done 😴. That's the protocol way 🌌. Hard things become afternoons!

What's here

Threads and replies. Standard board-and-thread structure. Posts are written directly to your PDS – the forum polls until your post comes back through Jetstream, so you see it as soon as the network does.

Rich text. Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, spoilers, links, blockquotes, code blocks, headings, lists. Stored as structured app.atmobb.richtext blocks.

Images, polls, mentions, quotes. Paste or drag an image (2 MB). Polls carry 2 to 10 options, single or multiple choice, optional expiry. @handle resolves to a DID at write time. Quote buttons lift a reference to the original record.

Your posts are yours. Public threads, replies, and profiles are records in your own repo. Delete your account and your posts are actually gone. Move PDSes and everything follows you. The forum's repo holds boards, staff grants, and the mod log – not your content.

One profile, every forum. Display name, bio, avatar, signature, pronouns, and website live in a single record in your repo. The same profile follows you to every atmoBB forum on the network.

Notifications. Delivered by atmo.pub. A reply in a thread you started, a reply or quote aimed at one of your posts, an @mention, or a new thread in a board you're watching. Members turn it on from settings, approve the forum once on atmo.pub's side, and pick their channels there: web push, email, Telegram, Bluesky DM, or a webhook. I didn't build any of the delivery channels myself.

Federation. Give a board a topic slug and it merges thread streams with any board on the network sharing that slug. The directory and webring (yes, a real webring: /ring/next, /ring/prev, /ring/random) track every atmobb forum the appview has seen.

Moderation. Staff grants, a public portable mod log, hide/lock/pin/ban, and an undo list in the admin panel. Every moderation action is an app.atmobb.moderation.action record in the forum's public repo – anyone can audit it.

Theming. Custom CSS, uploaded fonts, a token API and stable class hooks. All built-in styles sit in a low-priority cascade layer, so plain unlayered CSS beats them without !important fights. I worked really hard to make it as theme-able as possible, and there are a few default layouts.

What's not here yet

No search, no RSS, no private messages, no reactions. Notifications don’t cover a lot of situations. There is a long list!

Why

I genuinely love forums. I love the open internet. I love that you can find a niche forum for almost any topic and just go deep with people who care as much as you do. I miss that being the normal way to be online, and I wanted to build something that makes it easier to get back there.

The bet is that the costs stay low enough that running a small forum is something anyone can do. The big piece is the appview – right now you'd need to run your own, but @trezy.codes is working on a happyview-as-a-service (and I'd much rather folks pay him!), and once that exists the whole thing becomes "host a small app, pay for shared infrastructure." My plan is to offer free forum hosting on atmoBB using a shared appview. The honest goal is for this to be cheap enough that cost is never the reason someone doesn't have their own corner of the internet.

Small communities, niche topics, people actually talking to each other. That's it.

The features doc has the full breakdown: atmobb.app/docs/features.

Make yourself at home 💗