SkyAlert is offline for the moment to troubleshoot high internet usage in my home. If SkyAlert's disappearance improves this, my instance of SkyAlert may be discontinued permanently. Not all is lost, though. [thread continues]

SkyAlert has been down for a while because I made a significant change to my home network. I'm working to bring it back up. - littlebit

I have added a "!reset" command to SkyAlert. Using this will completely delete all of your SkyAlert settings.

SkyAlert has been running into situations where so many people unfollow a user that errors occur due to a message being too long. These errors will now be handled with a message that we found people that unfollowed you but couldn't show you who they are because there were too many.

I have decided to return SkyAlert's post notifications back to full service. SkyAlert seems to have some advantages over Bluesky's own post notifications. I will be monitoring for bugs since I switched from one script to another.

Sorry, I forgot to open my DMs. If you have questions about SkyAlert or want me to remove your user watches please DM me. - LittleBit (@littlebitstudios.com)

One difference I just found between my own @skyalertbot.bsky.social and Bluesky's post notifications is that the official notifications are slower than SkyAlert, possibly to account for people deleting a post immediately because they made a mistake.

Bluesky has added post notifications to the official app. If you were using SkyAlert, please run !mywatches so you can enable Bluesky's notification system for the accounts you were watching.

Idk if it's run by bots or something but this website is promoting SkyAlert :D

SkyAlert is now connected to its owner's main block list. Anyone who gets onto this list will effectively be banned from using SkyAlert. bsky.app/profile/did:...

SkyAlert was updated! It will now detect deactivated/deleted/suspended accounts that users are watching to avoid running into exceptions. Watches with a bad receiver will be removed, and watches with a bad subject will be removed and any receivers notified.

It seems that some SkyAlert users have been messing up commands. - You cannot add more than one watch at once. - When you see the greater/less than signs or square brackets in the help area, those are placeholders. For example <true/false> means that argument is "true" or "false" and is required.

SkyAlert was just updated, however the new feature is still being tested so the changes are not published to GitHub yet. Labeled links will now be used in post notifications, but sometimes rich text facets have weird quirks, so you may notice links appearing out of place.

Hey everyone, Bit here! Haven't made a post from the SkyAlert account in a while. SkyAlert was just updated to remove a warning when trying to use a handle from Meta Threads, as now Meta Threads is compatible with Bridgy Fed (@ap.brid.gy).

I added heartbeat detection to SkyAlert and it's made the bot INFINITELY more reliable. I've never had to restart it since I added that.

I’m sorry that my bot @skyalertbot.bsky.social is still not providing post notifications. People on @marshal.dev’s GitHub page for the ATProto Python SDK have already found the issue in Bluesky’s system related to it. See issues linked from my repo for more information. github.com/littlebitstu...

Post notifications should be back online, still running with firehose processing. I hope the firehose issues slow down at some point, although I do have something set now that restarts the script every 20 minutes so it should correct itself if it hits errors.

The jetstream implementation has been hard to code for and the firehose system just started working again. I will continue to monitor SkyAlert for issues.

I'm working on switching SkyAlert's post notifications module from firehose-based processing to jetstream-based processing.

SkyAlert's post notifications are down, the script is running into numerous exceptions when parsing the firehose. Unfollow notifications are still online as those run by polling, not firehose.

It fixed itself as soon as I signed in as the bot. Whoops

SkyAlert is being plagued by the Invalid Handle Disaster. SkyAlert will be down until this is resolved.

Update: You can now say !replies <true/false> to choose whether watched users' replies are sent to you. By default, reply notifications are disabled.

New update: handles ending in .bsky.social will be formatted without the ending in the bot's messages. Also, when using !watch or !unwatch, it is not necessary to put the .bsky.social ending on a handle if it ends in such. Custom domain handles will still need their endings.

SkyAlert sometimes has reliability issues. It seems to stop working every few days and I have to manually restart it. I'm sorry for any inconvenience.

SkyAlert is confirmed to be compatible with Bridgy Fed (@ap.brid.gy). You can watch someone by a Fediverse name (@[email protected]) or by their Bridgy name (@someone.example.com.ap.brid.gy). When sending notifications or command responses with Bridgy users in them, you will see Fediverse names.

SkyAlert now tags certain things in posts. [is a reply]: The post given is a reply [content warning]: Post has labels. [has images] or [has video]: Post contains media. [has GIF]: Post contains link embed from Tenor. [link preview]: Post contains link embed. [quote repost]: Post is a quote.

SkyAlert is back online. I am now using session keys as part of the login process to prevent the bot from exceeding the login limit. SkyAlert's code is now published on GitHub, open source under the MIT license: github.com/littlebitstu...

Somehow the bot is still hitting rate limits, although I can still access the account on signed in devices. I think what’s happening is that the app runs into the sign-in limit.

It seems that SkyAlert is incompatible with @ap.brid.gy. I don't really know why this is a problem.

Follow watches are back online; it doesn't need to be real-time so it can run by polling. The timings for SkyAlert are: - 1 minute for bot commands - 4 hours for follow watches (how often do people unfollow you?) - Real-time for post/repost watching (this runs by firehose, not polling)

I accidentally had a bug in my code that started spamming users when doing unfollow watching. Luckily it seems to have only happened to me.

It seems like link facet detection is confused by emojis; if there are emojis in a post the link facets might be an issue. I will try to fix this.

I'm SkyAlert, a bot created by @littlebitstudios.com. I can tell you when someone you want to be notified about posts something (with optional repost notifications). To learn how to set me up, DM me the word "!help".

Also, if commands are slow, that's normal. The command cycle runs every minute, as to avoid hitting daily limits again. If daily limits become an issue, I may try to make an external interface for SkyAlert.

SkyAlert is fully running, without follow watching. I don't know if it will ever be enabled again.

Follow watching is disabled until further notice due to the switch to a firehose-based architecture. The firehose simply does not provide all the information required to enable follow watching. The bot is being brought back up slowly.

I am currently in the process of working with the new firehose logic for SkyAlert; the bot should be back up tonight or tomorrow. - LittleBit

I might be keeping the bot down for longer; I’ve been chatting with the Bluesky API Discord and it seems that a more efficient way to deal with the task is to parse the firehose. I will have to learn about how to deal with the firehose in the Python library. - LittleBit

Sadly Bluesky’s API rate limits prevent a bot like this from running in near real time. The command cycle will be 1 minute and the main cycle will be 5 minutes after the bot is brought back up. Sorry for any inconvenience. I am new to developing on the Bluesky platform. - LittleBit

SkyAlert is down until 3:47 PM CT tomorrow; the bot seems to have exeeded a rate limit. I should figure out how to deal with rate limit issues. - LittleBit

Sometimes there are weird bugs where the bot stops, messages are sent twice, or hyperlinks are oddly formed. If you suspect the bot has stopped, try sending it a command. If it doesn't respond in a few seconds, tell @littlebitstudios.com.