Skyreader update - standard.site feeds, read-it-later workflow, and sustainability

Big Skyreader updates for fans of RSS, atproto, and reading.

Subscribing to standard.site feeds

One of my goals with Skyreader is for it to be a great place to follow and read content from anywhere. Obviously this means RSS but you should be able to subscribe to any feed-like thing no matter how it gets published.

As a first step in that direction Skyreader now lets you subscribe to standard.site publications and documents.

If you are not familiar, standard.site is a standard data format that any blog-like publication can use to publish content on the AT Protocol. Platforms like Leaflet , pckt.blog , Offprint , GreenGale , and more are all publishing via standard.site. In fact, this post you are reading right now is actually a standard.site document originally published on Leaflet.

Here's how the integration works in Skyreader. First, search for a Bluesky/atproto handle:

Selecting an account will show all their standard.site publications and free-standing documents (standard.site posts not associated with a specific publication) along with their Skyreader shares and let you subscribe to whichever you'd like. The subscribed feeds will then show up in your feed list along with your existing RSS subscriptions.

As an added bonus, if you already have standard.site subscriptions from following publications on Leaflet or pckt.blog, you can add them to your feed list in one click.

As @quillmatiq.com put it:

Read-it-later

Now that we're getting all this great long-form standard.site content into Skyreader we need a good way to manage our reading lists.

Ironically, RSS readers are usually terrible for actually reading. That's why everyone uses a read-it-later app like Pocket ( RIP ) or Omnivore ( RIP ) to actually track reading progress, make highlights, and manage reading lists.

As you might have noticed, read-it-later apps have an annoying habit of getting Our Incredible Journey 'd and shut down. Wouldn't it be great if your read-it-later app was built on a decentralized protocol where you could seamlessly move between apps?

So anyway, Skyreader is now a read-it-later app that saves your data to the AT Protocol so you can seamlessly move between apps.

There are three primary features that provide what I consider the basics of read-it-later support: a dedicated reading list with an inbox/archive workflow, read progress tracking, and highlighting.

First, Skyreader now has a dedicated reading list called Saved (this replaces what was previously called Stars or Bookmarks) that you can add any article to by clicking the Save button or using the s keyboard shortcut.

The Saved list has an inbox (where new articles appear) and an archive (where you move articles to when you're done) so you can track what you want to read and what you've finished.

While reading, your progress (how far down you've scrolled) is saved and restored when you come back. The current paragraph is subtly highlighted and you can move via the arrow keys.

You can also highlight sections of the article. Double click/tap a paragraph to highlight the entire paragraph or make a selection and highlight just that.

Oh also, you can save articles from any website:

Browser extensions are coming soon to make it easier to capture from anywhere.

Saved items are stored on your PDS just like shares for full atproto interoperability. Highlights and read position are not yet stored on your PDS because I'm not totally set on how I want to structure their lexicons. Full sync is coming soon though.

Sustainability

Skyreader started out as just an experiment to see how you could build an RSS reader on atproto. I was mostly just having fun and making a thing that I wanted to use for myself. Apparently a bunch of you want that too.

I want to make sure that I can keep Skyreader around. Servers are sadly not free so Skyreader limits how many feeds you can subscribe to and how many web articles you can save in a month. Once we exit beta I'll add a way to subscribe directly to Skyreader to get increased limits and support ongoing development.

In the meantime, if you'd like to help support the development of Skyreader (along with other atproto projects I work on like Skyboard ) and get increased limits you can support me directly on GitHub. I would appreciate it very much!

Next Up

Skyreader is starting to become a complete reading environment: subscribe to anything (RSS, standard.site, more coming soon), save and manage your reading list, and control your data on atproto. Browser extensions, more integrations, and full PDS sync for highlights and reading position coming soon.

Let me know what other features you'd like to see. You can use either GitHub issues or the Skyboard issue board . And if you'd like to help keep Skyreader sustainable, GitHub Sponsors directly funds server costs and ongoing development.

Happy reading!