The AT protocol is agnostic of Bluesky or Bluesky-specific content.
Different applications using the AT Protocol can publish records that have no relation to Bluesky posts, Bluesky follows, or other Bluesky concepts. For example, https://smokesignal.events/ is an AT protocol app that produces and aggregates its own record types ("events" and "RSVP"s).
So yes, there can't be any meaningful "official protocol client" (because the protocol isn't tied to a specific app).
However, realistically for each app (such as Bluesky or Smoke Signal) there'll usually be the most popular client (and the one we're developing is "official" in the sense that it's one we put on the app store under the Bluesky brand).
People can build other clients for Bluesky, but more importantly, they can build other apps on the protocol which have no relation to Bluesky (but can still ingest Bluesky data if they want to).
> People can build other clients for Bluesky, but more importantly, they can build other apps on the protocol which have no relation to Bluesky (but can still ingest Bluesky data if they want to).
Additionally, these apps can benefit from the distribution, moderation, and data hosting portability. ATProto allows for shared infrastructure across apps.
Different applications using the AT Protocol can publish records that have no relation to Bluesky posts, Bluesky follows, or other Bluesky concepts. For example, https://smokesignal.events/ is an AT protocol app that produces and aggregates its own record types ("events" and "RSVP"s).
So yes, there can't be any meaningful "official protocol client" (because the protocol isn't tied to a specific app).
However, realistically for each app (such as Bluesky or Smoke Signal) there'll usually be the most popular client (and the one we're developing is "official" in the sense that it's one we put on the app store under the Bluesky brand).
People can build other clients for Bluesky, but more importantly, they can build other apps on the protocol which have no relation to Bluesky (but can still ingest Bluesky data if they want to).