iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

BIG SonaSky Ref update including a couple of much-requested features! tl;dr - v1.5.0 - You can upload images TO SonaSky ref (into your repo) rather than needing a Bluesky post! (old way still works though!) - You can now add custom links to your character description - Better description editor

SonaSky REF Changelog
Current Version: 1.5.0

2026-09-19

- Add the ability to upload a ref sheet image directly, for characters that don't have an existing Bluesky post to reference. Look for the "Upload an Image" option next to Ref Sheet / Alt Ref on the character editor.
- Uploaded ref sheet images support alt text for accessibility.
Add the ability to report an uploaded ref sheet image, right from the character view page, to Bluesky Moderation Services (must be signed in).
- You may be asked to sign out and back in once to grant the new upload/report permissions.
- Character descriptions now support markdown links. Links to sites other than Bluesky/SonaSky show a leaving-site warning before you navigate.
- Character descriptions now have a "Formatted" editor alongside the raw "Source" markdown view, with a toolbar for bold, italic, strikethrough, underline, headings, quotes, lists, checklists, tables, links, and dividers.
- Better markdown support for tables, task list checkboxes, and --- dividers in character descriptions.

13910

Reposted by SonaSky

Also, not really mentioned in the changelog, but I did a bit of a visual refresh to the UI :) I thought the old UI components system looked kinda clunky and dated, looks a bit nicer to me now

1151

Reposted by SonaSky

The "Species Requests Form" is... back! (for now) After the last survey, I removed ~10 unused labels (to start). This means I can add roughly 10 new items on the main labeler. Please note that only labels with 5-10+ requests will be considered; vote + gets friends of the same species to vote!

SonaSky Species Request Form 2026-09 - SonaSky Forms

This form will be used to collect responses on what SonaSky species labels are currently missing that users want to see added. Because there is an upper limit to data size on labelers on AT Protocol, ...

3239

Reposted by SonaSky

Astra @astrabun.com · 19/09/2026

I sure do love to drop these in the middle of the night (it's when i'm actually productive and have time to work on and finish projects!) I'm glad to have finally gotten to these features.

0123

Also, not really mentioned in the changelog, but I did a bit of a visual refresh to the UI :) I thought the old UI components system looked kinda clunky and dated, looks a bit nicer to me now

1151

13910

Appreciate the note - I've got a separate open feedback form open for suggestions like this (and anything else that doesn't fit any specific open surveys) - forms.sonasky.app/f/000-sonask...

000

SonaSky Species Request Form 2026-09 - SonaSky Forms

3239

Oh, forgot to say, bot is caught up!

040

Astra @astrabun.com · 12/09/2026

SonaSky 2026-09-17: SonaSky Bot Offline Update: The bot is back online and catching up over the missed posts from today. 2026-09-18T00:33:00Z - sorry all, my job's been keeping me crazy busy. I'm just getting to this now. Restarted the bot, it's catching up.

SonaSky
2026-09-17: SonaSky Bot Offline - Investigating

At 7:08 AM ET, the bot for applying SonaSky labels went offline. Investigation and service restoration in progress.

EDIT: 2026-09-18T00:33:00Z - sorry all, my job's been keeping me crazy busy. I'm just getting to this now. Restarted the bot, it's catching up.
Date Created: 2026-09-17 08:19:31 (12 hours ago)
Last Updated: 2026-09-17 20:33:24 (a few seconds ago)
Partially Degraded Service

1190

Reposted by SonaSky

0.341% of SonaSky users (85 people) have filled out the survey asking for feedback, I'm going to close the specific feedback survey in a couple days and it's going to help drive the decision on if/which low-use labels will be removed. I'll leave it open through the weekend, since it's been ~1 week

2026-09 - SonaSky Feedback Survey - SonaSky Forms

This is a short survey asking for your feedback on SonaSky. There are a couple of required questions and some optional ones you'll be able to skip. The whole survey shouldn't take more than 5 minutes ...

398

Attention all @sonasky.app users! I have a survey I'd really love if you filled out. There's some general feedback questions but most importantly, some questions regarding removal of labels with low-or-no use. **PLEASE** consider taking 5 mins to respond. forms.sonasky.app/f/sonasky-fe...

2026-09 - SonaSky Feedback Survey - SonaSky Forms

22920

I am working on getting a better feedback-gathering system together to handle questions and feedback moving forward. As I've said in the past though please remember that this is a hobby project for me, and I support it in my limited free time, when I have it.

000

about the feature, but this was much less visible.

100

To the point that I had disabled replies on the feature announcement: yes - I disabled those intentionally because I was pinning that post to the top of every feed and didn't want to cause replies to it to then fill up each feed instead of the intended content. I left replies on for my personal post

100

Also, to the user who reported this issue (I can't reply to your post because you have replies disabled, and you have DMs disabled so I can't DM you) - please know all feeds have been scrubbed of your posts and will not include your posts moving forwards. I am *very* sorry.

110

I hope to do better in the future. Thank you for the feedback.

100

Please know I listen to feedback and want to run this in a way that feels safe & welcoming to all. Developing this as a hobby project, I hadn't considered how other folks use this particular social media site and its settings, and that was a big oversight on my part.

120

Astra @astrabun.com · 08/09/2026

[Quick *important* announcement about SonaSky feeds] SonaSky feeds now respects users' "Ask apps to hide my posts from algorithmic recommendations" privacy setting. To the 106 of you who were briefly included in feeds despite your preference stating otherwise - I am deeply sorry. -Astra

Screenshot of Bluesky's privacy and security settings, detailing the setting for opting out of algorithmic recommendations.

"On Bluesky, this means your posts will only appear in the Discover feed to people who follow you. Other apps can choose to use this preference in their own algorithmic recommendations."

Deployed and then ran the backfill script to retroactively remove any content from accounts opted out of algo.

> REDACTED JOB LOGS (on the issue comment, this would allow the user to expand and view the logs)

To the 106 of you who were briefly included in feeds - I am deeply sorry. Please know I listen to feedback and want to provide this service to the community in a way that feels safe and welcoming to all. Developing this as a hobby project, I hadn't considered how other folks use this particular social media site and its settings, and that was a big oversight on my part. I hope to do better in the future. Thank you for the feedback.

1192

Reposted by SonaSky

1 more feat this weekend - in addition to the chronological + trending feeds in quote, I've now added "☄️ SonaSky Comet", which is an alt to Trending. "Trending" shows posts *from* users with SonaSky labels. "Comet" shows posts that SonaSky users engage w/ regardless if posts come from SonaSky users!

☄️ SonaSky Comet
By @sonasky.app
Recent posts most liked and reposted by SonaSky users (not necessarily users who have a species label).
Liked by 1 user

1235

SonaSky @sonasky.app · 06/09/2026

At the time of posting, I'd classify this as a bit of an "experimental" feature, as I may still do some refining on how the popular feeds work.

0140

SonaSky @sonasky.app · 06/09/2026

Time for a new feature... SonaSky Feeds! I'm excited to share that that I've got feeds created to show posts from all SonaSky labeled accounts *and* feeds per species label, both in reverse-chronological order and in a "popular" sorted feed that updates every ~15 minutes.

A screenshot of sonasky.app, which shows two new links near the top of the page, highlighted in this screenshot with a rectangular red outline. The new links read "All SonaSky Users Feed" and "SonaSky Trending Feed"

A screenshot of the species labels on sonasky.app showing two feed links next to each species: "chrono" (meaning a reverse chronological feed of posts from users who have that label), and "popular", a "trending"-like tab for posts made by users who have that label.

15712

SonaSky @sonasky.app · 06/08/2026

[RESOLVED] Network Routing Issue - 2026-08-06 Summary tl;dr - the way outbound traffic for SonaSky is routed failed due to an upstream/provider issue. The issue is now resolved. At time of posting, bot lag is about 2 hours. This should auto-resolve shortly.

[RESOLVED] Network Routing Issue - 2026-08-06
Summary

At around 2026-08-06T10:27:14Z, SonaSky became unavailable due to a network routing issue. Outbound traffic from SonaSky nodes was effectively blocked, leading to an outage.

At around 2026-08-06T12:00:00Z, Astra woke up and began diagnosing the issue, and at around 2026-08-06T12:20:00Z, the policy with an issue was identified. A new policy was created to create an alternate outbound route for SonaSky traffic. Service was fully restored by 2026-08-06T12:29:00Z.

Note: this was not due to a firewall policy change - this was an issue with an upstream provider through which SonaSky outbound traffic is routed.

0141

Reposted by SonaSky

SonaSky @sonasky.app · 23/10/2024

First, I've been dreading the day this would happen again. I still have an open bug with in the ATProto Github repo to see if there's any way to increase the limit or perhaps change up how label definitions get pushed so they don't need to be all in one payload. github.com/bluesky-soci... (2/n)

github.com

Ozone/Labeler Update Fails with "Request entity too large" when adding large number of labels/localizations · Issue #2803 · bluesky-social/atproto

Describe the bug When using a labeler (Ozone), I am unable to add new label definitions or localized descriptions of existing labels once the payload reaches a certain size. Error: request entity t...

1223

Reposted by SonaSky

SonaSky @sonasky.app · 23/10/2024

Important Announcement... Well, I've hit the max amount of label data again. Only this time, it's not because of translations to other languages. It's because there are so many labels now. At this time, I have closed SonaSky's DMs as I am unable to add any more new species. So what now? (1/n)

3648

Reposted by SonaSky

Astra @astrabun.com · 26/07/2026

It took most of the weekend but sonasky is back. And more resilient than ever. And on new hardware. :') Should be nice and tidy now.

2437

SonaSky @sonasky.app · 26/07/2026

2026-07-26T05:58:24Z - Resolved **We're so back**. Bot is up and running and liking/unliking posts will now add/remove sonasky labels. Thanks for bearing with me over the last few days. Browse/check status on sonasky.app

Updates

2026-07-26T05:58:24Z - Resolved

We're so back. Bots are rewritten to be more tidy and efficient, web app is leaner, redis cache used to keep things nice and speedy.

Thanks for bearing with me. Ability to add/remove labels by liking/unliking is back. Browse/check status on https://sonasky.app .

Uptime monitor showing sonasky bot coming back online.

1192

SonaSky @sonasky.app · 26/07/2026

Still chipping away, the label browser (more minimal than before) is back. Next up, bots that handle adding/removing labels.

1110

Reposted by SonaSky

Astra @astrabun.com · 24/07/2026

An emotional last 24+ hours trying to quickly get this back online. I know I'm not beholden to any SLA's or anything, but I know many people like SonaSky and I feel bad that yesterday's power outage seemingly frying the main node is causing problems. I will continue to chip away at fixes. Thx.

3326

2026-07-24T20:21:21Z - Core services restored, except for bots. tl;dr - labelers are *ok* <3. For now, adding/removing labels is unavailable and the label browser site is unavailable while I work on some efficiency improvements to the bot and browser. Thank you for your patience.

Core services restored, except for bots.

Well, here we are. 24+ hours later from the initial start of the problem, I'm still pretty exhausted, BUT... the most important data recovery is complete. Enough to keep the labeler running on a new node.

What's been done:

Recovery for signing key and database for the labeler
New gitops-controlled infrastructure on new hardware with a drive that isn't exploding, with automated daily backups, to make this kind of thing easier to recover from in the future should it (hopefully NOT) ever happen again.
SonaSky Ref data (because it lives in your Bluesky repo, not on my server) is still intact! so you're good there! But in the spirit of making this easier to manage (for me), I've also moved SonaSky ref deployments to be part of the same gitops process mentioned above. What does this mean for you? Basically nothing. It just means making sure it's online and available to use is easier for me.

What's still left to do:

I'm not out of the water yet. This isn't really how I'd hoped I'd be spending my Friday/weekend...

I'd like to rewrite the label browsing web app (for finding a species label). The old one wasn't the most efficient and I think I can do better with that. For now, this service remains offline. As a workaround, if you're looking for a label, try searching on bluesky.
I'd like to test some efficiency improvements to the bots handling applying/removing labels. For now, these services remain offline.

I greatly appreciate your patience as I've worked through this issue. This has been an unexpectedly stressful 24+ hours. I ask for your continued patience over the coming days (and week) as I continue to chip away at getting everything running close to the way it had been. Again, for now, the main impact is you will not be able to add/remove SonaSky labels. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I will have something up as soon as I can to remedy this.

Sincerely, possibly the world's most tired rabbit.

Partially degraded service. Shows that SonaSky Ref is online, the bots and label browser are offline, and the labeler nodes themselves are online.

1121

2026-07-24T18:35:03Z New hardware acquired. Partial data recovery success - most critical data recovered, but was an issue recovering all db records for the db. Ozone up and running on new node with correct signing key. Next: continue attempts to recover the db + once stable bring bots back online

Updates

2026-07-24T18:35:03Z

New hardware acquired. Partial data recovery success - most critical data has been recovered, but there was an issue recovering all database records for the Ozone database. Ozone (labeler service) up and running on new node with correct signing key.

Next steps: continue attempts to recover the database and, once stable, bring the bots back online.

1141

informal update - cautiously optimistic - i can see directories now :v

2121

Updates 2026-07-24T16:28:12Z Data recovery attempt is still in progress. Restarted drive recovery after first attempt failed. Disk read speed is quite slow. In parallel, acquiring new hardware.

170

Updates 2026-07-24T03:35:10Z Data recovery attempt is still in progress. Drive read is going very slow. Next update to come after I've gotten some sleep. It's been a long day.

2181

Updates 2026-07-24T01:20:35Z Data recovery attempt is still in progress. Drive read is going very slow.

2160

2026-07-23T23:17:58Z Data recovery attempt is still in progress. Last updated: 2026-07-23T23:17:58Z

1120

Welp, scratch that. Shortly after coming back online after the power outage, main sonasky node went back offline with a filesystem error. Will follow up as details are available.

0150

And... back to real time! > Currently, SonaSky is running approximately a minute behind real-time. The last post processed was from around 2026-07-23T16:24:30-04:00.

0180

And... back to real time! > Currently, SonaSky is running approximately a minute behind real-time. The last post processed was from around 2026-07-23T16:24:30-04:00.

0100