Atproto Repository

AT Protocol Repository

An AT Protocol repository is a single account's entire record store, addressed by its DID. Every record lives at a key in a Merkle Search Tree; the tree's root CID is sealed by a signed commit; the commit plus every block it transitively references are the repository. On the wire, it travels as a CAR v1 file.

This skill routes to per-language guides for Rust, TypeScript, and Go, sitting on top of a language-neutral spec in shared/.

Defaults

• DRISL — canonical DAG-CBOR: bytewise map keys, shortest-form integers, no indefinite-length framing, CIDs as tag 42 + identity multibase.
• CAR v1 — varint ‖ header-cbor ‖ (varint ‖ 36-byte-CID ‖ bytes)*. Roots list declares the commit CID.
• MST — SHA-256 key height with fanout 4 (count pairs of leading zero bits). Node shape {l?, e:[{p,k,v,t?}]}. Keys are /, max 1024 bytes.
• Commit — {did, version:3, data, rev, prev, sig}. prev is null for genesis (though see §divergence). Signing bytes = DAG-CBOR of the commit minus sig.
• Signature — raw r ‖ s ECDSA (k-256 or p-256), low-S normalized. Verified against the #atproto Multikey in the signer's DID document.

Full normative rules: shared/drisl.md, shared/car-v1.md, shared/mst.md, shared/commit-and-signing.md, shared/data-model.md. Fixtures: shared/test-vectors.md. Cross-language differences: shared/divergence-matrix.md.

Language detection

Before generating or reviewing any repo code, determine the target language from project files or the file being edited:

• Cargo.toml, *.rs, any mention of atproto-repo / atproto-dasl / atproto-record → Rust — read from rust/.
• package.json, tsconfig.json, *.ts, *.tsx, imports of @atproto/repo / @atproto/lex-cbor / @atproto/crypto → TypeScript — read from typescript/. Also *.js/*.jsx when there is no .ts present.
• go.mod, *.go, imports of github.com/bluesky-social/indigo/atproto/repo → Go — read from go/.

Prefer the file being edited over the repo root when they disagree: a .go consumer inside a TypeScript-workspace monorepo still means Go for that task.

If multiple languages are present and the task does not point at one unambiguously, ask which one applies. Never mix repo libraries across languages in generated code.

If an unsupported language is detected (Python, Java, Swift, …), point the user at shared/drisl.md, shared/car-v1.md, shared/mst.md, and shared/commit-and-signing.md for the wire format, and offer the Go indigo/atproto/repo source as the most complete reference implementation to transliterate from.

Reading guide

For every repo task:

1. Read the relevant shared/*.md first. They are short and define the rules your code must enforce.
2. Read the relevant task file in the detected language directory:

• DRISL / canonical DAG-CBOR encoding of any block → {lang}/drisl.md
• CAR v1 reading and writing → {lang}/car.md
• MST construction, traversal, diff → {lang}/mst.md
• Commit record shape, signing, verification → {lang}/commit.md
• Library setup, public API at a glance, idioms → {lang}/README.md

1. Consult shared/divergence-matrix.md whenever porting between languages or reviewing cross-stack interop. The prev: null vs omitted divergence alone has caused many hours of "why does my signature not verify" debugging.

Always prefer the official library over hand-rolling: atproto-repo crate in Rust, @atproto/repo in TypeScript, github.com/bluesky-social/indigo/atproto/repo in Go.

The conceptual stack

                       ┌──────────────────────────────┐
  CAR v1 file  ──────▶ │ header: { version:1, roots }  │
  (on the wire)        │ block: [cid, data] …          │
                       │ block: [cid, data] …          │
                       └──────────────────────────────┘
                                   │
                                   ▼
                       ┌──────────────────────────────┐
  Signed commit ─────▶ │ { did, version:3, data, rev, │
  (root block)         │   prev, sig }                │
                       └──────────────────────────────┘
                                   │ data: CID
                                   ▼
                       ┌──────────────────────────────┐
  MST node ──────────▶ │ { l?, e:[entry,entry,…] }    │
  (many blocks)        │ entry = { p, k, v, t? }      │
                       └──────────────────────────────┘
                                   │ v: CID (leaf = record block)
                                   ▼
                       ┌──────────────────────────────┐
  Record block ──────▶ │ DAG-CBOR encoding of record  │
  (many blocks)        │ { $type: "", … }       │
                       └──────────────────────────────┘

CAR just frames a sequence of (CID, bytes) blocks. The same block bytes travel over getRecord, the firehose, and any cache.

Cross-language hazards to flag up front

High-frequency failure modes; full detail in shared/divergence-matrix.md:

• prev: null vs omitted — When signatures fail on genesis commits only, suspect cross-encoder prev drift. Rust reference impl omits prev for genesis (4-entry map); Go and TS always serialize prev: null (5-entry map). Strip the signature from raw bytes rather than re-encoding before verifying.
• TS MST is immutable — When an add/update/delete appears to have no effect, reassign to the return value. add/update/delete return a new MST; the original is unchanged. Rust and Go mutate in place.
• TS CAR reader verifies CIDs on ingest — When a CAR that Go or Rust accepts fails TS intake, suspect block corruption. verifyIncomingCarBlocks defaults on in TS; Go and Rust do not verify.
• Go cbor-gen sorts by struct declaration order, not bytewise — When adding a new cbor-gen struct, audit field order against bytewise canonical order. The Commit struct happens to be canonical, but anything you add must be checked.
• Partial trees are normal in Go/Rust, exceptional in TS — When a firehose event traversal throws MissingBlockError in TS, treat the partial tree as expected and fall back to a partial walker. Go/Rust return a partial-tree sentinel instead.
• Only Go has end-to-end wired verification — When verifying in TS or Rust, resolve the signing DID key separately first. VerifyCommitSignatureFromCar is Go-only; TS needs a pre-resolved didKey and Rust needs the caller to do everything.
• Rust Mst::insert_recursive can't cross heights — When building an MST from scratch in Rust, build bottom-up from sorted (key, cid) pairs, not top-down.

Tools you can call

Prefer these MCP tools when the goal is to compute or validate rather than teach an implementation how:

• lexicon-garden → create_record_cid(record), transmogrify_record, invoke_xrpc (e.g. com.atproto.sync.getRepo, getBlocks).
• atpmcp → create_record_cid, get_record, transmogrify_record, generate_tid against a local PDS.

Concrete example — computing a spec-conformant record CID against an in-memory record before writing a test vector:

create_record_cid({
  "$type": "app.bsky.feed.post",
  "text":  "hello",
  "createdAt": "2024-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
})
→ "bafyreihsh..."

Use this to verify your own encoder output matches the canonical CID without having to boot a PDS. transmogrify_record is the round-trip companion — feed it a record, get back the DAG-CBOR bytes and the CID together.

For record-side helpers (TID generation, AT-URI parsing), the atproto-record Rust crate ships the cleanest reference; the TS equivalent is @atproto/syntax, and Go uses atproto/syntax in indigo.

Cross-skill plumbing: DID resolution for verification

VerifyCommitSignatureFromCar (Go) does identity lookup and signature check in one call. TypeScript and Rust need the signing key resolved separately before verification:

• Rust — resolve with atproto-identity first, extract the #atproto verification method, then pass the Multikey into atproto-repo's verify loop. See ../atproto-identity-resolution/rust/resolution.md for the resolver and rust/commit.md for the verify surface.
• TypeScript — resolve via @atproto/identity → IdResolver.did.resolveAtprotoData(did) → yields { signingKey } as a didKey, then pass into verifyCommitSig. See ../atproto-identity-resolution/typescript/resolution.md and typescript/commit.md.
• Go — VerifyCommitSignatureFromCar wraps both; no manual plumbing required.

Directory layout

atproto-repository/
├── SKILL.md                          # this file — router
├── shared/
│   ├── drisl.md                      # canonical DAG-CBOR rules
│   ├── car-v1.md                     # CAR v1 byte layout
│   ├── mst.md                        # MST algorithm + invariants
│   ├── commit-and-signing.md         # commit shape, signing bytes, verification
│   ├── data-model.md                 # records, NSIDs, TIDs, AT-URIs
│   ├── test-vectors.md               # fixtures
│   └── divergence-matrix.md          # cross-language differences
├── rust/
│   ├── README.md                     # atproto-repo / atproto-dasl / atproto-record setup
│   ├── drisl.md                      # atproto-dasl encoding
│   ├── car.md                        # CarReader / CarWriter
│   ├── mst.md                        # Mst, insert_recursive, diff_entries
│   └── commit.md                     # Commit / UnsignedCommit / signing loop
├── typescript/
│   ├── README.md                     # @atproto/repo setup
│   ├── drisl.md                      # @atproto/lex-cbor
│   ├── car.md                        # readCar / writeCarStream / verifyIncomingCarBlocks
│   ├── mst.md                        # immutable MST class
│   └── commit.md                     # signCommit / verifyCommitSig / verifyRepo
└── go/
    ├── README.md                     # indigo/atproto/repo setup
    ├── drisl.md                      # cbor-gen + atdata
    ├── car.md                        # LoadRepoFromCAR / go-car
    ├── mst.md                        # Tree / Node / partial-tree semantics
    └── commit.md                     # Commit / Sign / VerifyCommitSignatureFromCar

References

All reachable from the tree above. Listed here for quick grep:

• shared/drisl.md, shared/car-v1.md, shared/mst.md, shared/commit-and-signing.md, shared/data-model.md, shared/test-vectors.md, shared/divergence-matrix.md
• rust/README.md, rust/drisl.md, rust/car.md, rust/mst.md, rust/commit.md
• typescript/README.md, typescript/drisl.md, typescript/car.md, typescript/mst.md, typescript/commit.md
• go/README.md, go/drisl.md, go/car.md, go/mst.md, go/commit.md

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: ngerakines
• Source: ngerakines/atproto-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.