Around 2026-08-20 the Bluesky relay marked every ATCR hold offline and stopped dialing. Nobody noticed for two weeks, and it surfaced only indirectly as "pull and push counts are up to 24 h stale". The stats were a symptom; the fleet was simply disconnected. It cannot recover on its own. Indigo's relay gives up on a host after 16 consecutive dial failures and returns from the redialer, and only a fresh requestCrawl revives it. The hold sends requestCrawl exactly once, at boot (server.go:400), with no ticker and no check that any relay is subscribed. So a dropped hold is invisible until its process restarts, silently. Documents the current mechanics, the failure mode, how to diagnose it with getHostStatus and a frozen repo rev, and how to recover. The automatic re-crawl is described as a deferred proposal and explicitly NOT implemented, by decision: a jittered ticker guarded on subscriber liveness, plus surfacing the subscriber count, since the deeper problem is that this was silent. Two things found while writing it, both recorded. The proposal needs plumbing that does not exist: EventBroadcaster has no exported subscriber count, and Subscriber does not retain the userAgent, so "is a relay listening" cannot currently be answered. And ResubscribeAllHosts selects only active hosts, so an offline host is not recovered even by a relay restart. Carries a replay warning.ca539b1fixed a panic on subscriber disconnect during firehose backfill, and the exposure condition is that a backfill goroutine exists at all, which Subscribe skips when the cursor is current. So a caught-up relay never triggered it and a hold whose relays are far behind is exposed on every reconnect. Verify a deployed hold containsca539b1before provoking a re-crawl;efabb677does not. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01PDqoCE1j3njokkZ9b1C5n9
ATCR - ATProto Container Registry
https://atcr.io
An OCI-compliant container registry that uses the AT Protocol for manifest storage and S3 for blob storage.
What is ATCR?
ATCR integrates container registries with the AT Protocol ecosystem. Container image manifests are stored as ATProto records in your Personal Data Server (PDS), while layers are stored in S3-compatible storage.
Image names use your ATProto identity:
atcr.io/alice.bsky.social/myapp:latest
atcr.io/did:plc:xyz123/myapp:latest
Architecture
Three components:
-
AppView - Registry API + web UI
- Serves OCI Distribution API (Docker push/pull)
- Resolves handles/DIDs to PDS endpoints
- Routes manifests to user's PDS, blobs to hold services
- Web interface for browsing/search
-
Hold Service - Storage service with embedded PDS (optional BYOS)
- Each hold has a full ATProto PDS for access control (captain + crew records)
- Identified by did:web (e.g.,
did:web:hold01.atcr.io) - Generates presigned URLs for S3/Storj/Minio/etc.
- Users can deploy their own storage and control access via crew membership
-
Credential Helper - Client authentication
- ATProto OAuth (DPoP handled transparently)
- Automatic authentication on first push/pull
Storage model:
- Manifests → ATProto records in user's PDS (small JSON, includes
holdDidreference) - Blobs → Hold services via XRPC multipart upload (large binaries, stored in S3/etc.)
- AppView uses service tokens to communicate with holds on behalf of users
Features
- ✅ OCI-compliant - Works with Docker, containerd, podman
- ✅ Decentralized - You own your manifest data via your PDS
- ✅ ATProto OAuth - Secure authentication (DPoP-compliant)
- ✅ BYOS - Deploy your own storage service
- ✅ Web UI - Browse, search, star repositories
- ✅ Multi-backend - S3, Storj, Minio, Azure, GCS, filesystem
Quick Start
Using the Registry
1. Install credential helper:
curl -fsSL https://atcr.io/static/install.sh | bash
2. Configure Docker (add to ~/.docker/config.json):
{
"credHelpers": {
"atcr.io": "atcr"
}
}
3. Push/pull images:
docker tag myapp:latest atcr.io/yourhandle/myapp:latest
docker push atcr.io/yourhandle/myapp:latest # Authenticates automatically
docker pull atcr.io/yourhandle/myapp:latest
See INSTALLATION.md for detailed installation instructions.
Running Your Own AppView
# Build
go build -o bin/atcr-appview ./cmd/appview
# Generate a config file with all defaults
./bin/atcr-appview config init config-appview.yaml
# Edit config-appview.yaml — set server.default_hold_did at minimum
# Run
./bin/atcr-appview serve --config config-appview.yaml
Using Docker:
docker build -f Dockerfile.appview -t atcr-appview:latest .
docker run -d -p 5000:5000 \
-v ./config-appview.yaml:/config.yaml:ro \
-v atcr-data:/var/lib/atcr \
atcr-appview:latest serve --config /config.yaml
See deploy/README.md for production deployment.
Running Your Own Hold (BYOS Storage)
See docs/hold.md for deploying your own storage backend.
Development
Building from Source
# Build all binaries
go build -o bin/atcr-appview ./cmd/appview
go build -o bin/atcr-hold ./cmd/hold
go build -o bin/docker-credential-atcr ./cmd/credential-helper
# Run tests
go test ./...
go test -race ./...
Project Structure
cmd/
├── appview/ # Registry server + web UI
├── hold/ # Storage service (BYOS)
├── credential-helper/ # Docker credential helper
├── oauth-helper/ # OAuth debug tool
├── healthcheck/ # HTTP health check (for Docker)
├── db-migrate/ # SQLite → libsql migration
├── usage-report/ # Hold storage usage report
├── record-query/ # Query ATProto relay by collection
└── s3-test/ # S3 connectivity test
pkg/
├── appview/
│ ├── db/ # SQLite database (migrations, queries, stores)
│ ├── handlers/ # HTTP handlers (home, repo, search, auth, settings)
│ ├── holdhealth/ # Hold service health checker
│ ├── jetstream/ # ATProto Jetstream consumer
│ ├── middleware/ # Auth & registry middleware
│ ├── ogcard/ # OpenGraph image generation
│ ├── readme/ # Repository README fetcher
│ ├── routes/ # HTTP route registration
│ ├── storage/ # Storage routing (blob proxy, manifest store)
│ ├── public/ # Static assets (JS, CSS, install scripts)
│ └── templates/ # HTML templates
├── atproto/ # ATProto client, records, manifest/tag stores
├── auth/
│ ├── oauth/ # OAuth client, refresher, storage
│ ├── token/ # JWT issuer, validator, claims
│ └── holdlocal/ # Local hold authorization
├── config/ # Config marshaling (commented YAML)
├── hold/
│ ├── admin/ # Admin web UI
│ ├── billing/ # Stripe billing integration
│ ├── db/ # Vendored carstore (go-libsql)
│ ├── gc/ # Garbage collection
│ ├── oci/ # OCI upload endpoints
│ ├── pds/ # Embedded PDS (DID, captain, crew, stats, scans)
│ └── quota/ # Storage quotas
├── logging/ # Structured logging + remote shipping
└── s3/ # S3 client utilities
License
MIT
Contributing
Contributions welcome! Please open an issue or PR.