New project — Willow, a native SwiftUI Bluesky client

Willow

A new project: a native SwiftUI Bluesky/AT Protocol client for iOS and macOS, one shared codebase branching only where the platforms genuinely differ. It started from Xcode's default SwiftData template on 2026-07-30 and has had five days of work since. ATProtoKit (the Swift AT Protocol library) does the protocol work; Willow's own code stays in domain types and UI.

auth and the first timeline

The first real slice: sign in with an app password, and read the home timeline. ATProtoClient wraps ATProtoKit behind AuthService and TimelineService protocols, so the rest of the app never touches the SDK directly — it speaks only Account and TimelinePost. Sessions come from ATProtoKit's session handling; tokens go into the Keychain, with only non-secret restore pointers (handle, PDS URL) kept in UserDefaults. LoginView takes a handle, an app password, and a PDS host (defaulting to https://bsky.social, but not locked to it), and points out explicitly that it wants an app password from Bluesky's settings, not the main account password.

homeTimeline(cursor:) calls app.bsky.feed.getTimeline and maps the lexicon's FeedViewPostDefinition into TimelinePost, driving pull-to-refresh and cursor-based paging in TimelineView.

rendering embeds

A following commit added PostEmbed and EmbedView to map app.bsky.embed.* view types into UI: image grids (a single image keeps its own aspect ratio, two to four lay out in a square grid), external link cards, quoted posts, and the recordWithMedia combination (a quote with attached media). Unavailable quotes — blocked, deleted, or detached — and any embed type Willow doesn't know about yet (video, galleries) degrade gracefully instead of crashing the row. The layout intentionally follows the patterns in the official social-app client rather than inventing new ones.

the sandbox network gotcha

Once the timeline code was in, requests on macOS just silently failed — the app reported the server wasn't responding when the PDS was fine. The cause was the App Sandbox: outbound connections are blocked by default, and the fix isn't the Willow.entitlements file (which isn't wired into the build at all — CODE_SIGN_ENTITLEMENTS is unset) but the ENABLE_OUTGOING_NETWORK_CONNECTIONS Xcode build setting, under Signing & Capabilities → App Sandbox → Outgoing Connections (Client). Fixed alongside a trim of the entitlements file down to sandbox, network client, and user-selected read-only.

logging without leaking secrets

Auth and timeline calls in ATProtoClient now log through os.Logger under the subsystem uk.ewancroft.Willow — handles, DIDs, PDS URLs, and error descriptions, never passwords or tokens.

likes and reposts, in progress

The most recent code adds an InteractionService protocol — like, unlike, repost, removeRepost — implemented on ATProtoClient via ATProtoBluesky's createLikeRecord/createRepostRecord/deleteRecord, each create returning the new record's AT URI so the UI can undo it later. TimelinePost is gaining a cid field (needed alongside the URI to like or repost a post), viewer-state fields (likeURI, repostURI, isLiked, isReposted) meant to update optimistically, and a webURL computed property that derives a shareable bsky.app link from the handle and the AT URI's record key. This part isn't committed yet — it's the current working state of the tree, wiring the write path in before it reaches the timeline UI.