Skywriter Turns Bluesky Threads Into ‘Articles’ for Easy Reading

I never enjoyed the experience of reading long threads on Twitter (the same goes for X), and I don't think any of its successors have done a particularly great job making them easier to read. Since Bluesky is the preferred home of X-pats, I've been reading a number of lengthy threads there, and after I encountered multiple threads with 10+ posts, I went looking for a tool that would make it easier to follow along. That's when I came across Skywriter, a utility that unrolls long threads and converts them into an article format.

Skywriter turns Bluesky threads into articles

The next time you encounter a long thread on Bluesky, drop the link to the first post on Skywriter's website and it'll convert the entire thread into an article for you. Or, even better, just tag @unroll.skywriter.blue in the replies and use the word "unroll" without quotes in your post. You don't need to create an account with Skywriter, but if you do, you'll be able to keep a list of all the threads you've saved. (That said, you can achieve the same thing by saving the URLs of the pages Skywriter generates too, so there really is no need to create an account at this point.) This tool is quite similar to the excellent Thread Reader bot that would convert Twitter threads into articles.

Skywriter is quite fast at doing its job and the webpage it generates is reader-friendly. It'll even match your device's current theme—if you're using dark mode, your Skywriter article will use dark mode, too. On the webpage, you can see the author's profile picture, Bluesky username, and display name. Below that is the number of likes the post has received, a link to the original thread, and a button to save it to your Skywriter account. You can see a sample of a Bluesky post turned Skywriter article here. (If you're curious about the original, check this link.)

With some threads on Bluesky, I was unable to see individual posts because they contained keywords that I muted. Skywriter was able to find and save even these posts, which allowed me to read the entire thread. I'd muted those keywords to avoid reactionary takes, but in the context of an insightful, long thread, I actually wanted to see those posts. Skywriter fills that gap and allows me to read the things I'm interested in, even if those posts are hidden from my Bluesky feed.

Skywriter isn't perfect

My only complaint is that Skywriter is fairly literal in its task. Quite often, the thread creator is forced to stop a post mid-sentence or add numbers to the end of each post. When you're reading it on Bluesky, it makes sense because of the 300-character limit on each post. On Skywriter's website, these gaps look quite odd. It starts every post in a new paragraph, and, due to its literal conversion, you'll see paragraphs that start in the middle of a sentence, or numbers appearing in between posts. 

This isn't Skywriter's fault per se, because its job is to make posts easier to read, without changing the original content, but it does make the reading experience less than ideal at times. Otherwise, it does a stellar job at loading text and media content in the right places, and is a useful tool to add to your Bluesky collection.

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