When we launched cdk.dev in 2020, we created a simple landing page for the Cloud Development Kit ecosystem. This launch happened right after HashiCorp released CDK for Terraform. Our main goals were to connect people through our Slack community and share content from various sources.

In the beginning, we built the website using NextJS, with all content stored directly in our git repository. Adding new content meant creating new files and submitting a pull request. This process wasn't very user-friendly, and people often made mistakes. Despite these challenges, community members continued to contribute new links.

Earlier this year, we made changes to improve the website. We moved all our links and content to AWS using Amplify, storing everything in DynamoDB and S3. We thought this would make things easier for users, but it actually created new problems. Now we had to manage a state and deal with complex content submission processes. As a result, we noticed that people stopped adding new content over the past few months.

Recently, many people started using Bluesky, a new social platform. I had created an account there last year but hadn't used it much. When I looked at it again, I became very interested in how it works, especially its AT Protocol. I realized we could use Bluesky's open data structure in many interesting ways.

After successfully rebuilding my personal website using my Bluesky data, I became excited about the possibilities. Within a few hours, I created a new version of cdk.dev that gets its information from our Bluesky profile. I wrote a small script to move our existing links to the Bluesky account. When I shared this idea with others, people really liked it.

Now, cdk.dev pulls all its data from Bluesky. The website doesn't need to store any data itself, and it gets information from Bluesky through public requests that don't require login. We can still make many improvements to this system. For example, we could automate content publishing, create a special content feed, or analyze the shared content in new ways.

For now, we're keeping it simple: if you want to share CDK-related content, just tag @cdk.dev on Bluesky, and we'll help spread the word.