Bluesky Moon Tracker is a small Rust bot that posts the current moon phase to Bluesky once per day at 00:00 UTC. It prefers moon data from the Skytime API, falls back to a local lunar calculation when needed, and can optionally use Ollama to generate the post text.

🧶 Also available on Tangled

Features#

Posts once per day at 00:00 UTC with a graceful shutdown loop
Fetches moon phase data from Skytime and falls back to a local calculation if the API is unavailable
Optionally uses Ollama to generate the post text
Falls back to template-based message generation if Ollama is not configured or fails
Supports a debug mode for generating sample messages or posting immediately with credentials
Designed to run as a background service such as a macOS launchd job

Requirements#

Rust 2024 toolchain with cargo
A Bluesky account and app password
Optional: Ollama installed locally if you want AI-generated post text

Configuration#

Create a .env file in the repository root:

BLUESKY_USERNAME=your_handle.bsky.social
BLUESKY_PASSWORD=your_app_password
BLUESKY_PDS_URL=https://bsky.social
DEBUG_MODE=false
OLLAMA_MODEL=llama3.2
OLLAMA_URL=http://localhost:11434
OLLAMA_TIMEOUT=30000

Environment variables#

BLUESKY_USERNAME / BLUESKY_PASSWORD — Bluesky login credentials
BLUESKY_PDS_URL — optional PDS URL, defaults to https://bsky.social
DEBUG_MODE — set to true to print sample messages or post immediately when credentials are present
OLLAMA_MODEL — enables Ollama generation when set
OLLAMA_URL — Ollama server URL, defaults to http://localhost:11434
OLLAMA_TIMEOUT — request timeout in milliseconds, defaults to 30000

Usage#

Development#

cargo run

Release build#

cargo build --release
./target/release/bluesky-moon-tracker

Debug mode#

Set DEBUG_MODE=true to run the template generator without scheduling posts. If Bluesky credentials are present, the bot posts immediately once and exits its debug flow.

Project structure#

src/
├── main.rs             # Entry point, config loading, runtime mode selection
├── config.rs           # Environment parsing
├── bluesky.rs          # Bluesky login and post creation
├── scheduler.rs        # UTC-midnight scheduler
└── moon/
    ├── api.rs          # Skytime + local moon phase lookup
    ├── calc.rs         # Local lunar phase calculation
    ├── constants.rs    # Phases, aliases, and message constants
    └── messages.rs     # Template and Ollama message generation

Notes#

Skytime is tried first; local phase calculation is used as a fallback.
Ollama is optional. If it is not configured or unavailable, the bot uses template messages instead.
The bot is intended to be run continuously as a background process or service.

Run the bot with Cargo:

cargo run

Or run the release binary directly:

If you found this useful, consider buying me a ko-fi!

Configure Feed