How TidySky works

Where the data comes from

TidySky reads two things from Bluesky, right in your browser: the list of people you follow, and the public details of each of those accounts (profile, follower and follow counts, and a sample of recent posts). TidySky has no server, so all the math happens on your device.

Active, quiet and gone

• Active: the account exists and its profile can be read.
• Quiet: an active account whose newest post or repost is older than the number of days you pick (30, 60, 90, 180 or 365). An account with no posts in the sample counts as quiet.
• Gone: the account was deactivated, deleted or taken down, so its profile can't be read anymore.

How posts per day is estimated

Reading an account's whole history would be slow, and you don't need it to tell whether an account is active. TidySky reads the 30 newest posts and reposts and estimates a rate from them, so the number is always shown as an estimate:

• When those 30 posts are all the account has ever posted, the span is measured from when the account was created.
• Otherwise the span is measured from the oldest post in the sample. The account may have posted more before that, so this is a lower bound.
• The span is never shorter than one hour, so a quick burst of posts can't produce a wild rate.

Reposts count too, because they show up in your timeline like posts do.

How "follows you back" works

For each account you follow, TidySky asks Bluesky whether that account follows you. The answer comes straight from Bluesky, not from guessing at follower counts. If Bluesky doesn't answer, the account is marked unknown, not "doesn't follow back".

Why some accounts show as unknown

Now and then a single read fails: a momentary network error, or an account Bluesky doesn't answer about. TidySky marks those accounts as unknown. Unknown accounts can never be put into a clean-up selection, and the next scan tries them again.

Known limits

• Activity is a sample of the 30 newest posts, not the full history.
• The "your followers" views use your newest 300 followers.
• Scan snapshots are kept per device: the newest 10.
• Scan results are treated as stale after 24 hours.
• The daily unfollow suggestion defaults to 300; you can change it in Settings.