I was thinking more that they have a custom lexicon, so you could create and view WhiteWind records without using their app at all. That your content lives on the ATProto network, and more specifically in your own database which you can migrate and/or run yourself. This would seem to align with your loose coupling line of thinking
https://github.com/whtwnd/whitewind-blog/tree/main/lexicons/...
So if I am a bsky.social user the content gets stored in their database, and if I have a PDS the content gets stored in my PDS?
Yep. If you look at the repo browser for @bnewbold.net, you can see his blogposts: https://atproto-browser.vercel.app/at/did:plc:44ybard66vv44z...
Some more interesting breadcrumbs (what does it take to implement a repo)
My understanding is that your content gets stored in your database, regardless of PDS host. Bluesky hosts most PDS
I believe each user gets a dedicated sqlite database, or at least a dedicated repo. I recall reading somewhere about the implementation moving to use sqlite
"My" instance of sqlite that they host?
yeah, that is my understanding, if I understand your question correctly.
Of course it is all hidden from view, there is a merkle tree involved, and you probably want to use a higher level client than SQL
This talks about why SQLite and not Postgres
https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/discussions/2287
Repository spec:
https://atproto.com/specs/repository
Small program to export:
https://github.com/bluesky-social/cookbook/tree/main/go-repo...
If I understand what's going on with WhiteWind it's taking advantage of another dimension of federation which the "fediverse" doesn't address, which is identity. It seems it's a blog service that is linked to my ATProto account that anyone can use so long as they have one.
I'll make the case that the fediverse style of federation has a low level of trust for this sort of things. If I log on to a service that uses Facebook or Bluesky or whatever for identity, there's always the risk that the people who run the service can let somebody else log in. I've got some trust in mastodon.social but plenty of small server administrators in the fediverse have demonstrated that they can't be trusted.