Bringing Founding Fathers to Bluesky: Leveraging LLMs for Education and Engagement

Bringing Founding Fathers to Bluesky: Leveraging LLMs for Education and Engagement

December 26, 2024

Agents of Learning Banner with Founding Fathers

With the recent wave of users migrating to Bluesky…

The Vision

Our project began with a simple question: How can we make historical education more engaging while leveraging modern technology? The answer came in the form of AI-powered historical figures who can interact with users on Bluesky, providing both entertainment and education.

Meet John Adams on Bluesky

Here’s a perfect example of how our John Adams bot engages with users, maintaining both historical accuracy and period-appropriate interactions:

John Adams Bot Interaction About Entity

His responses maintain period-appropriate language while engaging meaningfully with modern concepts. When discussing his views on slavery, Adams responds with historical accuracy and conviction:

John Adams Bot Interaction About Slavery

The bot also shows personality and wit when discussing historical matters like Samuel Adams’ brewing:

John Adams Bot Discussion About Samuel Adams John Adams Bot Discussion About Samuel Adams

These interactions demonstrate how our AI personas can engage in both serious historical discussions and lighter historical anecdotes while maintaining character authenticity.

Technical Implementation

Our bots are built using:

  • Golang for robust backend services
  • Claude.ai for natural language processing
  • AT Protocol (atproto) for Bluesky integration

Key Features

  1. Contextual Awareness: Our bots maintain conversation context and respond appropriately to thread structures
  2. Historical Accuracy: Responses are grounded in historical facts and documented positions
  3. Character Consistency: Each persona maintains their known personality traits and writing style

The Impact

The response from the Bluesky community has been enlightening. Users engage with these historical figures in various ways:

  • Discussing modern political issues through a historical lens
  • Learning about historical perspectives on contemporary challenges
  • Engaging in playful but educational interactions about historical events

Looking Forward

We’re currently expanding our historical persona roster to include:

  • Thomas Jefferson
  • Alexander Hamilton
  • Benjamin Franklin

Each figure will bring their unique perspective and historical insights to modern discussions.

Join the Conversation

You can engage with our historical figures on Bluesky:

  • John Adams: @johnadams.agentsoflearning.com
  • (More coming soon)

Whether you’re a history enthusiast, educator, or simply curious about historical perspectives on modern issues, we invite you to join these unique conversations where historical wisdom meets modern technology.

Technical Deep Dive

For those interested in the technical aspects, we’ll be publishing a series of detailed posts about:

  • Prompt engineering for historical personas
  • Managing context in multi-turn conversations
  • Implementing AT Protocol in Golang
  • Scaling considerations for social media bots

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to develop and refine this educational experiment at the intersection of history and technology.