The question
Pseudorandom number generators produce deterministic sequences from their seeds. I wondered whether people's public replies could make an interesting seed. That was the original Reddit-comment experiment; the current API uses replies on Bluesky instead.
How the experiment works now
The API reads public replies to posts in Bluesky's Discover feed, hashes each reply's post URI and text with FNV-1a, and uses the 32-bit result to seed a separate PCG generator for one number. It caches reply seeds in memory and fetches another post when they run out. No Bluesky account or API key is required.
Public replies can be known, old, or repeated. Hashing them does not add entropy or make the output unpredictable. This endpoint is an educational experiment, not a source of secrets. If Bluesky is unavailable, it returns an error instead of silently switching to ordinary random numbers.
Using the API
The hosted API
documents number, string, UUIDv4, and Bluesky-reply-seeded number
endpoints. Try the
Bluesky reply example: it returns a JSON array of three numbers from 0 through 99.
max is exclusive, and count defaults to
one. The old /api/v1.0/randomredditnumber route is
gone; use /api/v1.0/randomblueskynumber instead.
For security-sensitive uses, the regular
number endpoint
and string endpoint support secure=true, using
cryptographic randomness; UUIDv4 values are also cryptographically
random. The Bluesky endpoint rejects secure=true.
Invalid or repeated documented options now return HTTP 400 rather
than silently falling back to defaults. The public API allows
cross-origin GET requests from browser pages.
The experiment also inspired a Discord bot. See the API source and the companion bot on GitHub.