Chicago Free Museum Days Bluesky Bot

There's a clear gap in the Chicago cultural information ecosystem: no Bluesky bot exists to notify residents about free museum days.

The information aggregation problem is largely solved by existing websites (Choose Chicago, Upparent, Do312), but the distribution/discoverability problem is not.

A Bluesky bot would:

• Passively surface free days to people who already use the platform
• Fill a civic information niche that's underserved on Bluesky
• Require minimal code and maintenance
• Generate reusable data for other formats (ICS feed, embeddable widget)

@FreeMuseumDay on Twitter

• Covers: Portland, SF, Boston, Chicago, LA, NYC, Seattle
• Links to freemuseumday.org for details
• Status: Appears dormant or minimally active on Chicago posts

• No free museum days bot exists on Bluesky
• Bluesky is growing rapidly but has fewer bots than Twitter
• Civic information niche is underserved
• Lower noise/competition for attention

These do the heavy lifting of compiling from individual institutions. Scrape these instead of hitting each museum:

• Choose Chicago

  • Format: H3 headings per museum + bulleted date lists
  • Structure: Clean semantic HTML (<ul><li>)
  • Update frequency: Periodic (2-3x per year)
  • Scraping strategy: Parse H3 for institution name, extract <li> dates

• Loop Chicago

  • Format: Museum section + free day listings
  • Structure: Similar semantic HTML layout
  • Update frequency: Annual refresh (early January)
  • Scraping strategy: Same as above

Recurring patterns (no scraping needed, hardcode rules):

• Field Museum: Every Wednesday
• DuSable Black History Museum: Every Wednesday
• Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum: Every Thursday
• MCA Chicago: Every Tuesday 5-9pm (year-round)
• Lincoln Park Zoo: Every day (always free)
• National Museum of Mexican Art: Every day (always free)
• Chicago Cultural Center: Every day (always free)

Scattered/seasonal dates (need scraping):

• Art Institute: Seasonal weekday windows (Jan-Feb, etc.)
• Shedd Aquarium: Specific date ranges, varies by month
• Griffin MSI: 15-20 specific dates scattered across year
• Chicago History Museum: Mix of holidays + promotional dates
• Adler Planetarium: Scattered dates + seasonal Tuesday nights
• Chicago Botanic Garden: Specific dates, requires registration

Scraping challenges:

• Some sites use JavaScript rendering (need Playwright/Puppeteer)
• Some return 403 on direct fetches (Shedd)
• Date formats inconsistent within and across sites
• Eligibility rules embedded in prose

• Checked data.cityofchicago.org — no dedicated museum free days API
• Not likely to exist in the near future

Free days fall into two categories that need different handling:

Recurring patterns:

- institution: "Field Museum"
  free_day_type: "recurring"
  pattern: "every Wednesday"
  time: "9am-5pm"
  proof_of_residency: "Illinois ID required"

Scattered/seasonal dates:

- institution: "Art Institute"
  free_day_type: "dated"
  dates:
     - start: "2026-01-05"
       end: "2026-02-28"
       pattern: "weekdays only"
       time: "11am-close"
  proof_of_residency: "ZIP code verification"

Normalization needs:

• Convert prose patterns ("January 19-23, 27-30") → actual date lists
• Standardize time formats
• Document proof-of-residency requirements consistently
• Flag when scraping source becomes stale

1. Minimal code required

   • ~100 lines of TypeScript/JavaScript
   • Bluesky SDK is simple and well-documented
   • GitHub Actions handles scheduling

2. Zero infrastructure cost

   • GitHub Actions is free
   • No database (data lives in git)
   • No hosting fees

3. Low maintenance burden

   • Monthly or quarterly scrape updates
   • GitHub Actions logs for monitoring
   • Community PRs can help maintain data

4. Proven format for Bluesky

   • Simple daily/weekly posts work well on platform
   • Civic information is valued by Bluesky community
   • Low friction to follow and engage

5. Reusable data pipeline

   • Scraper output feeds bot, ICS feed, future embeddable widget
   • Single source of truth in version control
   • Easy to validate and review changes

• Aggregator sites already solve this problem adequately
• Users are fragmented across multiple platforms (email, calendar, social)
• Web traffic for this niche is low
• Maintenance burden higher than a bot

• Lower engagement than social platform for casual discovery
• Requires email list building and maintenance
• Subject to spam filters
• Already exists in limited form (My Kid List offers daily/weekly emails)

• No competition. Twitter has @FreeMuseumDay (dormant). Bluesky has nothing.
• Growing audience. Bluesky is experiencing rapid adoption, especially among civic-minded users.
• Civic information is valued. Bluesky users appreciate local information, mutual aid bots, etc.
• Easier to build bot culture. Fewer bots total = less noise, more discovery.
• Lower barrier to entry. Small bots can find their audience; don't need millions of followers.

Choose Chicago / Loop Chicago (web)
    ↓
Scraper (Node.js + cheerio or similar)
    ↓
Normalize to YAML (recutils format)
    ↓
GitHub repo with git history
    ↓
[Branch 1] Bluesky Bot (posts daily/weekly)
[Branch 2] ICS Feed Generator (for calendar apps)
[Branch 3] Future: Embeddable widget

Stack:

• Node.js + TypeScript (or Python)
• Bluesky SDK (@atproto/api)
• GitHub Actions (cron schedule)
• Data: YAML files in git

Posting schedule:

• Monday morning: "Here's what's free this week"
• Could also do: Daily post, weekly digest, or real-time alerts

Example bot post:

🏛️ What's free in Chicago this week:

• Art Institute: Mon-Fri (weekdays only)
• Field Museum: Wednesday
• MCA: Tuesday evenings 5-9pm

+ 3 more (thread 🧵)

Data source: github.com/your-repo

Use YAML or recutils (your prior research interest):

YAML approach:

institutions:
   - id: "art-institute"
     name: "Art Institute of Chicago"
     address: "111 S Michigan Ave"
     website: "artic.edu"
     free_days:
        - type: "seasonal"
          periods:
             - name: "Winter Weekdays"
               start: "2026-01-05"
               end: "2026-02-28"
               pattern: "Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri"
               time: "11am-close"
          proof_of_residency: "ZIP code verification"
        - type: "permanent"
          eligibility:
             - "Children under 14 (always free)"
             - "Chicago residents under 18 (always free)"

   - id: "field-museum"
     name: "Field Museum"
     address: "1400 S Lake Shore Dr"
     website: "fieldmuseum.org"
     free_days:
        - type: "recurring"
          pattern: "every Wednesday"
          time: "9am-5pm"
          proof_of_residency: "Illinois ID required"

Recutils approach:

id: art-institute
name: Art Institute of Chicago
address: 111 S Michigan Ave
website: artic.edu
free_day_type: seasonal
free_period_start: 2026-01-05
free_period_end: 2026-02-28
free_pattern: Mon,Wed,Thu,Fri
free_time: 11am-close
proof_of_residency: ZIP code verification

Either format works; choose based on preference.

1. Audit the scraping targets (Done ✓)

   • Choose Chicago and Loop Chicago are primary targets
   • Both have semantic HTML suitable for scraping
   • Update frequency: 2-3x per year

2. Build a minimal scraper

   • Extract one institution's data from Choose Chicago
   • Test date normalization logic
   • Validate against official museum sites

3. Create test data file

   • Manually enter ~15 institutions with current free days
   • Structure in YAML/recutils
   • This becomes the seed for bot posts

4. Build minimal bot

   • Post hardcoded message to test Bluesky SDK
   • Schedule with GitHub Actions
   • Verify it works

5. Automate scraper → data

   • Hook scraper into GitHub Actions workflow
   • Run weekly/monthly, commit changes as PRs
   • Review diffs before merging

6. Launch bot

   • Post sample messages for next week
   • Seed with followers (share in Chicago communities)
   • Monitor engagement

• Low bar for success:

  • Bot posts on schedule without errors
  • Data stays in sync with institution calendars
  • Minimal manual maintenance (<1hr/month)

• Bonus outcomes:

  • Community contributions (PRs with new institutions or corrections)
  • ICS feed reuse (users subscribe in calendar apps)
  • Potential expansion to other cities

• Failure case:

  • Requires more than 2-3 hours of maintenance per month
  • Museums change data format too frequently
  • Bluesky account gets no engagement (unlikely, but acceptable)

Even failure is low-cost: you've proven the concept and built reusable data/code.

Once the bot is stable, generating an ICS calendar feed is trivial:

// Pseudocode
institutions.forEach((inst) => {
   inst.free_days.forEach((day) => {
      const event = {
         summary: `Free: ${inst.name}`,
         date: day.date,
         description: `Address: ${inst.address}\nProof: ${day.proof_of_residency}`,
      };
      calendar.addEvent(event);
   });
});

fs.writeFileSync("chicago-free-days.ics", calendar.toICS());

Users could subscribe in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook. This is Direction 2 from your research.

Building a Bluesky bot is the highest-ROI first step because it:

• Validates the data collection and normalization process
• Fills a genuine gap on the platform
• Requires minimal code and infrastructure
• Generates reusable data for ICS feed and future formats
• Is low-cost to maintain or abandon

The bar for success is low. The potential upside is genuine (civic value + community engagement). The learning is high (data pipeline, scraping, bot APIs, git workflows).

Worth building.