Blog publisher lite

Blog Publisher Lite

Publish markdown articles to Dev.to — the largest developer blogging platform — directly from a markdown file using their REST API.

Want cross-posting to Medium and Hashnode too? Upgrade to Blog Cross-Publisher (Full) for canonical URL management, Hashnode GraphQL integration, Medium browser automation, and platform-specific tag mapping.

What You Need

A Dev.to API key. Get one in 30 seconds:

1. Go to https://dev.to/settings/extensions
2. Scroll to "DEV Community API Keys"
3. Enter a description, click "Generate API Key"
4. Copy the key

Article Format

Write your article in standard markdown with optional metadata at the top:

# Your Article Title

*Tags: javascript, webdev, programming, ai*
*Read time: ~5 min*

---

Your article body starts here. Standard markdown works: **bold**, *italic*,
[links](https://example.com), code blocks, images, and headings.

## A Section Heading

More content...

The skill extracts the title from the first # heading, tags from the *Tags:* line, and everything after --- becomes the body.

Publishing

Use the bundled script:

python scripts/publish_devto.py article.md \
  --api-key YOUR_API_KEY \
  --publish

Flag	What It Does
--publish	Publish immediately (omit for draft)
--tags "seo,webdev"	Override tags from the file

The script outputs the published URL and article ID as JSON.

API Details

POST https://dev.to/api/articles
Header: api-key: <key>
Header: Content-Type: application/json

Payload:

{
  "article": {
    "title": "Article Title",
    "published": true,
    "body_markdown": "Full markdown body",
    "tags": ["seo", "webdev", "programming", "ai"]
  }
}

Constraints: Max 4 tags, lowercase, no spaces (use hyphens). Dev.to auto-generates a slug from the title.

Updating an Existing Article

PUT https://dev.to/api/articles/{id}

Same payload structure. Use the article id from the original publish response.

Network Restrictions

If curl or urllib fails with connection errors in sandboxed environments, use browser JavaScript fetch() as a workaround:

fetch('https://dev.to/api/articles', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'api-key': 'YOUR_KEY',
    'Content-Type': 'application/json'
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    article: {
      title: 'Your Title',
      published: false,
      body_markdown: 'Your content...',
      tags: ['seo', 'webdev']
    }
  })
}).then(r => r.json()).then(console.log)

Troubleshooting

401 Unauthorized

API key invalid or expired. Generate a new one at https://dev.to/settings/extensions

422 Unprocessable Entity

Check: title is present, tags ≤ 4, body_markdown is valid, no duplicate draft with same title.

429 Too Many Requests

Rate limited. Wait 30 seconds and retry.

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