Postking getting started

Getting Started

The full zero-to-first-post path: connect, authenticate, fund the balance, onboard a brand from its website, connect socials, and ship a first scheduled post. This is the first skill to run for any new user or freshly-connected agent.

When to Use

Use this as the very first skill for any new user or freshly-connected agent session: checking auth state, funding credits, onboarding the first brand, connecting social accounts, or shipping the first post. Also use it any time you hit UNAUTHORIZED, INSUFFICIENT_CREDITS, or TRIAL_EXPIRED from another skill and need to route back through auth/billing.

When NOT to Use

Not for day-to-day content work once a brand is onboarded and funded — hand off to the postking-social/postking skill for calendar review, posts, blogs, and repurposing. Not for SEO, campaigns, competitor research, Reddit, or voice/quality passes — those are their own skills (postking-seo, postking-storylines, postking-competitor-intel, postking-reddit, postking-brand-voice).

Minimal tool subset

This skill needs 17 tools out of PostKing's 200+, grouped by stage:

Auth

• health — no-auth status check; always call this first.
• login_start, login_complete — stdio device-flow authentication.

Credits & billing

• get_credits — check balance and free-tier status.
• billing_list_packs — list one-off credit packs.
• billing_topup — buy a pack.
• billing_wallet — check the unified credit balance.
• billing_list_tiers — list subscription tiers.
• billing_subscribe — start a subscription.

Brand onboarding

• onboard_brand — crawl a website, analyze audience, generate themes.
• create_brand — manual brand creation without a website crawl.
• get_onboarding_status — poll onboarding progress.
• list_themes — review generated content themes.

Socials

• check_social_accounts — see what's connected.
• generate_connect_link — get an OAuth link for a platform.

First post

• generate_post — draft post variations.
• approve_post — lock in a variation and schedule.

(whoami and logout are also available if you need to confirm identity or sign out, but aren't required for this flow.)

Prerequisites

None — this is the first skill to run when connecting to PostKing.

Pacing rules

This is a multi-stage flow. Obey these rules throughout:

1. One stage per turn. Run the current stage, present the result, then stop and wait for the user. Don't chain into the next stage in the same turn, even on success.
2. Never reuse remembered values without confirmation. Brand names, website URLs, social handles, theme choices, and post topics must be reconfirmed in the current conversation — don't pull them from prior sessions or long-term memory without surfacing the value and asking the user to confirm it.
3. Fail loudly, never silently retry. If a stage fails, stop, surface the error verbatim, and ask the user how to proceed.
4. Zero brands means onboarding is required, not optional — never skip ahead to other work without a brand.

Procedure

Step 1 — Check health first

Call health. This requires no authentication and tells you whether you're already logged in and what to do next. Always start here.

• Remote/OAuth transport (client connected to https://mcp.postking.app via an OAuth-aware host): health reports that authentication already happened at the connector. Do not call login_start — there's no in-session login step.
• Local stdio transport: health reports whether a token is stored. If not, continue to Step 2.

Step 2 — Authenticate (stdio only)

Call login_start. It returns a URL and a short code and begins polling on its own — the tool call itself waits for the browser approval step and reports success or timeout; you don't need a separate confirmation turn.

Show the URL and code to the user verbatim (no paraphrasing or redaction) and tell them to open it and approve. Use login_complete only if your client's flow separates "start" from "poll" — most stdio clients handle both in one login_start call.

Step 3 — Check credits

Call get_credits (detail: "short" for just the number, "full" for complete billing context).

• Healthy balance → continue to Step 5 (brand onboarding).
• 0, or a later operation returns INSUFFICIENT_CREDITS → go to Step 4.

Step 4 — Fund the balance

Ask the user once which they prefer: a one-off credit pack (agent-native default, instant off-session charge) or a subscription.

One-off pack:

1. billing_list_packs — SKUs agent_4/agent_5/agent_25/agent_50 = $4/160cr, $5/220cr, $25/1200cr, $50/2600cr. The $5 pack covers a full demo run (a week of posts + SEO pipeline + a landing page). Show the options and let the user pick — don't guess.
2. billing_topup({ packSku: "<chosen>" }):
   • status: "paid" (common case, card on file) — instant off-session charge; response includes the new balance. Done immediately, do not poll.
   • checkoutUrl returned (no card on file) — present the URL, have the user complete Stripe Checkout, then poll billing_wallet every few seconds (cap ~5 minutes) until credits rises by the expected amount. Hosted Checkout sessions expire after ~30 minutes of inactivity — call billing_topup again for a fresh URL if that happens.

Subscription:

1. billing_list_tiers — GROWTH / PRO / ENTERPRISE. Ask which tier.
2. billing_subscribe({ tier, interval }) (interval: "month" or "year") — returns a checkoutUrl. Human-completion is the cleanest path: the user completes Checkout, the webhook provisions the account (grants credits, activates the plan).
3. Poll billing_wallet (or get_credits) every few seconds (cap ~5 minutes) until the subscription is active. The agent spends from the same unified User.credits pool either way — there's no separate agent wallet.

Step 5 — Onboard a brand

• get_onboarding_status (or check via health/prior context) to see whether a brand already exists. If the user has zero brands, onboarding is required — don't proceed to anything else.
• If zero brands: ask the user two questions in the current conversation, one at a time if the UI supports it — (1) "What's the name of the brand?", (2) "What's the website URL to analyze?" If a plausible value exists from prior context, surface it as a suggestion only ("Last time you mentioned acme.com — still right, or different?") and wait for explicit confirmation. Never onboard silently on remembered values.
• onboard_brand({ websiteUrl, name }) — crawls the site, analyzes audience, generates themes. Typically 30–90s.
• Or create_brand({ name, description, tone, audience }) for manual setup without a crawl.
• get_onboarding_status({ brandId }) — poll until analysis/theme generation finishes.
• list_themes({ brandId }) — surface the generated themes (titles + one-line gloss each) and ask the user whether to keep, edit, or regenerate. Don't proceed silently.
• If the user already has ≥1 brand with none active, don't auto-onboard — ask which existing brand to use, or whether to add a new one.

Deeper brand & theme editing (optional, outside this skill's minimal subset) — get_brand_info for the full audience/positioning reveal, edit_theme/delete_theme/generate_themes for individual theme edits or regeneration. These are covered in the postking skill; use them there once onboarding is complete if the user wants finer control.

Step 6 — Connect socials

• check_social_accounts({ brandId }) — see what's connected.
• Ask the user which platform(s) they want connected before running anything — don't pick a default silently.
• generate_connect_link({ brandId, platform }) — platforms: linkedin, x, instagram, threads, facebook. Show the URL and ask the user to confirm once they've completed OAuth.

Step 7 — First post

• Confirm with the user which connected platform and which reviewed theme to use — don't pick silently.
• generate_post({ brandId, platform, variations: 3 }) — show the variations.
• approve_post({ postId, variation, schedule }) — locks it in.
• Hand off to the postking skill from here for calendar review and everything else day-to-day.

CLI fast path

If a shell is available, the same flow via pking (npm package postking-cli):

pking me                                          # check auth
pking login-start                                 # print URL+code (device flow)
pking login-finish                                # complete after user approves
pking user credits                                # check balance
pking billing packs                                # list one-off packs
pking billing topup --pack <sku>                   # buy a pack
pking billing tiers                                # list subscription tiers
pking billing subscribe --tier <TIER> [--interval year]
pking onboard <websiteUrl> --name "<Name>"         # crawl + analyze + themes
pking brand create <name> --description "..." --tone "..." --audience "..."   # manual
pking brand themes list                            # review generated themes
pking social check                                 # see connected accounts
pking social connect-platform --platform <linkedin|x|instagram|threads|facebook>
pking posts generate --platform <p> --variations 3
pking posts approve <postId> --variation <n> --schedule <iso>

pking login (unsplit) blocks for up to 15 minutes polling — prefer login-start / login-finish in an agent context to avoid timeouts. For new users without an account yet, pking register-start --email <email> / pking register-finish runs the equivalent magic-link registration flow.

Expected Output

• Confirmed auth state (already-authenticated via transport, or freshly authenticated via device flow).
• A funded balance — instant charge, completed Checkout, or active subscription.
• A populated brand profile (tone, audience, reviewed themes).
• 1+ connected social platform.
• At least one scheduled post.

Pitfalls

• INSUFFICIENT_CREDITS (HTTP 402) — balance too low. Run Step 4.
• RATE_LIMITED — back off using the retryAfter value in the error envelope before retrying.
• UNAUTHORIZED — the stored token is invalid or expired. Re-run login_start (stdio) or reconnect the connector (remote/OAuth transport).
• TRIAL_EXPIRED — upgrade via the checkoutUrl returned in the error envelope.
• VALIDATION — invalid email format or a missing required field.
• NOT_FOUND on the onboarding/audience status — analysis hasn't finished yet; wait briefly and retry once on the user's say-so, don't loop silently.
• Stripe Checkout session expired (~30 min inactivity) — call billing_topup or billing_subscribe again for a fresh checkoutUrl.

Verification

• health should return successfully and report the current auth state before doing anything else.
• After onboarding, get_onboarding_status({ brandId }) should report a terminal (non-running) state.
• check_social_accounts({ brandId }) should reflect the platform just connected.

Next steps

Once authenticated, funded, and onboarded:

• postking — day-to-day content: posts, content weeks, repurposing, blogs, landing pages, visuals, trends.
• postking-seo — SEO / GEO from seed keywords to published articles.
• postking-storylines — multi-channel marketing campaigns (Storylines).
• postking-competitor-intel — discover, register, and analyze a brand's competitors.