Claude Skill: DEV.to Publishing (AppleScript)

Publish articles to DEV.to from Claude Code — using AppleScript to control your real Chrome browser and DEV.to's internal CSRF API.

What's Inside

Skill	Description
devto-post	Publish markdown articles to DEV.to with tags, via the reliable CSRF API

Why Not Just Use the Editor?

DEV.to's React editor has multiple bugs that make automation unreliable:

Issue	What Happens
Tag input	Tags concatenate into one string instead of separating
Auto-save drafts	Bad state persists across page reloads
React state	Native value setters can corrupt controlled components

The solution: Bypass the editor entirely. Use DEV.to's internal POST /articles API with a CSRF token. One API call = article published. 100% reliable.

Install

npx skills add PHY041/claude-skill-devto

Or manually copy the .claude/skills/ directory into your project.

Requirements

• macOS (AppleScript is macOS-only)
• Google Chrome with "Allow JavaScript from Apple Events" enabled:
  • Chrome → View → Developer → Allow JavaScript from Apple Events
  • Restart Chrome after enabling
• Logged into DEV.to in Chrome

Usage

Once installed, just tell Claude Code:

Post this article to DEV.to

or

Publish my markdown file to DEV.to with tags: python, opensource, tutorial

The skill will:

1. Navigate Chrome to dev.to
2. Extract CSRF token from the page
3. POST to /articles with your content
4. Return the published URL

How It Works

// 1. Get CSRF token from page meta tag
var csrf = document.querySelector('meta[name="csrf-token"]').getAttribute('content');

// 2. POST to internal API
var resp = await fetch('/articles', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'X-CSRF-Token': csrf
  },
  credentials: 'include',
  body: JSON.stringify({
    article: {
      title: "Your Title",
      body_markdown: "# Your content...",
      tags: ["python", "opensource"],
      published: true
    }
  })
});

All executed through Chrome via AppleScript — uses your existing login session.

Important Gotchas

• Never start article body with --- — DEV.to parses it as YAML front matter
• Max 4 tags, all lowercase
• Long articles: Write body to a temp JSON file, then inject via JXA (see skill for details)

License

MIT