Post to LinkedIn

Draft and publish LinkedIn posts from the CLI. Always previews before publishing.

Arguments

Argument	Behavior
(none)	Interactive: ask what to post
`setup`	Run OAuth setup flow (first time or re-auth)
`<text>`	Use provided text as starting draft

Prerequisites

LinkedIn Developer App with "Share on LinkedIn" product enabled
OAuth tokens in Vault (run /post-linkedin setup first)
Python 3 for image upload support

Step 0: Check Auth State

Retrieve LinkedIn credentials from Vault via $OUTWORKOS_ROOT/scripts/get-secret.sh:

LINKEDIN_CLIENT_ID=$("$OUTWORKOS_ROOT/scripts/get-secret.sh" linkedin_client_id)
LINKEDIN_CLIENT_SECRET=$("$OUTWORKOS_ROOT/scripts/get-secret.sh" linkedin_client_secret)
LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN=$("$OUTWORKOS_ROOT/scripts/get-secret.sh" linkedin_access_token)
LINKEDIN_REFRESH_TOKEN=$("$OUTWORKOS_ROOT/scripts/get-secret.sh" linkedin_refresh_token)
LINKEDIN_PERSON_URN=$("$OUTWORKOS_ROOT/scripts/get-secret.sh" linkedin_person_urn)

Look for:

LINKEDIN_CLIENT_ID
LINKEDIN_CLIENT_SECRET
LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN
LINKEDIN_REFRESH_TOKEN
LINKEDIN_PERSON_URN

If argument is setup, jump to Setup Mode.

If tokens are missing, tell the user to run /post-linkedin setup first and stop.

If tokens exist, test validity:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  "https://api.linkedin.com/v2/userinfo"

200: Proceed to Step 1
401: Try token refresh (see reference/api-reference.md). If refresh works, store new tokens in Vault via set-secret.sh and proceed. If refresh fails, tell user to run /post-linkedin setup.

Setup Mode

Guides through first-time LinkedIn app creation and OAuth flow. Follows the same pattern as scripts/google-auth.sh.

S1: Detect Existing State

Check Vault for existing LinkedIn credentials (linkedin_client_id, linkedin_client_secret, linkedin_access_token, linkedin_refresh_token, linkedin_person_urn). Report what exists and what's missing.

S2: App Creation (if no credentials)

Walk the user through:

Go to https://developer.linkedin.com/ and sign in
Click "Create app"
Settings:
- App name: Any name (e.g., "OutworkOS")
- LinkedIn Page: Associate with any Company Page (create a minimal one if needed)
- Logo: Any image
After creation, go to the Auth tab:
- Add redirect URL: http://localhost:5556/callback
- Copy the Client ID and Primary Client Secret
Go to the Products tab:
- Request access to Share on LinkedIn (auto-approved)
- Request access to Sign In with LinkedIn using OpenID Connect (auto-approved)

Ask the user for their Client ID and Client Secret.

S3: Store Credentials in Vault

Store the client credentials in Vault:

"$OUTWORKOS_ROOT/scripts/set-secret.sh" linkedin_client_id "<client-id>" "LinkedIn OAuth client ID"
"$OUTWORKOS_ROOT/scripts/set-secret.sh" linkedin_client_secret "<client-secret>" "LinkedIn OAuth client secret"

S4: Run OAuth Flow

Execute the auth script:

bash "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/linkedin-auth.sh"

This opens a browser, completes OAuth, and saves tokens to Vault. See the script for details.

S5: Fetch Person URN

After tokens are saved, fetch the user's LinkedIn Person URN:

LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN=$("$OUTWORKOS_ROOT/scripts/get-secret.sh" linkedin_access_token)
RESPONSE=$(curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  "https://api.linkedin.com/v2/userinfo")

Extract the sub field -- this is the Person URN ID. Store in Vault:

"$OUTWORKOS_ROOT/scripts/set-secret.sh" linkedin_person_urn "urn:li:person:<sub-value>" "LinkedIn Person URN"

S6: Verify

Test posting capability:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -H "LinkedIn-Version: 202501" \
  -H "X-Restli-Protocol-Version: 2.0.0" \
  "https://api.linkedin.com/rest/posts?q=author&author=$LINKEDIN_PERSON_URN&count=1"

Note: reading posts may return 403 if r_member_social isn't available — that's fine. The write scope (w_member_social) is what matters for posting.

Report success and remind the user that tokens last 60 days (refresh tokens up to 1 year).

Step 1: Discovery Interview

If the user provided ready-to-publish text as an argument, skip to Step 2.

Otherwise, interview the user one question at a time to gather everything needed to draft the post. Do NOT ask multiple questions at once. Wait for each answer before asking the next.

Interview Flow

Ask these in order, adapting based on answers. Skip questions that become obvious from prior answers.

"What's the core thing you want to communicate?"
- Could be a win, an insight, a question, an announcement, a reflection
- Listen for the "so what" — why would someone care?
"Who's the audience for this?"
- Their network generally? A specific industry? Potential hires? Investors? Peers?
- This shapes tone, jargon level, and call-to-action
"What's the context or backstory?"
- What happened that prompted this? What's the situation?
- Pull out specific details, numbers, names — these make posts real
"What do you want people to do after reading this?"
- React/engage? Visit a link? DM you? Apply? Share?
- Or just "think about this differently" — that's valid too
"Do you have an image, link, or document to include?"
- Image: provide a file path
- Link: provide URL (will generate a preview card)
- Neither is fine — text posts perform well on LinkedIn
"Anything to avoid or specifically include?"
- Tone preferences, people to mention, hashtags, constraints
- "Don't make it sound corporate" is useful input

When You Have Enough

You have enough when you can answer: what's the message, who cares, and what's the ask. Not every question needs asking — if the user gives you a rich answer to Q1 that covers context and audience, skip ahead.

Writing Style

When drafting, write in a natural human voice:

No em dashes
No "excited to announce", "thrilled to share", or other AI clichés
No "let's dive in", "here's the thing", "game-changer"
Short paragraphs (1-3 sentences each)
Line breaks between paragraphs (LinkedIn renders these as visual breaks)
Lead with a hook — the first 2 lines show before "see more"
Hashtags: 3-5 max, at the end, only if relevant
Mentions: use the person's name naturally in the text

Step 2: Preview

Display the draft in a formatted preview:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
LINKEDIN POST PREVIEW
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[Post text here]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Type: text | Characters: N
Image: [path or none]
Link: [URL or none]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Ask the user: Publish this, edit, or cancel?

If edit: ask what to change, revise, preview again.

Step 3: Publish

Text-Only Post

curl -s -X POST "https://api.linkedin.com/rest/posts" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -H "LinkedIn-Version: 202501" \
  -H "X-Restli-Protocol-Version: 2.0.0" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/linkedin-post.json

Build the JSON payload in Python (avoids shell escaping issues):

import json
payload = {
    "author": "PERSON_URN",
    "commentary": "POST_TEXT",
    "visibility": "PUBLIC",
    "distribution": {
        "feedDistribution": "MAIN_FEED",
        "targetEntities": [],
        "thirdPartyDistributionChannels": []
    },
    "lifecycleState": "PUBLISHED",
    "isReshareDisabledByAuthor": False
}
with open("/tmp/linkedin-post.json", "w") as f:
    json.dump(payload, f)

Success: HTTP 201 with x-restli-id header containing the post URN. Failure: Parse error response and report to user.

Post with Image

See reference/api-reference.md for the two-step image upload flow:

Initialize upload → get upload URL
Upload binary → get image URN
Create post with image URN in the content field

Post with Link Preview

Add an content block with article type to the payload. See reference/api-reference.md.

Step 4: Confirm

Report:

Post published successfully
Post URN (for reference)
Direct link: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/{post-urn}

Token Refresh

Tokens expire after 60 days. The skill checks token validity in Step 0 and auto-refreshes when possible. If the refresh token has also expired (after ~1 year), the user must run /post-linkedin setup again.

See reference/api-reference.md for the refresh flow.

post-linkedin

SKILL.mdskills/post-linkedin/SKILL.md