Social Publisher

Social Publisher — The Operator's Desk for Distribution

Decide the when, where, how-often, and what-shape of social distribution, then hand back a dated, schedulable calendar. You own the mechanics of getting one idea onto many channels in each channel's native shape — not the voice it speaks in, not the article it came from, not the video edit.

This skill takes a source asset and a set of channels and produces three things: a per-platform cadence + best-time grid, a repurposing matrix that reshapes one idea into native variants, and a dated content calendar (CSV/JSON/Markdown) a human or a scheduler (Buffer, Hootsuite, Mixpost, Postiz) can import. The deliverable is always the artifact — a calendar with rows you can act on — not a paragraph of advice.

When to use / When NOT

Use when:

• Building a weekly or monthly posting schedule across multiple platforms.
• Deciding posting frequency and best-time slots per platform.
• Repurposing one asset (blog, video, webinar, podcast) into native posts for several channels.
• Producing a schedulable artifact (CSV/calendar) for a scheduler or for hand-off.
• Checking per-platform limits before programmatic publishing (char caps, media specs, API publish/rate limits, approval gates).

Do NOT use when (route to the sibling that owns it):

If a brand voice spec exists, shape every post in it — load ../brand-voice/SKILL.md. This skill schedules and reshapes; it does not invent the voice.

The distribution mental model

Four rules. Internalize them before you touch a calendar.

1. One source asset → N native variants, never N copies. Reshape language, length, hashtags, and format per channel — repurposing is reformatting, not copy-paste. One blog or long video commonly yields 7–10 short clips plus carousels and threads. Source: Buffer "Ultimate Guide to Repurposing Content"; Planable 2026 repurposing guide (accessed 2026-06-02).

2. Aim for roughly one native-original post per two repurposed. Repurposed content reportedly drives ~25–35% more engagement than one-off posts, but an all-repurposed feed reads stale — keep a ~1:2 native:repurposed mix so the account still feels alive. Source: InfluenceFlow / Planable 2026 (accessed 2026-06-02).

3. Consistency beats raw frequency, and gaps are expensive. A steady schedule outperforms bursts; a ~2-week gap after heavy posting can cut reach 30–50%. Plan a cadence you can actually sustain. Source: Sprout Social / Buffer / Metricool 2026 (accessed 2026-06-02).

4. The deliverable is a schedulable artifact. Always end at a dated calendar (rows: date, time, platform, format, body, status) — something a scheduler imports or a person executes. Advice without a calendar is a miss. The schema lives in references/calendar-schema.md; scripts/verify.sh lints what you emit.

Cadence & best-time grid

Per-platform 2026 frequency sweet spots and starting best-time slots. Source: Sprout Social / Buffer / Metricool best-time-to-post 2026 (accessed 2026-06-02).

Caveat, not law: these slots are starting hypotheses. The only authoritative times are in the account's own analytics — schedule to the table, then move slots toward where that audience actually engages. Never present these numbers as guarantees.

Repurposing matrix

Map source type to per-channel native output. Each cell is a shape, not the same text.

Reshape the same idea, not the same string. Bad→Good:

Bad  (same caption pasted to all four — flat, off-shape, link breaks IG):
  "New blog: 5 ways to cut cloud cost. Read here https://ex.co/cloud #cloud #devops"

Good (native per channel):
  X       thread → "5 ways we cut our cloud bill 38% in a quarter. 🧵"
                   one tactic per post, link only in the last post.
  LinkedIn → "We cut our cloud bill 38% last quarter. The boring one
              that mattered most: rightsizing before reserving. Here's
              the order we did it in →" (3–5 short paras, no hashtag wall)
  Instagram → 6-slide carousel, one tactic per slide; link in bio;
              caption is the hook + 3–5 specific hashtags.
  Bluesky → short thread, plain link (no UTM-bloat), 1 tag max.

Channel-native shaping rules

Quick reference; full specs and API reality in references/platform-limits.md.

Rule with a why: put links in the first comment on LinkedIn/IG/FB — link-in-body posts are commonly down-ranked, so keep the body clean and drop the URL below. Front-load the hook everywhere — LinkedIn truncates at ~210 chars and X shows post 1 only, so the first line decides the click.

The content calendar artifact

Every run ends here. Minimum columns:

date · time · timezone · platform · format · source_asset_id · hook · body · media_ref · link · hashtags · status

status lifecycle: draft → scheduled → posted. source_asset_id ties all rows derived from one source (the repurposing link), so you can see at a glance that one blog became six native posts.

Markdown example (one source asset, two channels):

| date       | time  | tz        | platform | format   | source_asset_id | hook                         | status    |
| 2026-06-09 | 11:30 | Europe/Madrid | linkedin | post     | blog-cloud-001  | We cut our cloud bill 38%…   | scheduled |
| 2026-06-09 | 21:00 | Europe/Madrid | x        | thread   | blog-cloud-001  | 5 ways we cut cloud cost 🧵   | scheduled |

JSON row (what a scheduler ingests):

{
  "date": "2026-06-09",
  "time": "21:00",
  "timezone": "Europe/Madrid",
  "platform": "x",
  "format": "thread",
  "source_asset_id": "blog-cloud-001",
  "hook": "5 ways we cut cloud cost 🧵",
  "body": "5 ways we cut our cloud bill 38% in a quarter…",
  "media_ref": null,
  "link": "https://ex.co/cloud",
  "hashtags": ["#cloud"],
  "status": "scheduled"
}

Full column definitions, the CSV variant, and import notes for Buffer/Hootsuite/Mixpost/Postiz are in references/calendar-schema.md. After you write a calendar file, run scripts/verify.sh path/to/calendar.{csv,json} to catch over-cap bodies, byte-identical cross-posts, bad status values, and non-future scheduled datetimes.

Platform limits & API reality

Before promising programmatic publishing, check the 2026 gotchas — they change what is even possible. Full sourced table in references/platform-limits.md.

• Instagram Graph API: ~25–50 API-published posts per rolling 24h per account (sources vary 25/50/100 by account trust); ~200 API requests/hour. The window is rolling, not calendar-day. (Meta IG Platform "Content Publishing Limit"; InstantDM 2026 — accessed 2026-06-02.)
• X API: as of Feb 2026, legacy Free tier is write-restricted (500 posts/month, no new signups) and pay-per-use is now default for new developers ($0.01/post; URL posts cost more). Programmatic X posting costs money for new apps. (Zernio / Postproxy / Blotato 2026 — accessed 2026-06-02.)
• LinkedIn API: free OAuth = Sign-In + basic profile only; posting (UGC/Share) runs 100 calls/day/member and Marketing/advanced access starts **$699+/mo** for approved partners. Plan around the gate. (Phyllo / SociaVault 2026 — accessed 2026-06-02.)
• Bluesky AT Protocol: moved to OAuth (announced 2024-09-25; App Passwords deprecated for new projects; first granular scope transition:email shipped 2025-06-12); API is free with a ~5,000-points/hour cap. (Bluesky/AT Protocol docs — accessed 2026-06-02.)
• TikTok Content Posting API: requires a separate audit and forces SELF_ONLY (private) posts until approved. (Blotato / PostPeer 2026 — accessed 2026-06-02.)

Execution-layer decision: this skill produces the plan; something else publishes it.

• Manual / few channels → a hosted scheduler (Buffer, Hootsuite) — import the CSV.
• Self-host, own your data → Mixpost (Laravel, one-time license, drag-drop calendar, first-comment + dynamic variables) or Postiz (Apache-2.0, free, 15+ platforms).
• Programmatic across many platforms → a unified API (Blotato-style) to dodge per-platform auth pain.

(Mixpost.app; Postiz "Open Source Social Media Scheduler" / GitHub inovector/mixpost — accessed 2026-06-02.)

Anti-patterns