Short Publish Folder

Short Publish — Folder Method

Publish your own short-form videos to all platforms from a local folder.

Drop .mp4 or .mov files into your watch folder. This skill picks them up, uploads to Late cloud storage, generates platform-optimized captions via Gemini, and publishes to Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook, and Twitter/X — all in one shot.

This is the core publishing pipeline for creators who make their own videos. No AI video generation — just your content, distributed everywhere.

Watch Folder

Default: ~/Short form videos/

The skill scans this folder for video files (.mp4, .mov, .webm) that haven't been published yet. Published videos get a .published.json sidecar file so they're not re-posted.

You can override the folder with --folder "/path/to/videos".

Folder Structure

~/Short form videos/
  ├── my-first-reel.mp4              ← ready to publish
  ├── behind-the-scenes.mov          ← ready to publish
  ├── old-video.mp4                  ← already published
  ├── old-video.published.json       ← sidecar (marks as published)
  └── published/                     ← optional: move published files here

Naming Convention (Optional)

If you name files descriptively, Gemini uses the filename as context for better captions:

• day-in-the-life-austin.mp4 → captions about day-in-the-life content in Austin
• product-launch-announcement.mov → captions about a product launch

Usage

# Publish the next unpublished video in the folder
node skills/short-publish-folder/scripts/short-publish-folder.js

# Publish a specific file
node skills/short-publish-folder/scripts/short-publish-folder.js --file "~/Short form videos/my-video.mp4"

# Publish to specific platforms only
node skills/short-publish-folder/scripts/short-publish-folder.js --platforms "instagram,tiktok"

# Schedule instead of publish now
node skills/short-publish-folder/scripts/short-publish-folder.js --schedule "2026-03-14T09:00:00"

# Preview captions without publishing
node skills/short-publish-folder/scripts/short-publish-folder.js --dry-run

# Custom watch folder
node skills/short-publish-folder/scripts/short-publish-folder.js --folder "~/Desktop/reels"

# Publish ALL unpublished videos in the folder (batch mode)
node skills/short-publish-folder/scripts/short-publish-folder.js --all

# Limit batch to N videos
node skills/short-publish-folder/scripts/short-publish-folder.js --all --limit 5

# Override caption context (if filename isn't descriptive enough)
node skills/short-publish-folder/scripts/short-publish-folder.js --topic "Behind the scenes at the studio"

Flags

Environment Variables

Platform Account IDs

Read from SOCIALS.md in the workspace root. The skill parses Late Account IDs for each platform. If SOCIALS.md is not configured, pass --profile and --accounts flags.

Output

After publishing, each video gets a .published.json sidecar:

{
  "source_file": "my-first-reel.mp4",
  "media_url": "https://cdn.getlate.dev/media/...",
  "late_post_id": "post_abc123",
  "published_at": "2026-03-13T12:00:00Z",
  "published_platforms": ["instagram", "tiktok", "youtube", "facebook", "twitter"],
  "captions": { "instagram": "...", "tiktok": "...", ... }
}