Blog Create From Gdoc

Blog from Google Doc

Convert a Google Doc into a blog-ready markdown file with downloaded images, saved to blog-output/.

Input Handling

This skill accepts a Google Docs URL:

• A Google Docs URL (e.g., https://docs.google.com/document/d/1abc.../edit) — fetch and convert
• No argument — ask the user for the URL

The URL can be in any format (edit link, published link, share link). The skill extracts the document ID from it.

Prerequisites

The Google Doc must be accessible — either publicly shared ("Anyone with the link can view") or shared with the user's Google account. If the doc is private, tell the user to update sharing settings.

Workflow

Step 1: Extract the Document ID

Parse the Google Docs URL to extract the document ID. The ID is the long string between /d/ and the next / in the URL.

import re

url = "GOOGLE_DOCS_URL_HERE"

# Extract document ID from various Google Docs URL formats
match = re.search(r'/document/d/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)', url)
if not match:
    raise ValueError(f"Could not extract document ID from URL: {url}")
doc_id = match.group(1)
print(f"Document ID: {doc_id}")

Step 2: Fetch the Document Title

Use the Google Docs export URL to fetch the document as HTML first, then extract the title:

import urllib.request

# Fetch as HTML to get the title
html_url = f"https://docs.google.com/document/d/{doc_id}/export?format=html"
req = urllib.request.Request(html_url, headers={"User-Agent": "PostmanDevRelSkill/1.0"})
html_content = urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=30).read().decode("utf-8")

# Extract title from <title> tag
title_match = re.search(r'<title>(.*?)</title>', html_content)
doc_title = title_match.group(1).strip() if title_match else "untitled"
print(f"Document title: {doc_title}")

# Create a slug from the title
slug = re.sub(r'[^\w\s-]', '', doc_title.lower().strip())
slug = re.sub(r'[\s_]+', '-', slug)
slug = re.sub(r'-+', '-', slug).strip('-')
print(f"Slug: {slug}")

Step 3: Download Images from the Document

Parse the HTML to find all embedded images, download them, and save to blog-output/images/{slug}/:

import os, urllib.request, hashlib

image_dir = f"blog-output/images/{slug}"
os.makedirs(image_dir, exist_ok=True)

# Find all image URLs in the HTML
img_pattern = re.compile(r'<img[^>]+src="([^"]+)"', re.IGNORECASE)
img_urls = img_pattern.findall(html_content)

image_map = {}  # old URL → local path
for i, img_url in enumerate(img_urls, 1):
    try:
        # Google Docs images are served from googleusercontent.com
        if not img_url.startswith("http"):
            continue
        req = urllib.request.Request(img_url, headers={"User-Agent": "PostmanDevRelSkill/1.0"})
        img_data = urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=30).read()

        # Determine extension from content or default to png
        ext = "png"
        if img_url.endswith(".jpg") or img_url.endswith(".jpeg"):
            ext = "jpg"
        elif img_url.endswith(".gif"):
            ext = "gif"
        elif img_url.endswith(".svg"):
            ext = "svg"

        filename = f"image-{i}.{ext}"
        filepath = os.path.join(image_dir, filename)
        with open(filepath, "wb") as f:
            f.write(img_data)

        image_map[img_url] = f"images/{slug}/{filename}"
        print(f"Downloaded: {filename} ({len(img_data)} bytes)")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Failed to download image {i}: {e}")

Step 4: Convert HTML to Markdown

Write and run a Python script to convert the HTML content to clean markdown:

import subprocess, sys

# Install html2text if needed
subprocess.check_call([sys.executable, "-m", "pip", "install", "html2text", "-q"])

import html2text

h = html2text.HTML2Text()
h.body_width = 0  # Don't wrap lines
h.ignore_links = False
h.ignore_images = False
h.ignore_emphasis = False
h.protect_links = True
h.unicode_snob = True
h.skip_internal_links = True

markdown = h.handle(html_content)

Step 5: Clean Up the Markdown

After conversion, clean up the markdown:

1. Replace image URLs — swap the Google-hosted image URLs with local paths from image_map
2. Remove Google Docs artifacts — strip empty links, tracking parameters, Google redirect wrappers
3. Fix heading levels — ensure the document starts with H1 and has proper hierarchy
4. Clean up whitespace — remove excessive blank lines (more than 2 consecutive)
5. Add language identifiers to code blocks that are missing them

# Replace image URLs with local paths
for old_url, local_path in image_map.items():
    markdown = markdown.replace(old_url, local_path)

# Unwrap Google redirect links: https://www.google.com/url?q=REAL_URL&...
google_redirect = re.compile(r'https://www\.google\.com/url\?q=(.*?)&[^)]*')
markdown = google_redirect.sub(lambda m: urllib.parse.unquote(m.group(1)), markdown)

# Remove excessive blank lines
markdown = re.sub(r'\n{3,}', '\n\n', markdown)

# Strip Google Docs comment anchors and bookmark links
markdown = re.sub(r'\[([^\]]*)\]\(#[^)]*\)', r'\1', markdown)

Step 6: Add Blog Frontmatter

Add YAML frontmatter at the top of the markdown file with metadata extracted from the document:

---
suggested_title: "Title from the Google Doc"
meta_description: "Generated from the first paragraph — under 155 characters"
seo_score: 0
primary_keyword: ""
secondary_keywords: []
source_gdoc: "https://docs.google.com/document/d/{doc_id}/edit"
---

Set seo_score to 0 and leave keyword fields empty — the blog-copyeditor skill will fill these in during the copyedit pass.

Extract the meta_description from the first paragraph of the document body (under 155 characters, ending at a natural sentence boundary).

Step 7: Save the Markdown File

Save the final markdown to blog-output/{slug}.md:

output_path = f"blog-output/{slug}.md"
with open(output_path, "w") as f:
    f.write(markdown)
print(f"Saved: {output_path}")

Step 8: Present Results

Summarize what was created:

Google Doc converted to markdown.

  Source:   https://docs.google.com/document/d/{doc_id}/edit
  Title:    "Document Title Here"
  Output:   blog-output/{slug}.md
  Images:   3 images saved to blog-output/images/{slug}/

Next steps:
  - Run /blog-copyeditor blog-output/{slug}.md to copyedit and add SEO metadata
  - Run /blog-header-image blog-output/{slug}.md to generate a header image
  - Run /blog-wordpress-stage blog-output/{slug}.md to stage to WordPress

Error Handling

• Invalid URL: If the URL doesn't contain a Google Docs document ID, tell the user and show the expected format.
• Access denied (403): The document is private. Tell the user to change sharing to "Anyone with the link can view".
• Document not found (404): The document ID is invalid or the doc was deleted.
• Image download failure: Continue with the conversion — note which images failed and use the original URL as a placeholder in the markdown.
• html2text not available: Fall back to a basic regex-based HTML-to-markdown conversion (strip tags, convert <h1> to #, <p> to paragraphs, etc.).

Important Guidelines

• Do not modify the Google Doc — this skill only reads from it.
• Preserve all content — tables, lists, code blocks, links, and formatting should survive the conversion.
• Download all images locally — don't leave references to Google-hosted URLs, as they expire.
• Use the document title as the filename — slugified, lowercase, hyphenated.
• Add frontmatter with empty SEO fields — the copyeditor skill fills these in later.
• Unwrap Google redirect URLs — Google Docs wraps all links in google.com/url?q= redirects. Always unwrap to the original URL.