Thingino Blog Publish

thingino-blog-publish

Use this skill when asked to write, publish, update, unpublish or fix an article on the thingino blog.

The blog is a minimal Sinatra app that serves .md files from its articles/ directory. Full app documentation lives in DOCUMENTATION.md at the blog app root. If the local app root is unknown, ask the user (commonly ~/www/thingino/blog).

When to use

• "Write a blog post about X" / "publish this on the blog".
• "Update / fix / unpublish the article about X".
• "Why doesn't my article show up?"

Key facts

• One .md file = one article. No database, no admin UI, no restart — files take effect on the next HTTP request.
• Publishing means committing the article to the blog repo and pushing to the remote. The server pulls from the repo --- no scp, no manual file copy. The blog app root is a git working copy.

Article rules

1. Filename: YYYY-MM-DD-url-slug.md (today's date, lowercase slug with hyphens). The slug part becomes the URL: /url-slug.

2. Start the file with front matter (simple key: value lines, no YAML nesting):

   ---
   title: Human-readable headline
   description: One-sentence summary under 160 characters.
   author: <author name, if known>
   ---
   

3. Body is GFM Markdown. Start sections at ## — never add a leading # H1 when title: is set (it would render twice).

4. Fenced code blocks with language tags get syntax highlighting.

5. description is used verbatim for SEO meta and feed summaries; keep it under 160 characters, plain text.

6. Optional fields: date: (overrides filename date), slug: (overrides filename slug), draft: true (hides article everywhere).

7. Images are served from the public/images/ directory (publicly accessible). Place article images there and reference them as /images/filename.webp. Prefer landscape .webp images at 600px wide or less. See thingino-blog-write for full image guidelines.

Content style

1. Match thingino voice: technical, concise, no marketing fluff.
2. Brand is "Thingino" in prose (a proper noun); lowercase "thingino" is logo/wordmark styling only.
3. Prefer concrete commands, tables and short paragraphs over prose walls.
4. Link to https://thingino.com and the GitHub repo (https://github.com/themactep/thingino-firmware) where relevant.

Workflow

1. Draft the article as articles/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md in the local blog app root. For anything not explicitly approved for immediate publication, include draft: true.
2. Verify locally:
   • cd <blog-app-root> && bundle exec rackup -p 4567 &
   • curl -sI http://127.0.0.1:4567/<slug> → expect 200 (drafts correctly return 404; temporarily flip the flag to preview).
   • Check rendered HTML for the title, date and body: curl -s http://127.0.0.1:4567/<slug> | grep -E '<h1|<time'
   • Stop the server afterwards (kill by port, see pitfalls).
3. Publish (after user confirms final text):
   • Ensure the article has no draft: true flag (remove it if present).
   • Commit and push: cd <blog-app-root> && git add articles/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md && git commit -m "..." && git push
   • The user pulls on the server to make it live.
4. Updates: edit the same file, commit, push. Unpublish: add draft: true to the front matter, commit, push.

Pitfalls

1. Never change the slug of a published article (breaks inbound links; the app has no redirects). To adjust a filename without changing the URL, pin the old slug with slug: front matter.
2. Front matter must start on line 1; both fences must be exactly ---.
3. Slug chars are [a-z0-9-] only — underscores, spaces and uppercase in filenames are normalized, so verify the resulting URL rather than assuming it.
4. When killing a local test server, kill by port (ss -ltnp | grep 4567), not pkill -f rackup — the -f pattern can match your own shell.
5. After pushing, the article is live once the user pulls on the server. No further action is needed from the agent.