Linkedin Page Publisher

Publish posts programmatically to a LinkedIn Company Page via the versioned Posts API (/rest/posts), including text posts, single-image posts, multi-image carousels, video posts, and article link previews. Handles the full multi-step media upload flow (initializeUpload → PUT binary → wait for LinkedIn to finish processing → reference URN in the post). Use this skill whenever the user wants to post to LinkedIn, publish to a Company Page, automate LinkedIn content, cross-post to LinkedIn from another system, build a LinkedIn publishing bot or scheduler, or upload images or videos to LinkedIn programmatically — even when they don't say "API" explicitly. Also use it when the user mentions errors from the LinkedIn Posts API, w_organization_social scope, urn:li:organization URNs, UGC posts, or /rest/images and /rest/videos endpoints.

Publishes content to a LinkedIn Company Page through LinkedIn's versioned REST API (/rest/posts). The skill ships a Python CLI (scripts/publish.py) that also works as an importable library, plus a one-time OAuth helper (scripts/get_token.py) to obtain the initial access token.

When to reach for what

• User just wants to post something → run scripts/publish.py directly with the right subcommand (see "Publishing" below).
• User is setting this up for the first time and doesn't have a token yet → walk them through references/setup.md, which covers creating the LinkedIn Developer app, requesting Community Management API access, and running scripts/get_token.py to complete the 3-legged OAuth flow.
• User hits a cryptic API error → consult references/troubleshooting.md before guessing. LinkedIn's error messages are often misleading (e.g., "unauthorized" frequently means "wrong scope" or "not a page admin," not "bad token").
• User wants to extend the skill (schedule posts, add analytics, wrap it in a web service, etc.) → import from scripts/lib/ rather than shelling out to the CLI. The library layer is the contract; the CLI is just one consumer of it.

Environment variables

These three cover every use case. Don't invent a config file — env vars compose better with cron, CI, and shell scripts.

Variable	Required	What it is
LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN	yes	OAuth 2.0 access token with w_organization_social scope. Valid for 60 days; refresh tokens last 365 days.
LINKEDIN_ORG_ID	yes	Numeric organization ID only (e.g. 5515715), not the full URN. The script prepends urn:li:organization:. Find it at https://www.linkedin.com/company/<slug>/admin/ — the URL shows the numeric ID once you're in the admin view.
LINKEDIN_API_VERSION	no	YYYYMM format, e.g. 202602. Defaults to 202602 (February 2026). LinkedIn supports each version for a minimum of one year, so bump this deliberately when new features ship.

Publishing

scripts/publish.py exposes five subcommands. Every subcommand accepts --text (post commentary, up to 3,000 characters) and --dry-run (prints the request body without calling the API — useful for debugging).

Text-only post

bash

python scripts/publish.py text --text "Announcing our Q1 roadmap. Three big bets this year: ..."

Single image

bash

python scripts/publish.py image path/to/photo.jpg \
  --text "At the AI builders meetup in Lima last night" \
  --alt "Twelve people seated around a conference table with laptops open"

--alt is required. Accessible alt text is also what LinkedIn's ranking signals care about, so don't skip it.

Multi-image carousel (2–20 images)

bash

python scripts/publish.py multi-image img1.jpg img2.jpg img3.jpg \
  --text "Recap from OpenClaw's monthly hackathon" \
  --alt "Photo of attendees" "Photo of winning demo" "Group photo at the end"

Pass one --alt per image, in order. If the count doesn't match, the CLI errors out before hitting the API.

Video

bash

python scripts/publish.py video path/to/demo.mp4 \
  --text "Demo of our new agent flow" \
  --title "Agent flow walkthrough"

Video uploads take longer. The script auto-detects file size and uses single-part upload under 200 MB or multipart upload above. It polls LinkedIn's video status endpoint until the asset reaches AVAILABLE before creating the post — posting against a still-processing video produces a post with a broken player.

Article link preview

bash

python scripts/publish.py article https://example.com/my-blog-post \
  --text "Wrote up how we built this — thoughts welcome"

LinkedIn scrapes the URL's OpenGraph metadata to render the preview card. If the target page's OG tags are missing or wrong, the preview will look bad — that's a site issue, not an API issue. The CLI prints the article URN in the response so the user can verify.

Using the library from other Python code

python

from scripts.lib.client import LinkedInClient
from scripts.lib.posts import post_text, post_image, post_video, post_article, post_multi_image

client = LinkedInClient()  # reads env vars

# Text
post_text(client, "Hello, page followers!")

# Image
post_image(client, "photo.jpg", text="At the meetup", alt="Group photo")

# Video (handles small and multipart automatically)
post_video(client, "demo.mp4", text="Quick demo", title="Demo")

# Article
post_article(client, "https://example.com/post", text="Worth a read")

All post functions return the post URN (e.g. urn:li:share:7045020441609936898) on success and raise on failure. Don't swallow exceptions — the error messages carry the LinkedIn response body, which is the only useful debugging signal.

Why the upload flow has so many steps

LinkedIn's media upload is a three-step handshake:

1. Register — POST /rest/images?action=initializeUpload (or /rest/videos?action=initializeUpload). LinkedIn returns an upload URL (or several, for multipart) and a pre-assigned URN (urn:li:image:... or urn:li:video:...).
2. Upload — PUT the binary bytes to the returned upload URL(s). No auth header on these PUT calls — the URL itself is pre-signed.
3. Reference — create the post with the URN in content.media.id.

For videos, there's an implicit fourth step: LinkedIn processes the video asynchronously. If you create the post immediately after the PUT, the video may not be ready and the post will be broken. The library polls GET /rest/videos/{urn} until status == AVAILABLE before returning the URN. Multipart video uploads also need a finalizeUpload call with the ETags from each part — the library handles this.

This is why the skill bundles upload helpers rather than expecting callers to reimplement them — the edge cases (async processing, multipart, alt text on multi-image) are where naive implementations break.

Rate limits and scope

• Personal token limit: roughly 100 calls/day/member. Respect this when building schedulers.
• Scope required: w_organization_social. The authenticating user must be an admin of the Company Page — being an employee is not enough.
• Post character limit: 3,000. The API returns HTTP 422 if exceeded. The library checks locally before calling so the failure is cheaper.
• Access token lifetime: 60 days. Refresh tokens last 365 days and can be used to mint new access tokens without re-prompting the user. get_token.py saves both.

What LinkedIn's API cannot do (as of 2026)

Don't promise the user these — they require manual work in LinkedIn's web UI:

• Long-form articles (the Medium-style ones with a title, cover, and body) — web UI only.
• Newsletters — web UI only.
• Document posts / PDF carousels — no API support.
• Polls — no API support.
• @mentions of people or companies in post text — no API support. The text will publish, but the mention won't be a link.
• Native scheduling — the API posts immediately. Build scheduling with cron or a queue.

If the user asks for any of the above, say so upfront rather than trying to hack around it.

Debugging etiquette

When the user reports an error, ask for:

1. The exact command they ran (redacting the token).
2. The full response body LinkedIn returned — the serviceErrorCode and the message fields carry the real signal.
3. Whether the token still works for a simple GET /rest/posts?author=urn:li:organization:<id>&q=author. If this 401s, the token is the problem, not the post.

Then check references/troubleshooting.md against the specific error code before guessing.