v1.0 to v1.0

---

name: medium

description: Read and publish on Medium (medium.com) with the user's own login cookies (BYOC) — list their posts with clap/response stats, inspect one post, and publish a new story. Use when the user mentions Medium, "my Medium posts", reading their post stats (claps/reads), or publishing a story to Medium.

when_to_use: |

Trigger for anything on the user's Medium (medium.com) account driven by their

own login cookie: show who they are, list their posts with clap / response /

reading-time data, look at one post, or publish a new story. This acts as the

user's real account, so writes are gated behind an explicit confirmation.

connections: [medium]

allowed_tools: [Bash]

license: Apache-2.0

metadata:

author: acedatacloud

version: "1.0"

---

# medium — read & publish on Medium via your own cookies

Drives the user's **real** Medium account through the same internal web API the

site uses (Medium retired its public write API in 2023), authenticated by the

login cookie they captured with the ACE extension. No browser, no third-party

deps — just `urllib`.

The connector injects the cookie jar as an env var:

- `MEDIUM_COOKIES` — a JSON array of cookies (`sid`, `uid`, `xsrf`). **Secret —

never echo or print it.** The CLI echoes the `xsrf` cookie as the

`x-xsrf-token` header on writes for you. If the captured jar has no `xsrf`

cookie (common), the CLI mints one automatically before writing, so publishes

no longer fail with "Missing xsrf token".

## CLI

The skill ships [`scripts/medium.py`](scripts/medium.py) — self-contained, stdlib only.

```sh

# $SKILL_DIR can point at another skill loaded this turn — anchor on our own

# script, and re-run this at the top of every Bash block (fresh shell each time).

MED="$SKILL_DIR/scripts/medium.py"; [ -f "$MED" ] || MED=$(find /tmp -maxdepth 8 -path '*/skills/*/scripts/medium.py' 2>/dev/null | head -1)

[ -f "$MED" ] || { echo "medium script not found (SKILL_DIR=$SKILL_DIR)" >&2; exit 1; }

python3 "$MED" whoami # who is logged in

python3 "$MED" articles --limit 20 # my posts + clap/response stats

python3 "$MED" article <post-id> # one post's details

```

## Verify the connection first

```sh

MED="$SKILL_DIR/scripts/medium.py"; [ -f "$MED" ] || MED=$(find /tmp -maxdepth 8 -path '*/skills/*/scripts/medium.py' 2>/dev/null | head -1)

python3 "$MED" whoami

# → {"user_id": "...", "name": "...", "username": "..."}

```

On an auth error the cookie is expired — have the user reconnect at

## Publishing — GATED (dry-run unless trailing `--confirm`)

`publish` writes to the user's real account. Content is **Markdown** (converted

to Medium paragraph blocks: `#`/`##`→heading, `###`→sub-heading, `>`→quote,

```` ``` ````→code, `-`/`*`→bullet list, `1.`→numbered list, tables→aligned

code block). Inline **bold**, *italic*, `code`, and `[links](url)` render as

real Medium formatting (clickable links included). Bare `https://…` URLs in text

are auto-linked too (URLs inside code spans are left untouched).

Without a trailing `--confirm` it dry-runs. `--confirm` is honored **only as the

last argument**. Always show the dry-run, get an explicit "yes", then re-run.

```sh

MED="$SKILL_DIR/scripts/medium.py"; [ -f "$MED" ] || MED=$(find /tmp -maxdepth 8 -path '*/skills/*/scripts/medium.py' 2>/dev/null | head -1)

python3 "$MED" publish --title "Title" --content-file a.md # dry-run

python3 "$MED" publish --title "Title" --content-file a.md --draft-only --confirm # private draft

python3 "$MED" publish --title "Title" --content-file a.md --confirm # PUBLIC story

```

Publishing is Medium's multi-step editor flow (new-story → write deltas →

publish). `--draft-only` stops at the draft (visible only at the user's

`/me/stories/drafts`). Default to `--draft-only` unless the user asked to go live.

## Images

`publish` automatically uploads each external markdown image (``) to

Medium and inserts it as a real image block — Medium has no markdown-image

syntax, so this is the only way images render. Pass `--no-rehost-images` to

degrade images to link-only paragraphs. An image that fails to upload falls back

to a link paragraph (never blocks the post).

## Gotchas

- **This is the user's real Medium account.** Confirm before any publish.

- Markdown→Medium conversion covers headings, quotes, fenced code, bullet/

numbered lists, images, and inline markups (bold/italic/code/links). Medium's

editor has no table element: a narrow markdown table renders as an aligned

monospace code block, while a wide one (long cells / URLs, which would wrap into

an unreadable grid) is rendered as per-row records — the first column bolded as

a lead-in, the remaining columns as `header: value` bullets.

- Medium sits behind Cloudflare; an occasional 403/429 is transient — the CLI

auto-retries once after a short pause. A *persistent* 403 means the cookie is

genuinely expired (reconnect).

- **Never print `MEDIUM_COOKIES`** — it is full account access.

- **ToS**: acts only on the user's own account with their own captured cookie.

## Record the output

After you successfully publish and obtain the live result URL, call the built-in

`publish_artifact` tool ONCE so the user can track this deliverable in **My Outputs**:

```

publish_artifact(kind="article", channel="medium", title="<title>", url="<the REAL returned URL>", status="delivered")

```

Use the real returned URL — never fabricate one. Call it once per published item,

only after delivery is confirmed; skip it (or use `status="failed"`) if publishing failed.

See `_shared/artifacts.md`.