Pendpost README
The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Pendpost listing page.
pendpost
Agent-operated social media with a human approval gate.
pendpost is a free, open-source (MIT), local-first social media planner where an AI agent drafts and schedules posts across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Telegram, Discord, Mastodon, and Nostr, plus long-form blogs on WordPress and Ghost, with Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, and Google Business Profile in beta, all behind a human approval gate you control. It is MCP-native: AI agents draft, lint, schedule, and queue your posts, but nothing goes live until a human approves it. It is built for developers, agencies, and technical solopreneurs who want agents to do the work without handing them the keys, and without getting accounts flagged.
Why pendpost is different (not just a scheduler)
Most "AI social" tools are schedulers with an agent bolted on. pendpost is the opposite. It is an operations layer designed around the agent-plus-human workflow, and these are the parts a scheduler does not give you:
- Human approval gate. Every post carries an approval state (
draft,approved,rejected) and is fail-closed: a post with no approval will not publish.plan_create_postalways creates a draft, and onlyapprove_postorreject_postcan flip it. Nothing publishes until it's approved. By default that's you; auto-approve is owner-only and revocable. - Anti-ban circuit breakers. A Meta error 368 (an action block) trips a breaker that halts the Meta lane and never auto-resumes, because 368 carries no machine-readable clear time. Health probes send zero Graph traffic while blocked. A cadence cap defers bursts rather than dropping them, and a lane pause kill switch is always available.
- Humanizer brand-lint. Captions are checked before publish against editable rules in
rules.json. The humanizer layer flags English AI-writing tells. Errors block publish; warnings are advisory. - Honest native scheduling. Where a platform supports it (Facebook scheduled posts, YouTube
publishAt), pendpost uses native scheduling, so those posts fire even when your computer is off. Instagram, LinkedIn, and X have no native scheduling, so pendpost must be running to publish them; run it on an always-on host to cover those too. It stays honest about which cover/thumbnail mechanics actually apply per platform. - Dual interface. A web dashboard and any MCP client drive the same contract. A parity test enforces that every capability ships on both faces.
- German and Swiss localization. Run the dashboard, digest, and notifications in English or real Swiss German (
de-CH, with proper umlauts and 24-hour Swiss dates); set the language in Settings. See the localization docs.
Quickstart
One line, no setup:
No account, no signup - pendpost runs locally and starts immediately. You can draft, approve, and schedule a full campaign right away; the first run ships an example "Acme Launch" campaign in data/plans, so you see real content at once. Connect a platform in Setup when you are ready to publish - until then a lane is live-but-unauthenticated, so publishing simply waits for the connection rather than faking it.
Prefer git or docker?
The dashboard
The planner and the approval queue are the two screens you live in: draft and schedule on the left, approve or reject on the right. Nothing on the right can approve itself.
| Planner | Approval queue |
|---|---|
 |  |
MCP clients
The easiest path self-boots: pendpost speaks MCP over native stdio, so the client launches the server for you - nothing to start first.
Claude Desktop (one-click): install the pendpost .mcpb bundle attached to each GitHub release. It self-boots npx -y pendpost --stdio and opens the approval dashboard in the same process.
Any stdio MCP client:
Advanced / dev (HTTP transport): pendpost also serves MCP over streamable-HTTP at /mcp. This needs the server already running via npx pendpost:
AI-assisted setup (Claude for Chrome)
Going live on a real platform means creating a developer app in each vendor's portal and running one OAuth ceremony. pendpost makes that agent-drivable: on each incomplete card in the dashboard's Setup page, a Copy AI prompt button copies a ready-to-paste, secret-safe prompt for Claude for Chrome that drives the portal for that one platform. You authenticate at every login/consent gate, and the credential is minted locally by the CLI - it never passes through the agent or the chat. The same setup contract is documented for any agent in AGENTS.md.
What the MCP tools do
Every capability is an MCP tool, and the dashboard mirrors it. Read-only tools can never publish; write tools create drafts and are gated by the approval rules above. Grouped by what they do:
- Read and inspect:
plan_list,plan_get,account_status,assets_list,activity_log,validate_media,platform_validate,pendpost_health,publish_preview,brand_lint,generate_digest,config_get,clients_overview. - Compose:
plan_create_post,plan_update_post,plan_delete_post,campaign_create,campaign_set_active. - Approve (the human gate):
approve_post,reject_post. Nothing publishes until it's approved; by default that's you. - Schedule and publish:
scheduler_set,publish_due_run,reschedule,unschedule,mark_posted,verify_post. - Covers and assets:
set_cover,clear_cover,asset_upload,rename_asset,delete_asset. - Insights and safety:
fetch_insights,token_refresh,pendpost_record_block,health_recheck,meta_lane_set. - Config and clients:
config_set,client_create,client_update,client_archive,client_list,client_set_active.
The authoritative count and the read/write split are derived from lib/mcp.mjs and verified by test/parity-check.mjs (see the MCP docs). Each tool also carries readOnlyHint/destructiveHint/title annotations in tools/list.
Going live
When you are ready to publish, connect each platform in Setup (or copy .env.example to .env and fill in only the platforms you use). A platform publishes once its credential is present; until then it is live-but-unauthenticated and publishing waits for the connection. (PENDPOST_MODE=mock exists only as a test/demo fixture that routes every lane through the credential-free mock driver.)
Each platform has an interactive setup ceremony that writes to .env:
Running more than one client? Append --client <client-id> to any command above so the credential lands in that client's .env (single-client installs don't need it, and pendpost_health's connectAction already fills the flag in for you).
X (Twitter) supports two auth paths; OAuth 1.0a is recommended because it needs no browser and sidesteps the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS that some apps hit on X's OAuth 2.0 consent screen.
- OAuth 1.0a (recommended, zero browser). In the X developer portal: (1) set the app's User authentication settings to Read and Write FIRST; (2) then under Keys and tokens, generate/regenerate both the API Key/Secret and the Access Token/Secret; (3) paste all four into
.envasX_API_KEY,X_API_SECRET,X_ACCESS_TOKEN,X_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET. The lane goes live the momentX_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRETis set - noauthcommand. Verify withnode scripts/x-social.mjs probe(printsconnected as @handle). Gotchas, in order:- All four values must come from the same app and the same generation.
- Regenerating the API Key/Secret invalidates the Access Token/Secret - so always regenerate the Access Token/Secret after the API Key/Secret, never before.
- One wrong character yields
401 "Could not authenticate you"(code 32), which masquerades as an access-token problem. Copy the values from the portal; do not hand-type them.
- OAuth 2.0 PKCE (browser). Create an OAuth 2.0 confidential client with callback
http://localhost:8087/callbackand scopestweet.read tweet.write users.read media.write offline.access, then runnode scripts/x-social.mjs auth. The access token lasts ~2h and the refresh token rotates; pendpost refreshes both automatically before each run.
See .env.example for the full list of environment variables per platform.
Brand-lint + humanizer
Captions run through a brand-lint pass before they can publish. The rule set lives in rules.json, which you edit directly. Each rule is an object with an id, a severity (error blocks, warn is advisory), a matcher (a regex or a platform-aware built-in like captionLength, hashtagCount, allCaps, brokenLink), and a hint. The shipped default also includes humanizer rules that flag English AI-writing tells (AI vocabulary, em dashes, negative parallelism, reflexive rule-of-three padding, filler and hedging, promotional puffery). To disable a rule, delete its object; to add one, append an object. A rules.json at your workspace root overrides the shipped default. brand_lint is both an MCP tool and the dashboard composer's lint panel.
Architecture
pendpost is one zero-dependency Node process (server.mjs) with four faces: a REST API at /api, an MCP server at /mcp (streamable-HTTP, JSON-RPC 2.0, 120 tools), a /media face that range-streams local files under data/, and /, which serves the built React dashboard from app/dist. Backend logic lives in lib/*.mjs. There are 14 publish engines in scripts/ - one per platform (meta-social.mjs handles Facebook and Instagram) - each spawned as a subprocess on a scheduler tick or on demand and each emitting a JSON envelope. Plans and state are local JSON. The workspace root holding .env, config.json, state.json, and data/ is overridable via PENDPOST_ROOT (default: the install dir).
Platforms
Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Telegram, Discord, Mastodon, Nostr, WordPress, and Ghost are live. Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, and Google Business Profile are in beta. Each engine handles its own auth, publishing, native scheduling, cover/thumbnail mechanics, and read-only insights. Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, WordPress, and Ghost schedule natively, so those posts fire even when pendpost is off. Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Telegram, Discord, and Nostr have no native scheduling, so due posts are published by the scheduler at their scheduled time.
Security + privacy
pendpost binds 127.0.0.1 (loopback) by default, never phones home, and keeps secrets only in your own .env (which is gitignored). See SECURITY.md for the full posture and how to report a vulnerability.
Shaping pendpost
pendpost is built in the open and we want your feedback. There are three ways in, and none of them make the app phone home:
- Quick feedback or an idea: use the Share feedback link in the dashboard (it opens a prefilled GitHub page in your browser and never sends your
.envor any secret), post in Discussions, or use the feedback issue form. - A bug or a feature request: open an issue and pick the matching form.
- A deeper proposal (a new integration seam, a change to how the core works): open an RFC. See
docs/rfcs/README.md.
No account? A short feedback form on pendpost.com forwards into GitHub for you. See SUPPORT.md for where to get help, and docs/specs/feedback-pipeline.md for how the whole feedback pipeline works.
Status
pendpost is maintained part-time by a small team and is early. Expect rough edges, and set your response-time expectations accordingly.
Docs
The full reference lives at docs.pendpost.com (source in site-docs/). Marketing, pricing, and every download option live at pendpost.com.
License
MIT, Copyright 2026 Nomadik GmbH. See LICENSE. Please also read DISCLAIMER.md for the responsible-use posture and CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.