DEV.to

DEV.to is the one blogging platform Ocoya connects to. A DEV.to post isn’t a social caption — it’s a Markdown article with a title, so it behaves differently from every other channel.

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Before you start

You need a DEV.to account and an API key from it. DEV.to has no sign-in flow for apps, so Ocoya connects with a key you generate yourself rather than by sending you to DEV.to to approve access.

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Connect DEV.to

Because the connection is a key rather than an approval, revoking it is done on DEV.to: delete the key in Settings → Extensions and Ocoya can no longer reach the account.

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What you can post

An article, written in Markdown:

• A title — required, and the thing to get right
• A body in Markdown, with the formatting DEV.to supports
• Images, carried inside the body as Markdown

No video. Attach one and the article is refused. DEV.to articles publish live — Ocoya publishes them as published, not as drafts on DEV.to.

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The title

Every DEV.to article needs a title, capped at 128 characters. If you don’t set one, Ocoya takes the first line of your caption and uses that, stripping any Markdown heading marks so a line starting ## Introduction becomes Introduction rather than printing the hashes. With nothing to work from it falls back to Untitled article — which you don’t want published, so set a title or open with a strong first line.

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DEV.to’s limits

The body limit is Ocoya’s guard rail. DEV.to’s own cap is 800 KB of Markdown, which is far past anything typed into a composer — the lower number just means you fail in the editor rather than at publish time.

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Writing for it, not for social

The same caption rarely works as both a tweet and an article. Two things follow from that:

• Use per-channel captions when a post goes to DEV.to and social networks together. Write the article for DEV.to and a short version for everything else.
• Markdown is rendered, so headings, lists, code fences and links all work — and a caption written for social will look thin as an article.

If you’re publishing to DEV.to regularly, it’s usually a separate post rather than one shared with your social channels.

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Common problems

“That DEV.to API key was rejected. Generate a new key and try again.” The key is wrong, was revoked, or was copied with whitespace. Generate a fresh one in Settings → Extensions and reconnect. “DEV.to articles require text.” The article has no body. Media alone isn’t an article. “DEV.to articles cannot exceed 800 KB.” The Markdown is past DEV.to’s own limit — split it into more than one article. “DEV.to is rate limiting this account. Space the scheduled articles further apart and try again.” DEV.to limits how quickly one account can publish. Spread scheduled articles out rather than queuing several at the same time. “Connection to your profile has expired. Please reconnect.” Reconnect with a current key. See Reconnect a channel.

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