Power Publisher Dev.to

Generate a complete RSS 2.0 feed from all your blog posts for automatic import to Dev.to, eliminating manual content copying and enabling continuous syndication.

When to Use This Command

Run this command when you want to set up or update your Dev.to RSS feed for automatic blog post syndication.

• You have blog posts in your codebase and want to auto-syndicate them to Dev.to
• You added new blog posts and need to regenerate the RSS feed
• You are setting up Dev.to content import for the first time
• You want to ensure all your markdown blog posts are included in the RSS feed

Use it also when:

• You need to validate that your RSS feed is well-formed XML
• You want to preview what Dev.to will see when it imports your feed

Quick Start

Copy
# .claude/commands/power-publisher-devto.md
name: power-publisher-devto
description: Generate RSS feed for Dev.to auto-import
arguments: none

Copy
# Generate the Dev.to RSS feed
claude power-publisher-devto

Expected output:
Scanning for blog posts...
  Found: 12 posts in src/content/blog/

Generating RSS feed...
  - Parsed 12 posts with frontmatter
  - Converted markdown to HTML
  - Encoded content in CDATA sections

Saved: public/rss-devto.xml (12 items)

Next steps:
  1. Deploy your site (make RSS publicly accessible)
  2. Go to https://dev.to/settings/extensions
  3. Add RSS URL: https://yoursite.com/rss-devto.xml

Core Concepts

Concept	Description
RSS 2.0	Standard XML syndication format supported by Dev.to
CDATA Section	XML wrapper that preserves HTML content within RSS items
Frontmatter	YAML metadata (title, date, description, tags) in markdown files
Channel	The RSS feed container with your site metadata
Item	An individual blog post entry in the RSS feed

RSS Generation Pipeline:
  Blog Posts (*.md) ──> Parse Frontmatter ──> Convert to HTML
                                                   │
       public/rss-devto.xml <── Build RSS XML <────┘
              │
              v
       Deploy ──> Dev.to Auto-Import

Configuration

Parameter	Default	Description
content-dir	auto-detected	Directory containing markdown blog posts
output	public/rss-devto.xml	Output path for the generated RSS file
site-url	from config	Your site's base URL for absolute links
feed-title	from config	RSS channel title
max-items	unlimited	Maximum number of posts to include

Best Practices

1. Include complete frontmatter in all posts -- Every markdown file needs title, date, description, and tags in the frontmatter for proper RSS generation.

2. Deploy before configuring Dev.to import -- The RSS feed URL must be publicly accessible before Dev.to can fetch it. Deploy first, then add the URL.

3. Run this command after every new post -- Regenerate the RSS feed whenever you add or update blog posts to keep Dev.to in sync.

4. Use absolute URLs for images -- Relative image paths in markdown will break in RSS. Ensure all image references use full URLs.

5. Test the RSS feed with a validator -- Before adding to Dev.to, validate the XML at validator.w3.org/feed/ to catch formatting issues.

Common Issues

1. No blog posts found -- The scanner looks for common patterns: src/content/blog/**/*.md, content/blog/**/*.md, posts/**/*.md. Ensure your posts match one of these patterns.

2. HTML encoding issues in RSS -- Special characters in markdown can break XML. The CDATA wrapper handles most cases, but check for unescaped ]]> sequences.

3. Dev.to import not updating -- Dev.to polls RSS feeds periodically (not instantly). New posts may take several hours to appear. Force a refresh from Dev.to settings.