mpcli: Micropub Publisher Command Line Interface

A command-line tool for publishing text-only blog posts to any Micropub-compatible blogging service.

Overview

mp is a simple, fast, and reliable command-line utility for publishing blog posts to a Micropub-compatible blog. It supports publishing posts and drafts with content (including an optional title) provided by command-line arguments, a text file, or stdin.

Features

• ✅ Publish posts directly to Micropub endpoints
• ✅ Read content from multiple sources (arguments, files, stdin)
• ✅ Post titles are optional
• ✅ Post titles can be extracted from line 1 of post content
• ✅ Quiet mode for scripting
• ✅ Configuration management with interactive setup
• ✅ Built with Rust for performance and reliability

Compatible Microblogging Services

mp is known to work with the microblogging services listed below.

Installation

From Source

git clone https://github.com/mjdescy/mp.git
cd mp
cargo build --release

The binary will be available at target/release/mp.

Configuration

Before using mp, you need to configure your Micropub service settings:

mp configure

This will prompt you to enter:

1. API URL: Your Micropub API endpoint URL (refer to the "Compatible Microblogging Services" table above)
2. Authentication Token: Your Micropub authentication token

The configuration is saved locally and will be used for all subsequent posts.

Usage

Publishing Posts

Publish a post with content as an argument:

mp post "Hello, world! This is my first post."

Publish a post from a file:

mp post --file my-post.txt

Publish a post from stdin:

echo "Hello from stdin!" | mp post --stdin

Creating Drafts

Create a draft (same syntax as posts):

mp draft "This is a draft post."
mp draft --file draft.txt
mp draft --stdin

Quiet Mode

Use the --quiet or -q flag to suppress output (useful for scripting):

mp post --quiet "Silent post"

Command Reference

mp post [OPTIONS] [CONTENT]

Publish a post to your configured Micropub endpoint.

Arguments

• [CONTENT] - The content of the post as a command-line argument

Options

• -t, --title: The title of the post (optional)
• -f, --file <PATH> - Read content from file at PATH
• -s, --stdin - Read content from stdin
• -e, --extract-title - Extract a post title from the first line of post content, if the first line starts with a Markdown level 1 heading ("# ")
• -q, --quiet - Suppress output

mp draft [OPTIONS] [CONTENT]

Create a draft post (same options as post).

mp configure

Create or update the configuration file containing your authentication settings. mp configure will launch a short, guided process that prompts for user input and then outputs a configuration file.

Configuration File

The configuration is stored in a TOML file at the standard configuration directory for your platform. On Unix-like systems, this path is ~/.config/mp/config.toml.

To create a config file, simply run mp configure and follow the on-screen prompts.

Example Configuration File

[microblog_service]
api_url = "https://your-micropub-endpoint.example.com"
auth_token = "your-authentication-token"

[default_behavior]
quiet = false
extract_title = true

Usage Examples

# Configure the tool (first time setup)
mp configure

# Publish a simple post
mp post "Just finished reading a great book!"

# Publish a simple post with a title
mp post "Just finished reading a great book!" --title "Post title"

# Publish a longer post from a file
mp post --file blog-post.md

# Publish a longer post from a file, 
# and submit the first line in the file as
# the post title if it is a markdown level 1
#  heading ("# ") 
mp post --file blog-post.md --extract-title

# Create a draft for later
mp draft "Working on this idea..."

# Silent posting for automation
echo "Automated post" | mp post --stdin --quiet

# Get command usage information
mp help
mp help post
mp help draft

Requirements

• Rust 1.70+ (for building from source)
• A Micropub-compatible blogging service

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

Author

Michael Descy mike@mjdescy.me

Support

If you encounter any issues or have questions, please file an issue on the GitHub repository.