Publish Substack (manual publish handoff — Substack Articles + Notes)

Substack's sibling to /schedule-approved//schedule-approved-x, adapted for the one real constraint that makes those skills' approach impossible here: Substack has no Buffer channel and no supported API for posting. Rather than reach for an unofficial, session-cookie-based API (ToS-risky, undocumented, could break silently), this skill does what the pipeline already does for image generation — hand off a finished, ready-to-paste deliverable and let the human do the actual publish action, then record that confirmation honestly rather than assuming it happened.

Arguments

• note-id (optional) — hand off one specific approved item. If omitted, process every status: approved note with platform in {substack-article, substack-note} and no ready_id yet.

Process (per note)

1. Move to Substack-Ready/

Copy _Templates/Substack-Ready-Note.md into Substack-Ready/ as YYYY-MM-DD--kebab-slug.md. Fill in draft_id, platform, and:

• For substack-article: title, and the full article body copied into ## Final Content verbatim (in-body images already generated should be noted as "insert image: <label>" at their marker positions, since this handoff step doesn't embed files). Call out the header/hero image separately in ## Publishing Notes — it goes in Substack's dedicated header-image slot in the editor, not inline in the body, so don't leave it looking like just another in-body marker.
• For substack-note: final_text and the same text mirrored into ## Final Content.

publish_status: ready_to_publish. Copy category/format/hashtags/ visual_ids/sources from the source note; compute length from the final text/body. Set the source Draft/Article note's ready_id to this new note's id.

2. Present the copy-ready deliverable

Show the full final content exactly as it should be pasted into Substack's editor, plus a reminder of any images still needing manual insertion at their marked spots. State plainly: this is not published yet — nothing external has happened, this is the same "prompt not a picture" honesty /generate-visual already applies, just for the whole piece.

3. Ask for publish confirmation

Ask the user directly (AskUserQuestion when interactive): has this actually been published on Substack yet? Do not assume yes because time has passed or because the user moved on to another task.

• If confirmed published: set publish_confirmed_date to today, publish_status: published, move the file from Substack-Ready/ to Published-Posts/. Update the source Draft/Article note's status unchanged (it stays approved — the historical record, same pattern as /schedule-approved's Draft Notes) but append {action: scheduled, date, note: "published manually via publish-substack"} — reusing the existing history action name since it means the same thing here: this note left the approval stage for real, external distribution.
• If not yet published: leave it in Substack-Ready/ at publish_status: ready_to_publish. This is a normal, expected state — not an error — for however long it takes the user to actually paste it in.

Report back

Which notes moved to Substack-Ready/, which were confirmed published this run (with their publish_confirmed_date), and which are still waiting on the user to actually publish them.

Hard rules

• Never call any Substack API, official or unofficial — this skill is manual-handoff by design, not a missing feature.
• Never set publish_status: published or publish_confirmed_date without an explicit user confirmation this run.
• Never invent or guess a publish date from context (e.g. "they probably posted it by now") — ask.
• Never process a note that isn't status: approved.