social-media-post-drafting

Identify the target platform first, then verify its actual character cap since defaults vary (Mastodon instances range from 500 to 10,000). Draft the post, then count characters programmatically with Python len() and iterate until it fits with headroom.

Mastodon normalizes every URL to 23 characters regardless of raw length. Use a regex to find URLs in the draft, then compute weighted length as len(post) plus 23 minus each URL's actual length, and compare against your instance's cap.

Mastodon defaults to 500 but varies per instance via MAX_TOOT_CHARS. X allows 280 for free accounts and up to 25,000 for Premium. LinkedIn posts cap at 3000 characters, comments at 1250, Bluesky at 300, and Threads at 500.

Yes, query the instance API with curl: GET https://INSTANCE/api/v1/instance and read max_toot_chars, or use the v2 endpoint's configuration.statuses.max_characters field. The compose box counter also shows the live cap.

Bash expands dollar signs and mangles multiline strings passed as inline arguments. Write the post to a file with write_file and pass it via a --status-file flag to the posting script instead of embedding the text in the command line.

Avoid it for long-form content like blog posts, which belong to article-writing workflows, and for cover letters. It is designed specifically for short-form posts from single tweets to LinkedIn-length updates.