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Sharing on Social Media with Gos v1.0.0



Published at 2025-03-04T21:22:07+02:00

As you may have noticed, I like to share on Mastodon and LinkedIn all the technical things I find interesting, and this blog post is technically all about that.

Gos logo

Table of Contents




Introduction



Gos is a Go-based replacement (which I wrote) for Buffer.com, providing the ability to schedule and manage social media posts from the command line. It can be run, for example, every time you open a new shell or only once every N hours when you open a new shell.

I used Buffer.com to schedule and post my social media messages for a long time. However, over time, there were more problems with that service, including a slow and unintuitive UI, and the free version only allows scheduling up to 10 messages. At one point, they started to integrate an AI assistant (which would seemingly randomly pop up in separate JavaScript-powered input boxes), and then I had enough and decided I had to build my own social sharing tool—and Gos was born.

https://buffer.com
https://codeberg.org/snonux/gos

Gos features




Installation



Prequisites



The prerequisites are:


Build and install



Clone the repository:

git clone https://codeberg.org/snonux/gos.git
cd gos

Build the binaries:

go build -o gos ./cmd/gos
go build -o gosc ./cmd/gosc
sudo mv gos ~/go/bin
sudo mv gosc ~/go/bin

Or, if you want to use the Taskfile:

go-task install

Configuration



Gos requires a configuration file to store API secrets and OAuth2 credentials for each supported social media platform. The configuration is managed using a Secrets structure, which is stored as a JSON file in ~/.config/gos/gos.json.

Example Configuration File (~/.config/gos/gos.json):

{
  "MastodonURL": "https://mastodon.example.com",
  "MastodonAccessToken": "your-mastodon-access-token",
  "LinkedInClientID": "your-linkedin-client-id",
  "LinkedInSecret": "your-linkedin-client-secret",
  "LinkedInRedirectURL": "http://localhost:8080/callback",
}

Configuration fields




Automatically managed fields



Once you finish the OAuth2 setup (after the initial run of gos), some fields—like LinkedInAccessToken and LinkedInPersonID will get filled in automatically. To check if everything's working without actually posting anything, you can run the app in dry run mode with the --dry option. After OAuth2 is successful, the file will be updated with LinkedInClientID and LinkedInAccessToken. If the access token expires, it will go through the OAuth2 process again.

Invoking Gos



Gos is a command-line tool for posting updates to multiple social media platforms. You can run it with various flags to customize its behaviour, such as posting in dry run mode, limiting posts by size, or targeting specific platforms.

Flags control the tool's behavior. Below are several common ways to invoke Gos and descriptions of the available flags.

Common flags




Examples



*Dry run mode*

Dry run mode lets you simulate the entire posting process without actually sending the posts. This is useful for testing configurations or seeing what would happen before making real posts.

./gos --dry

*Normal run*

Sharing to all platforms is as simple as the following (assuming it is configured correctly):

./gos

:-)

Gos Screenshot

However, you will notice that no messages are queued to be posted yet (not like on the screenshot yet!). Relax and read on...

Composing messages to be posted



To post messages using Gos, you need to create text files containing the posts' content. These files are placed inside the directory specified by the --gosDir flag (the default directory is ~/.gosdir). Each text file represents a single post and must have the .txt extension. You can also simply run gos --compose to compose a new entry. It will open simply a new text file in gosDir.

Basic structure of a message file



Each text file should contain the message you want to post on the specified platforms. That's it. Example of a Basic Post File ~/.gosdir/samplepost.txt:

This is a sample message to be posted on social media platforms.

Maybe add a link here: https://foo.zone

#foo #cool #gos #golang

The message is just arbitrary text, and, besides inline share tags (see later in this document) at the beginning, Gos does not parse any of the content other than ensuring the overall allowed size for the social media platform isn't exceeded. If it exceeds the limit, Gos will prompt you to edit the post using your standard text editor (as specified by the EDITOR environment variable). When posting, all the hyperlinks, hashtags, etc., are interpreted by the social platforms themselves (e.g., Mastodon, LinkedIn).

Adding share tags in the filename



You can control which platforms a post is shared to, and manage other behaviors using tags embedded in the filename. Add tags in the format share:platform1.-platform2 to target specific platforms within the filename. This instructs Gos to share the message only to platform1 (e.g., Mastodon) and explicitly exclude platform2 (e.g., LinkedIn). You can include multiple platforms by listing them after share:, separated by a .. Use the - symbol to exclude a platform.

Currently, only linkedin and mastodon are supported, and the shortcuts li and ma also work.

**Examples:**


Besides encoding share tags in the filename, they can also be embedded within the .txt file content to be queued. For example, a file named ~/.gosdir/foopost.txt with the following content:

share:mastodon The content of the post here

or

share:mastodon

The content of the post is here https://some.foo/link

#some #hashtags

Gos will parse this content, extract the tags, and queue it as ~/.gosdir/db/platforms/mastodon/foopost.share:mastodon.extracted.txt.... (see how post queueing works later in this document).

Using the prio tag



Gos randomly picks any queued message without any specific order or priority. However, you can assign a higher priority to a message. The priority determines the order in which posts are processed, with messages without a priority tag being posted last and those with priority tags being posted first. If multiple messages have the priority tag, then a random message will be selected from them.

*Examples using the Priority tag:*


There is more: you can also use the soon tag. It is almost the same as the prio tag, just with one lower priority.

More tags




So you could also have filenames like those:


etc...

All of the above also works with embedded tags. E.g.:

share:mastodon,ask,prio Hello wold :-)

or 

share:mastodon,ask,prio

Hello World :-)

The gosc binary



gosc stands for Gos Composer and will simply launch your $EDITOR on a new text file in the gosDir. It's the same as running gos --compose, really. It is a quick way of composing new posts. Once composed, it will ask for your confirmation on whether the message should be queued or not.

How queueing works in gos



When you place a message file in the gosDir, Gos processes it by moving the message through a queueing system before posting it to the target social media platforms. A message's lifecycle includes several key stages, from creation to posting, all managed through the ./db/platforms/PLATFORM directories.

Step-by-step queueing process



1. Inserting a Message into gosDir: You start by creating a text file that represents your post (e.g., foo.txt) and placing it in the gosDir. When Gos runs, this file is processed. The easiest way is to use gosc here.

2. Moving to the Queue: Upon running Gos, the tool identifies the message in the gosDir and places it into the queue for the specified platform. The message is moved into the appropriate directory for each platform in ./db/platforms/PLATFORM. During this stage, the message file is renamed to include a timestamp indicating when it was queued and given a .queued extension.

*Example: If a message is queued for LinkedIn, the filename might look like this:*

~/.gosdir/db/platforms/linkedin/foo.share:-mastodon.txt.20241022-102343.queued

3. Posting the Message: Once a message is placed in the queue, Gos posts it to the specified social media platforms.

4. Renaming to .posted: After a message is successfully posted to a platform, the corresponding .queued file is renamed to have a .posted extension, and the filename timestamp is also updated. This signals that the post has been processed and published.

*Example - After a successful post to LinkedIn, the message file might look like this:*

./db/platforms/linkedin/foo.share:-mastodon.txt.20241112-121323.posted

How message selection works in gos



Gos decides which messages to post using a combination of priority, platform-specific tags, and timing rules. The message selection process ensures that messages are posted according to your configured cadence and targets while respecting pauses between posts and previously met goals.

The key factors in message selection are:


Database replication



I simply use Syncthing to backup/sync my gosDir. Note, that I run Gos on my personal laptop. No need to run it from a server.

https://syncthing.net

Post summary as gemini gemtext



For my blog, I want to post a summary of all the social messages posted over the last couple of months. For an example, have a look here:

./2025-01-01-posts-from-october-to-december-2024.html

To accomplish this, run:

gos --geminiSummaryFor 202410,202411,202412

This outputs the summary for the three specified months, as shown in the example. The summary includes posts from all social media networks but removes duplicates.

Also, add the --gemtexterEnable flag, if you are using Gemtexter:


gos --gemtexterEnable --geminiSummaryFor 202410,202411,202412

Gemtexter

In case there are HTTP links that translate directly to the Geminispace for certain capsules, specify the Gemini capsules as a comma-separated list as follows:

gos --gemtexterEnable --geminiSummaryFor 202410,202411,202412 --geminiCapsules "foo.zone,paul.buetow.org"

It will then also generate Gemini Gemtext links in the summary page and flag them with (Gemini).

Conclusion



Overall, this was a fun little Go project with practical use for me personally. I hope you also had fun reading this, and maybe you will use it as well.

E-Mail your comments to paul@nospam.buetow.org :-)

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