auto-li 0.1.0

Open-source LinkedIn company-page publisher that drives linkedin.com with Playwright and imported cookies. (CLI: auto-li)

auto-linkedin

Open-source LinkedIn company-page publisher that drives linkedin.com with Playwright and your own imported cookies. Prepare content in a folder, configure your account once, publish.

Status: Alpha. v1 supports company-page posting only (personal-feed posts are out of scope). Using browser automation to post to LinkedIn violates LinkedIn's User Agreement — use a scratch page, conservative pacing, and a residential IP that matches where you got the cookies.

Why this project

LinkedIn's official Marketing Developer Platform requires app review and is gated to specific Business partners; personal accounts and most company-page admins can't post programmatically through it. auto-linkedin takes the opposite approach: automate the website you already use, with the session you already have.

Supported post types (web UI, April 2026):

• text — caption-only post
• image — single image + optional caption
• multi_image — 2–9 images in a single share
• video — one video (MP4/MOV/WMV/FLV/AVI)
• link — share-modal post with an auto-generated URL preview card (/feed/update/...)
• article — long-form post via LinkedIn's article editor (/pulse/...), with title + body

link and article are different LinkedIn surfaces with unrelated UIs and permalinks; don't confuse them. link is the regular share modal with a URL embedded in the text. article is the dashboard "Publish an article" editor, with a separate title field and a long body (up to ~110k chars).

Personal-feed posting is intentionally out of scope for v1. Every publish call posts as one of the company pages listed in the account YAML.

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• macOS or Linux (tested on macOS)
• A real Chrome you can log in from on the same network you'll run the bot on
• Admin or Content Admin permission on the target company page
• (Recommended) a residential proxy if you'll run this on a different machine from where you logged in

Install

One command with pipx (recommended):

pipx install auto-li
auto-li init --account demo

Or with uv:

uv tool install auto-li
auto-li init --account demo

Note: the GitHub repo is auto-linkedin but the PyPI distribution is published as auto-li (matches the CLI command). PyPI rejected auto-linkedin as too similar to existing LinkedIn-named packages.

auto-li init installs the patched Chrome channel Patchright needs and scaffolds a working directory in .:

./config/demo.yaml            # account config from the shipped template
./content/example-post/       # sample post descriptor
./sessions/                   # session files (gitignored)
./.gitignore                  # appended with auto-linkedin entries

It is safe to re-run — existing files are preserved.

From source (contributors)

git clone https://github.com/xtea/auto-linkedin
cd auto-linkedin
uv sync
uv run auto-li init --account demo

Configure an account

Edit config/<account>.yaml. The important fields:

• handle — your personal LinkedIn handle (display only)
• company_pages — at least one entry. The numeric id comes from the admin URL https://www.linkedin.com/company/<id>/admin/dashboard/. Add display_name exactly as it appears on the page (used to verify the share-modal actor pill before posting).
• default_company_page — id used when post.yaml omits as_company and --as isn't passed
• user_agent, viewport, locale, timezone — match the browser you'll log in from. Drift between these and the cookie's origin is the #1 cause of /checkpoint/ challenges.
• pacing.max_posts_per_day — start at 1–2 for company pages. LinkedIn penalizes high-frequency company posting.

Inspect the configured pages at any time:

auto-li pages --account demo

Authenticate

Two paths; pick whichever you prefer.

Option A — Headed manual login (simplest)

auto-li login --account demo

A Chrome window opens. Log in by hand (handle 2FA yourself). When the home feed appears, the session is saved to sessions/demo.json.

Option B — Import cookies from your real browser

If you already have a logged-in LinkedIn tab in Chrome:

1. Install Cookie-Editor.

2. Open linkedin.com, click the extension, Export → Export as JSON → save to li-cookies.json.

3. Run:

   auto-li import-cookies ./li-cookies.json --account demo
   

The tool rejects the import if li_at or JSESSIONID is missing. Recommended cookies (liap, bcookie, bscookie, lidc, li_rm, lang) are warned about but not required.

Verify

auto-li doctor --account demo

Should print OK: <handle> session is valid.

Publish content

Layout

content/
└── my-post/
    ├── post.yaml
    └── media/
        └── launch.jpg

post.yaml schema

type: image                     # text | image | multi_image | video | link | article
caption: |
  Excited to announce ...
media:
  - ./media/launch.jpg          # paths are relative to this file
as_company: 111873058           # optional; falls back to default_company_page
link_url: null                  # required only for type=link (HTTPS)
title: null                     # required only for type=article (≤ 150 chars)
schedule: 2026-05-08T15:00:00Z  # optional; UTC or with offset

Validation runs before any browser work:

Type	Rule
text	non-empty caption, no media, no link_url, no title
image	exactly 1 image (.jpg / .jpeg / .png / .gif)
multi_image	2–9 images
video	exactly 1 video (.mp4 / .mov / .wmv / .flv / .avi)
link	HTTPS link_url, no media
article	non-empty title (≤ 150 chars) + non-empty body in caption (≤ 110k chars), no media, no link_url
caption (non-article)	≤ 3000 chars, ≤ 30 hashtags

One-shot publish

auto-li publish content/my-post --account demo --dry-run        # safe first run
auto-li publish content/my-post --account demo                  # posts for real
auto-li publish content/my-post --account demo --as 99999999    # override target page

--dry-run walks the full upload flow and stops before clicking Post — useful when patching selectors.

--as <page_id> overrides whatever is in post.yaml and the account's default_company_page. Resolution order: --as flag > post.as_company > default_company_page > error.

Scheduled / queued publish

Drop posts with schedule: set in the future, then run auto-li queue from cron / launchd / systemd-timer:

*/5 * * * * cd /path/to/auto-linkedin && auto-li queue --account demo >> sessions/queue.log 2>&1

The queue stores state in sessions/queue.db (SQLite) with statuses: queued | running | succeeded | failed | paused. Use auto-li list to inspect. Successful jobs record the post's activity URN (urn:li:activity:...) and permalink in the row's shortcode and url columns.

We deliberately don't drive LinkedIn's native "Schedule for later" UI button — driving its date-picker bottom-sheet has worse selector rot than the share modal itself, and it would split scheduled-post state between LinkedIn's servers and our SQLite. The CLI + cron pattern keeps everything inspectable in one place.

How the Playwright flow works

1. Launch Chrome via Patchright (Chromium with CDP/webdriver leaks patched at the binary level). Vanilla playwright is fingerprinted by LinkedIn's bot-detection stack in 2026 — don't use it.
2. Load sessions/<account>.json as the Playwright storage_state.
3. Navigate to https://www.linkedin.com/feed/, confirm by URL + page title that the session is authenticated.

For share-modal posts (text / image / multi_image / video / link):

4. Open the share modal from https://www.linkedin.com/company/<page_id>/admin/page-posts/published/. This URL auto-scopes the actor to the company — no actor-switcher driving required. The visible "Posting as <Company>" pill is verified before any caption / media work.
5. Type the caption (with humanized per-character delay), then setInputFiles into the hidden <input type=file> for image / multi_image / video posts. For link posts, the URL is included in the typed text so LinkedIn's auto-preview card renders.
6. Click Post. Confirm via URN delta on the admin grid (urn:li:activity:...).

For article (long-form):

4. Open the editor directly at https://www.linkedin.com/article/new?author=urn:li:fsd_company:<page_id>. The author= URN locks the actor to the company; no Create-menu interaction is required.
5. Verify the company name is reachable in the editor toolbar. Fill the title (<textarea>) and body (Quill contenteditable).
6. Click Next → Publish in the modal. Confirm by URL transition to /pulse/<slug>-<id>/.

All selectors are in src/auto_linkedin/publisher/selectors.py — when LinkedIn changes the UI, that is the file to patch.

Adding an alternative backend

The Publisher protocol in publisher/base.py is deliberately minimal so you can drop in alternative backends (e.g. an official Marketing API publisher for accounts that have access).

Pacing & safety

Built-in guardrails, tunable in config/<account>.yaml:

• max_posts_per_day daily cap (enforced by the queue)
• min/max_step_delay_seconds randomized delays between UI actions
• pre_run_idle_seconds_* scroll/dwell before the first click
• Per-character typing delay (15–45 ms) and pre-Post mouse jitter

On a /checkpoint/ redirect or /authwall, the runner pauses the job and records the reason. Re-authenticate with auto-li login and retry.

If the share modal opens with the wrong actor (admin permissions on the page have lapsed since you authenticated), the runner aborts with a WrongActorError rather than posting to the wrong surface.

Known limitations

• Company pages only in v1. Personal-feed posts are out of scope.
• No @mention typeahead. Mentions in the caption are passed through as plain text — driving LinkedIn's mention picker is a follow-up.
• No native scheduler. Schedules are managed via the local SQLite queue + cron; we don't drive LinkedIn's "Schedule for later" UI (which exists for both share posts and articles).
• Selectors rot. LinkedIn ships UI changes every few weeks. Expect periodic patches to selectors.py.
• 2FA mid-run. If LinkedIn challenges mid-publish, the tool pauses; manual re-login is required.
• Shared IP. Using cookies captured from residence A while running the bot on residence B's IP is the single most reliable way to get challenged.
• ToS risk. Browser-driven automation of LinkedIn is against the User Agreement. Use a page you control, on a residential IP, with conservative pacing.

Non-goals (for now)

• Web UI / dashboard (CLI + YAML only)
• Long-running daemon (cron-friendly invocation instead)
• Engagement automation (reactions, comments, DMs, connection requests)
• Personal-feed posting (deferred to v2)

License

MIT.