Cross-post blog articles to Medium with a canonical link

1. On the Medium homepage, click Stories in the left rail menu, then Import a story in the top-right corner, paste the post URL and click Import.
2. Click See your story and check the draft: Medium runs the import through a third-party service, so a page it cannot read comes back blank or with an error.
3. When the Medium importer fails, click Write, paste the post by hand, re-add images and embeds, then open the three-dot menu > More settings > Advanced Settings, select "This story was originally published elsewhere" and click Save canonical link.
4. Click Publish, add topics, and choose Publish now or Schedule for later.
5. Repeat for every new post. Nothing in Medium tells you which blog posts are already on your account, and a second copy of the same story breaks Medium's No Duplicate Content rule.

Every Monday, check yourname.dev/blog for posts that are not on Medium yet, import each one with a canonical link back to my blog, and schedule them for Thursday 9:00 my time.

1. 01

   Find what is new on the blog

   The agent reads your blog feed or the URLs you list and keeps only posts newer than the last run. It never picks a post you marked as blog-only, such as an announcement or a sponsor post.

2. 02

   Check Medium for a copy first

   Before importing, the agent pulls your published, draft and scheduled stories with list_stories and compares titles. A close match gets opened with get_story to compare its canonical_url with the blog URL. A match means the post is already on Medium, so it is skipped and named in the report.

3. 03

   Import, then inspect the draft

   import_story runs Medium's importer on the URL. The agent then reads the draft back and checks three things: the canonical_url points to your blog, every image from the original is there, and code samples did not turn into plain paragraphs.

4. 04

   Fall back when the importer gives up

   A blank or failed import is rebuilt with create_draft from the post's own Markdown, with canonical_url set to the blog address. The agent tells you which posts took this path, because those drafts carry today's date instead of the original one.

5. 05

   Schedule into your slot

   Clean drafts go to schedule_story at the day and hour you named, one story per slot so two posts never go out together. Drafts with missing images stay unscheduled and wait for you to look.

Blog checked: 3 new posts since 5 Oct.
"Shipping small": imported, canonical link OK, 4 of 4 images. Scheduled Thu 15 Oct 9:00.
"Why we dropped GraphQL": already on Medium (published 9 Oct), skipped.
"Postgres indexes, part 2": importer returned a blank page. Rebuilt from Markdown with the canonical link; dated today, not 7 Oct.
"Postgres indexes, part 2" waits unscheduled: 2 diagrams are missing.

• Medium's Import a story backdates the draft to the original publish date and adds a canonical link to the source automatically.
• Medium hands imports to a third-party service; when that service cannot interpret a page, the import shows a blank page or an error and Medium's advice is to move the post by hand.
• Only the author of a Medium story can set its canonical link, and Medium suggests checking it with View page source and a search for "canonical".
• Medium's No Duplicate Content rule forbids republishing a story that already exists on Medium, including the same story in a second publication, and violations suspend the account.
• Medium lets you import only content you have the rights to republish.

schedule_story asks for your OK by default. To run it weekly without you, switch confirmation off for that tool in your dashboard.

Sources: Medium Help: Importing a post to Medium · Medium Help: Trouble importing content using the import tool · Medium Help: Set a canonical link · Medium Help: About the No Duplicate Content rule

curl https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/medium/import_story \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url":"https://yourname.dev/blog/shipping-small"}'

{
  "story_id": "3f9a1c27b84e",
  "status": "draft",
  "canonical_url": "https://yourname.dev/blog/shipping-small"
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the tool is medium_import_story. Example data.

• Publish Markdown to Medium on a schedule
• Get a weekly Medium stats and earnings report
• Update old Medium stories in bulk
• Medium API and MCP server: every tool
• All use cases