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Answer your Tumblr asks with AI

Your Tumblr inbox fills with asks between visits, some from followers, some anonymous, and each one needs reading, an answer and a decision on whether it goes on your blog.

Cotlet does it in your own Tumblr account with list_asks, answer_ask and delete_ask, called by your AI agent, an n8n workflow or a script.

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Hosted · nothing to install or maintain

Can Tumblr do this on its own?

Tumblr has no automatic answers and no scheduled replies for asks (checked 17 Oct 2026). Its API lists submissions and creates posts with a private-answer flag, but the docs describe no dedicated method to reply to an ask, and there is no official MCP server.

How you do it in Tumblr today

  1. Turn on asks first: Settings in the left dashboard menu, pick the blog, and switch on Let people ask questions in the Ask section. Allow anonymous questions is a separate tick.
  2. On the web, click the envelope labeled Inbox in the left menu. In the apps, open the Activity menu and the Inbox tab.
  3. Reply publicly by publishing the answer to your blog, or privately. An anonymous ask can only get a public answer.
  4. To remove one, click the trashcan icon at the bottom of the ask. Delete all messages in the Inbox clears everything for the chosen blog, and Tumblr cannot restore deleted asks.
  5. Nothing sorts the inbox, so an ask that needs a private reply sits next to ten that could go on the blog.

How to answer your Tumblr asks with AI

Prompt

List the new asks on studio-notes. Draft an answer for each in my voice, skip anything personal, and wait for my OK before publishing.
  1. 01

    Read the inbox

    list_asks returns the pending asks with the text, whether the sender is anonymous, and the time received. The agent pages through the cursor so a full week is handled as one batch.

  2. 02

    Sort by who may see the answer

    An anonymous ask can only be answered publicly, so the agent marks those as public-only and treats everything else as public or private by your rules. Asks about money, health or other people go to your list.

  3. 03

    Draft in your voice

    The agent writes each answer from the posts you point it to, for example your last 20 on the blog, and shows the drafts as a list before anything is sent.

  4. 04

    Publish the approved ones

    answer_ask publishes the answer to your blog, or sends it as a private answer when you set visibility to private. It waits for your OK per call by default.

  5. 05

    Clear the rest

    Spam you name is dropped with delete_ask, which asks for your OK too, because Tumblr cannot restore a deleted ask. Everything else stays in the inbox.

What you get back

Example data

New asks on studio-notes: 9
Answered publicly 5, e.g. "What paper do you use for ink?" (anonymous)
Answered privately 1 (a follower asking about a commission)
Deleted 1 (a link in every sentence)
Left for you 2:
- A long ask about your health (personal)
- A question about another blogger

Other ways to ask

  • Every evening, answer asks with fewer than 200 characters and list the long ones for me.
  • Show the oldest 10 asks and draft answers, but publish none.
  • Answer the asks about commissions privately and point them to my commissions post.
  • Delete asks from the last week that are only a link.

What Tumblr allows, and what to know first

  • Tumblr lets only logged-in users send asks, who can choose to ask as themselves or anonymously, and a blog owner turns anonymous asks on separately with Allow anonymous questions.
  • A sender can send at most 10 asks per hour, and only 5 of those can be anonymous.
  • Tumblr may not deliver an ask over 500 characters, so a long question can be missing from the inbox.
  • An ask is a one-off question and answer, not a two-way conversation like a message, and a published answer can be reblogged by other users.
  • The Ask page title on a blog is limited to 26 characters.

answer_ask and delete_ask ask for your OK by default. To run it daily without you, switch confirmation off for those tools in your dashboard.

Sources: Tumblr Help: Ask · Tumblr API documentation source on GitHub

Call answer_ask from a script

curl

curl -X POST https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/tumblr/asks/ask_5521e0/replies \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"blog":"studio-notes","answer":"Mostly 300 gsm cold-pressed paper. It takes wet ink without buckling, and the tooth keeps lines soft.","visibility":"public"}'

Example response

{
  "post_id": "771205011190",
  "ask_id": "ask_5521e0",
  "blog": "studio-notes",
  "state": "published",
  "visibility": "public"
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the call is tumblr_write → answer_ask. Example data.

Schedule it in n8n, Make, Zapier or cron

Tumblr tools this automation uses

Cotlet Tumblr tools used to answer your Tumblr asks with AI
Tool Parameters
list_asks blog, limit, cursor
answer_ask blog, ask_id, answer, visibility, state
delete_ask blog, ask_id
All 15 Tumblr tools with descriptions

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe to connect Tumblr to Cotlet?

Yes. You sign in to Tumblr yourself, in your own Cloud Browser in the EU, and we never save your password. Your agents only get Tumblr once you enable it, every background request is listed, and the browser profile is stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM, the cipher 1Password uses for its vaults. The AI model never sees a login, posts and messages wait for your OK, and Disable for agents cuts access in one click. Independent scanners grade cotlet.dev A+ on Qualys SSL Labs, securityheaders.com and Mozilla Observatory; live results are on https://cotlet.dev/security.

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