Publisher Workbench

Turn Markdown notes into styled, review-ready publishing drafts. Publisher Workbench is a free, open-source, desktop-only community plugin for Obsidian, with an editorial workbench for WeChat Official Accounts and an optional companion Chrome extension for X Articles.

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Draft-first by design. The plugin does not click the final public Publish button. Verify content on the destination platform before publishing it yourself.

The development project was previously called Obsidian Publisher. The Community Plugins listing is Publisher Workbench (ID publisher-workbench), in accordance with Obsidian's plugin naming rules. The repository is still haomiaoOnline/obsidian-publisher. This is not an official Obsidian product.

Features

• Keep Markdown notes as the source of truth.
• Open the Publisher Workbench using the ribbon icon or Publish current note in the command palette.
• Style WeChat text with 14–20px font sizes, line height, accent and text colors, font family, and four section treatments (underline, left bar, box, bracket).
• Choose Editorial, Tech Blue, Warm Paper or Forest themes, then fine-tune the typography.
• Preview the article before copying, and retry individual platform handoffs if needed.
• Prepare HTML with compressed, embedded images and validate the local rich-text clipboard write.
• Dry run is on by default. No scheduled or silent publication, bundled tracking, or automatic installation of third-party tools.

Requirements and supported environment

• Obsidian desktop 1.6.0 or later; mobile is not supported.
• A platform account and logged-in browser session for any target you choose.
• macOS was used for end-to-end clipboard/draft verification. Other desktop operating systems use the same plugin, but clipboard interoperability with external editors should be checked locally.
• The core WeChat Copy to WeChat workflow does not require Wechatsync. Wechatsync and X Bridge are optional companion integrations and must be installed separately.

Installation

From Obsidian Community Plugins

After the directory review is approved, open Settings → Community plugins → Browse, find Publisher Workbench, install and enable it. This installs the Obsidian plugin only, not its separate Chrome extensions or command-line integrations.

Manual installation before directory approval

1. Download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest GitHub Release. Use matching files from the same release.
2. Create <Vault>/.obsidian/plugins/publisher-workbench/ and copy those files into the folder.
3. Restart/reload Obsidian if necessary. Enable Publisher Workbench from Settings → Community plugins.
4. Open a Markdown note, click the ribbon send icon, or run Publish current note.

Migrating from an earlier private/test version: The former ID was obsidian-publisher and the Community version ID is publisher-workbench. Disable the old plugin before enabling the new one. Back up its data.json if needed; settings and locally stored bridge tokens do not migrate automatically. Do not keep both enabled at once.

WeChat: rich-text publishing workflow

1. Open the source article in Obsidian. Local ![image](...) and Obsidian ![[image]] embeds are supported when attachments are resolvable from the vault.
2. In the workbench, select the WeChat preview, choose a theme, and adjust typography. The Focus preview view helps inspect long articles.
3. Wait until image processing is complete and the Copy to WeChat button is enabled. Click it once and check the local copy result.
4. Open a new draft at WeChat Official Account. Paste into the body editor, not the browser address bar or title field.
5. The WeChat editor may warn about text-alignment properties. Review the preview, and continue insertion only if it looks correct.
6. Explicitly choose Save as draft. Reopen/reload the saved draft and check image order, section styling, text and links. Final public publication remains a user action.

Why explicit saving matters: In real-editor acceptance testing, merely pasting text did not always cause a persistent save. A manual Save as draft followed by reopening did preserve the complete 11,298-character, five-image article. External clipboard managers, device-sharing utilities and desktop automation can occasionally replace the clipboard after copying. A successful local clipboard check cannot guarantee that the remote editor received or saved the content.

Optional: Wechatsync draft handoff

Wechatsync is a separate third-party CLI plus Chrome integration, not installed automatically by this plugin.

1. Install and configure Wechatsync according to its own documentation. Check the supported command syntax for your version.
2. Sign into the destination platform in Chrome. Enable Wechatsync's local bridge and copy its local MCP bridge token.
3. In Publisher Workbench settings, set the executable (default wechatsync), platform identifiers, and token.
4. Keep Dry run enabled while checking the planned command. Disable it only when ready to request a real draft.
5. Use Generate selected drafts / handoffs. Review the per-platform status and inspect the remote draft before any publication.

The plugin stages temporary Markdown/HTML files outside the vault for the configured adapter. It launches the executable without a shell, supplies the local token through the child-process WECHATSYNC_TOKEN environment variable (not command arguments), and checks bridge availability at 127.0.0.1:9527/9528. Versions of the third-party tool may behave differently. The plugin does not manage Wechatsync upgrades.

Optional: X Articles via the X Bridge Chrome extension

X Articles is not the same as a regular short post on X. The companion extension uses a pinned, MIT-licensed version of xPoster.

1. Download x-bridge.zip from the matching GitHub Release, and extract it to a stable directory.
2. In Chrome open chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode, select Load unpacked, and choose the extracted directory that contains the extension manifest.json.
3. Make sure Chrome is logged into X and the account can access the X Articles composer. Grant one-time image-folder permission if requested; Chrome stores the handle locally when permission remains valid.
4. In Publisher Workbench settings, leave the Bundled X Bridge strategy selected (the X Bridge companion is installed separately).
5. Open a note, select X Articles, and use Generate selected drafts / handoffs. The bridge consumes the clipboard handoff and fills an X draft.
6. Reopen the draft and verify text, every image and their order. You decide when to click Publish.

The X Bridge has a diagnostic side panel for manual retry. The core plugin also offers Prepare only and External command strategies; an external command must support X Articles, not merely short posts. No extension is installed by this Obsidian plugin. See extension notes, xPoster license, and upstream version attribution.

Privacy, permissions and external services

No built-in ads, telemetry or hosted plugin service. The plugin reads the currently opened note and referenced images only when you use the publishing interface. Nothing is made public automatically.

We cannot control the behavior of other installed publishing tools or Chrome extensions. Protect your vault, clipboard, local browser sessions and permission grants. Do not share private drafts or authentication data in bug reports.

Troubleshooting

Development

Use a Node.js development environment:

npm ci
npm run typecheck
npm test
npm run test:x-bridge
npm run build

main.js is a generated build artifact and is intentionally absent from Git source history. Community installs require the binary release assets main.js, manifest.json and styles.css. The optional X Bridge is distributed as x-bridge.zip.

See architecture and MVP test scope. The repository is open for bug reports and contributions.

Compatibility and limitations

• First community-facing release: 0.5.0; review-compliance patch: 0.5.1 (the Chrome X Bridge is version 0.1.10).
• Requires Obsidian desktop 1.6.0+. Mobile not supported.
• Frontmatter normalization is intentionally limited to the fields needed by the MVP.
• WeChat rich copy and X Articles drafts have been verified end to end; Xiaohongshu is adapter-dependent.
• Platform UI changes, clipboard software, browser permissions and account eligibility can affect draft creation.
• No scheduling, automatic final publication, platform-password management or cloud publishing history.

Credits, license and trademarks

Copyright © 2026 haomiaoOnline contributors. Distributed under the MIT License.

The optional Chrome extension contains modified material from xPoster under its MIT License, pinned to the documented upstream commit. Its third-party Markdown parser retains its license.

Obsidian, WeChat, X, Xiaohongshu and other platform names and marks belong to their respective owners. This project is independent and not endorsed by them.