How the international publishing service relates to the convert API and the CLI draft flow.

Publishing API

The Publishing API is the international publishing service at https://md2wechat.com/api/v1. It is a separate service surface from the Convert API.

Convert vs publishing

The Convert API (https://www.md2wechat.cn/api/convert) renders Markdown into WeChat-ready HTML. It never creates WeChat drafts.
The Publishing API (https://md2wechat.com/api/v1) is the publishing surface. Draft creation is driven by the md2wechat CLI through this service.

If your workflow only needs HTML, stop at the Convert API. Draft creation is a publishing side effect and always requires explicit user intent.

md2wechat inspect article.md --json
md2wechat convert article.md --preview
md2wechat convert article.md --draft --cover cover.jpg

Step by step:

inspect --json resolves metadata (title ≤ 32 chars, author ≤ 16, digest ≤ 128) and returns readiness.targets with ready/blocked/degraded states plus blockers such as MISSING_COVER or MISSING_WECHAT_CONFIG.
Preflight validates intent, assets, and cover before any remote call.
Convert renders the HTML through the Convert API.
--upload uploads and replaces article images as WeChat materials; --cover uploads the cover and yields a media_id.
Draft creation lands in the WeChat draft box and returns draft_id and draft_url.
--save-draft <file> saves the draft JSON without submitting; create_draft <json> submits it later; test-draft <html> <cover> is the minimal smoke path.

WeChat error 45004 means an invalid digest — check the digest length first.
Readiness blockers (MISSING_API_KEY, MISSING_WECHAT_CONFIG, MISSING_COVER, LOCAL_IMAGE_MISSING) must be cleared before retrying.

Publishing API

How the international publishing service relates to the convert API and the CLI draft flow.

The Publishing API is the international publishing service at https://md2wechat.com/api/v1. It is a separate service surface from the Convert API.

The Convert API (https://www.md2wechat.cn/api/convert) renders Markdown into WeChat-ready HTML. It never creates WeChat drafts.
The Publishing API (https://md2wechat.com/api/v1) is the publishing surface. Draft creation is driven by the md2wechat CLI through this service.

If your workflow only needs HTML, stop at the Convert API. Draft creation is a publishing side effect and always requires explicit user intent.

md2wechat inspect article.md --json
md2wechat convert article.md --preview
md2wechat convert article.md --draft --cover cover.jpg

Step by step:

inspect --json resolves metadata (title ≤ 32 chars, author ≤ 16, digest ≤ 128) and returns readiness.targets with ready/blocked/degraded states plus blockers such as MISSING_COVER or MISSING_WECHAT_CONFIG.
Preflight validates intent, assets, and cover before any remote call.
Convert renders the HTML through the Convert API.
--upload uploads and replaces article images as WeChat materials; --cover uploads the cover and yields a media_id.
Draft creation lands in the WeChat draft box and returns draft_id and draft_url.
--save-draft <file> saves the draft JSON without submitting; create_draft <json> submits it later; test-draft <html> <cover> is the minimal smoke path.

WeChat error 45004 means an invalid digest — check the digest length first.
Readiness blockers (MISSING_API_KEY, MISSING_WECHAT_CONFIG, MISSING_COVER, LOCAL_IMAGE_MISSING) must be cleared before retrying.