LinkedIn setup

linkedin-scheduler publishes through LinkedIn’s official Share on LinkedIn product, which lets an app post on the personal profile of the member who authorized it. It is self-serve: no review, no paid plan. You create your own app: nobody else’s app ever holds a token for your profile.

1. Create the app (once)

1. Go to https://www.linkedin.com/developers/apps and click Create app.
2. Fill in a name (it does not appear on your posts), a logo (any square image) and a LinkedIn Page. LinkedIn requires a Page, even though posts go to your personal profile. Any Page you belong to works, or create an empty one.
3. Settings tab: if a Verify button shows next to the Page, you can skip it. The products below do not need it.
4. Products tab: add
   • Share on LinkedIn: w_member_social, needed to post (docs);
   • Sign In with LinkedIn using OpenID Connect: openid profile, used to read your member id (docs).

2. Get a token

1. Open the Token Generator (also linked from the app’s Auth tab as “OAuth 2.0 tools”).
2. Choose your app, tick openid, profile and w_member_social, sign in and allow.
3. Copy the token. Note today’s date plus 60 days: that is LINKEDIN_TOKEN_EXPIRES.

Check it without publishing anything:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" https://api.linkedin.com/v2/userinfo

It answers with your name and a sub. Optional: set LINKEDIN_PERSON_URN to urn:li:person:<sub> as a secret to save one request per post.

3. Give it to the Worker

• Deploy button: paste it in the LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN field during setup.
• Afterwards: Cloudflare dashboard → your Worker → Settings → Variables and Secrets, or pnpm exec wrangler secret put LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN.

The token can post as you: never put it in a file, a commit, an issue or a chat.

Renew the token

The token expires after 60 days, and LinkedIn only gives refresh tokens to approved partners (docs). From 7 days before LINKEDIN_TOKEN_EXPIRES, /status shows a warning. Renewing is step 2 again, then replace LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN and LINKEDIN_TOKEN_EXPIRES. With an expired token, posts fail with a clear 401 message and nothing is published.

Things that catch people out

• A token generated before you added a product does not carry its permission. LinkedIn answers 403: generate a new token.
• Requesting a different set of scopes invalidates your previous tokens (docs). Generate a token with other scopes for another experiment, and the scheduler’s token stops working.
• Personal profile only. Posting as a Company Page needs w_organization_social, a partner permission.
• 150 requests per member per day. One post with an image and a first comment uses about 6.