Automating Quote Post Creation with Feedly and Hexo

I spend a lot of my time reading blog articles using my feed reader and wanted a lightweight way to capture interesting quotes and commentary directly into my blog. Rather than manually creating markdown files, I built, with a lot of assistance from Claude, a two-part automation system: a Node.js script that generates posts from parameters, and a browser bookmarklet that extracts article data from Feedly.

The basic idea is that when I read through my feed and see something interesting I can use Feedly’s native highlighting functionality and notes to add my commentary and then use that as a source for post generation.

How Hexo Works

I currently use Hexo for my blog. Hexo is a static site generator that converts markdown files into HTML. Here’s the basic workflow:

1. Source files: You write markdown files in source/_posts/ with YAML frontmatter metadata (title, date, tags, etc.)
2. Generation: Running hexo generate processes these files through templates and outputs static HTML to the public/ directory
3. Deployment: hexo deploy pushes the generated HTML to your hosting (in my case, GitHub Pages)

The key advantage is that your entire blog is version-controlled markdown files—no database, no complex tooling. Each post is just a file with metadata and content. I also do not need to worry about anyone hacking my site as there is no administrator login.

Creating the Quote Post Script

To automate post creation based on the article. I built a Node.js CLI script (tools/create-quote-post.js) that:

• Accepts command-line parameters: author, URL, title, publication date, quote, and commentary
• Generates proper frontmatter: Creates YAML metadata with tags, source information, and post date (today, not the article date)
• Formats the markdown body: Renders the quote as a blockquote and includes your commentary
• Writes the file: Creates a markdown file in source/_posts/ with a sanitized filename

Example

node tools/create-quote-post.js \
  --author "Ben Thompson" \
  --url "https://stratechery.com/..." \
  --title "Microsoft and Software Survival" \
  --date "2026-02-07" \
  --quote "That, then, raises the most obvious bear case..." \
  --commentary "Really interesting perspective"

Generates a post with:

• Frontmatter including source_author, source_url, and source_date (preserving the original article’s date)
• Post date set to today
• Proper YAML list formatting for tags
• Quote rendered as markdown blockquote

Directory Structure: The scripts live in tools/ rather than Hexo’s scripts/ directory, which prevents Hexo from trying to load them as plugins during the build process.

This script serves as the base for the automation hook.

Extracting Data with a Feedly Bookmarklet

For extracting the data off of Feedly there are a few options. Feedly does have an API but that is only available for the Enterprise plan. One option to create a workflow would have been to use IFTTT to create an automation using the Feedly applets and then call a web api with that. I might still do that as that might more mobile friendly, but for a first try I decided to just use the browser. As a simpler alternative to a browser addon, I made a bookmarklet that:

1. Extracts article data from Feedly’s DOM:
   • Title, URL, author/publication name
   • Publication date (parsed from Feedly’s date format)
   • All highlighted text (grouped by paragraph to preserve structure)
   • Any notes/comments I added in Feedly
   • Feedly board names as tags

2. Presents an editable form in a modal dialog where I can:
   • Review and edit all extracted data
   • Add or modify my comments further
   • Adjust tags before generating

3. Generates the bash command for the post creation, ready to copy and paste into my terminal
   

Part 2: Web Server Automation (Coming Soon)

While the bookmarklet works well for one-off posts, the next step is building a lightweight web server that can:

• Accept article data via HTTP (from a bookmarklet or API endpoint)
• Generate and commit the post automatically
• Trigger a blog rebuild and deployment
• Return the published post URL

This would eliminate the need to manually run the script, enabling a one-click publishing workflow directly from Feedly.

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Want to try it? The bookmarklet and script are open for customization. You can find:

• The minified bookmarklet in BOOKMARKLET.md
• The extraction logic in feedly-bookmarklet.js
• The post creation script in create-quote-post.js

Note: At the moment the form is not quite usable inside Feedly, but the buttons work.