Channel Setup
One page per platform: what it takes to get programmatic posting working, what will trip you up, and which environment variables come out the other end.
These are written for anyone configuring their own accounts, not just databayt. The env-var names are ours, but the platform steps and the traps are universal — most of the pain in social automation is platform paperwork, and none of it is documented in one place. Take what's useful.
Provenance — read this first
Setup guides rot. Console UIs move, permission names change, review processes tighten. So every page carries a badge saying how much to trust it:
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ✅ Verified | We configured this ourselves and posted through it. Steps are battle-tested. |
| 🔍 Researched | Written from the platform's current official docs, but nobody has walked it yet. The shape is right; exact button names may differ. |
| ⛔ No self-serve path | There is no way to just sign up and post. The page explains the gate and the honest workaround. |
A page gets promoted from Researched to Verified by someone actually completing it and correcting what was wrong. If you walk one, please fix it — open an issue.
The channels
Two tiers. The eight distribution channels carry marketing to an audience; Slack is the one communication channel — the approval and notice surface, never a publish target. It has a setup guide because it does need wiring, but it is not one of the eight.
Distribution
| Channel | Status | Cost | Difficulty | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Telegram | ✅ Verified | Free | Trivial — minutes | Set up → |
| ✅ Verified | Free | Medium — app review | Set up → | |
| 🔍 Researched | Free | Medium — inherits Facebook's gates | Set up → | |
| 🔍 Researched | Free | Medium — org verification | Set up → | |
| X / Twitter | 🔍 Researched | Paid per post | Easy to build, costs money | Set up → |
| TikTok | ⛔ Gated | Free | Hard — multi-week audit | Read the reality → |
| Snapchat | ⛔ Gated | Free | Allowlist-only | Read the reality → |
⛔ No API — manual | n/a | Drafted and approved by the pipeline; posted by hand via a copy-out block | Read the reality → |
Communication
| Channel | Status | Cost | Difficulty | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slack (via Hermes) | ✅ Verified | Free | Easy | Set up → |
All environment variables in one table: Environment reference.
Channels and destinations
Every channel above resolves to exactly one place per brand — a Page, an account, a channel — so "post to Facebook" is unambiguous. Telegram and WhatsApp are the two where that is a simplification: their real audience sits in groups other people run, many per brand, and posting into a room you are a guest in carries a risk a Page post does not. The destination model that gives those channels a selectable list of rooms is designed but not built — Groups & Destinations.
Where to start
If you are wiring a brand from zero, this order costs the least and delivers soonest:
- Telegram — free, instant, no review. Do it today; it proves your pipeline end to end.
- Facebook — the paperwork gate is real but one-time, and it unlocks Instagram.
- Instagram — mostly free once Facebook is done; they share the app and the review.
- LinkedIn — if you sell B2B. Worth knowing company-page reach is low; a personal profile usually outperforms the page.
- X — only after deciding you accept per-post costs.
- TikTok / Snapchat / WhatsApp — plan for a human to post, or use an aggregator.
The pattern behind all of them
Every platform that allows programmatic posting works roughly the same way, and knowing the shape makes each new one faster:
- An app registered with the platform (the identity making API calls)
- A review proving your app deserves the permissions it asks for — usually the slow part
- A long-lived token scoped to the account you post as, not to your personal login
- An endpoint that takes text and optionally media
The differences that matter in practice are: how long the review takes, whether the token expires, and whether media has to be a public URL the platform fetches (Facebook, Instagram, Telegram) or bytes you upload (X, LinkedIn).
A note on tokens
Every token below posts publicly as a brand. Treat them the way you would treat a password that cannot be un-leaked:
- Server-side only. Never a
NEXT_PUBLIC_*variable, never in client code, never committed. - Per-brand, not shared. One leaked token should not compromise every account.
- Long-lived, not eternal. Even "permanent" tokens get revoked when a password changes, an admin leaves, or an app's permissions are re-reviewed. Something should notice before a post fails.