@dollardeploy/ghost-cli

A zero-dependency Ghost Admin API client and a ghost-cli for managing members and posts.

This package contains two things:

1. api.js — a small Ghost Admin API client built on the native Node.js fetch and crypto modules. No axios, no form-data, no jsonwebtoken — nothing to install.
2. cli.js (ghost-cli) — a command line tool for managing Ghost members (list, add, remove, subscribe, unsubscribe) and posts (list, add, edit).

Requirements

• Node.js >= 22 (for the global fetch API).

Configuration

The CLI reads connection details from flags or environment variables:

Setting	Flag	Environment variable	Default
Site URL	--url	GHOST_API_URL	— (required)
Admin API key	--key	GHOST_ADMIN_API_KEY	— (required)
API version	--version	GHOST_API_VERSION	v5.0

The site URL may be either the site root (https://example.com) or a full Admin API URL (https://example.com/ghost/api/admin/), with or without a trailing slash — the client trims the /ghost/api/admin/ path for you. The API version defaults to v5.0 when omitted (both on the CLI and when constructing api.js directly), so you rarely need to set it.

The Admin API key has the form id:secret and is created in Ghost under Settings → Advanced → Integrations → Add custom integration.

export GHOST_API_URL="https://example.com/ghost/api/admin/"
export GHOST_ADMIN_API_KEY="0123...abcd:0123...def0"

CLI Usage

ghost-cli <group> <command> [arguments] [options]

Members

Command	Description
members list	List members, newest first (auto-paginates, see below)
members add <email>	Create a new member
members remove <email>	Delete a member permanently
members subscribe <email>	Subscribe a member to all active newsletters
members unsubscribe <email>	Unsubscribe a member from all newsletters

Member options: --name, --note, --labels a,b,c, --no-subscribe (for add); --limit, --page, --filter (for list).

ghost-cli members list --limit all
ghost-cli members add jane@example.com --name "Jane Doe" --labels vip,beta
ghost-cli members unsubscribe jane@example.com
ghost-cli members remove jane@example.com

Posts

Command	Description
post list	List posts (scope with a section flag)
post add --title "..."	Create a post
post edit <id|slug>	Update an existing post
image upload <file>	Upload a local image, print its URL

Section flags map to the internal tags that separate content on the site:

Flag	Tag	Use
--blog	#blog	Blog posts
--docs	#docs	Documentation
--changelog	changelog	Release notes

On list a section flag filters by that tag; on add/edit it attaches the tag (existing tags are preserved on edit).

Post options:

Option	Description
--title <title>	Post title (required for add)
--markdown <file|text>	Body from a Markdown file path or inline Markdown text
--html <file|text>	Body from an HTML file path or inline HTML (sent with ?source=html)
--content <text>	Inline Markdown body (alias of --markdown text)
--meta-description <text>	SEO meta description
--cover <url|file>	Cover image (feature_image): an http(s) URL, or a local file that is uploaded for you
--excerpt <text>	Custom excerpt
--tags <a,b,c>	Extra tags, added alongside the section tag
--status <draft|published>	Status (default: draft)

# Import a Markdown doc as a published docs page
ghost-cli post add --docs --title "Install guide" --markdown ./install.md --status published

# New blog post from inline Markdown, uploading a local cover image
ghost-cli post add --blog --title "We launched" \
  --content "Today we **shipped** it." \
  --cover ./launch.png \
  --meta-description "Our launch announcement"

# List and edit
ghost-cli post list --docs --limit 20
ghost-cli post edit install-guide --title "Installation guide" --meta-description "How to install"

Images

--cover accepts either an already-hosted http(s) URL (used as-is) or a local image file, which is uploaded to Ghost first and swapped for the hosted URL. To upload without attaching it to a post, use image upload:

ghost-cli image upload ./cover.png      # prints https://site/content/images/.../cover.png

Supported types: PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, SVG.

Auto-pagination (list)

members list and post list accept --limit <n|all>. Ghost caps each request at 100 items; when --limit is greater than 100 (or all), the CLI transparently fetches successive pages and trims to the requested count. --page sets the starting page.

Output

Every command accepts --json to print the raw API response instead of a table — handy for piping into jq or feeding other tools.

Programmatic Usage

const GhostAdminAPI = require("./api");

const api = GhostAdminAPI({
  url: process.env.GHOST_API_URL, // site root or full /ghost/api/admin/ URL
  key: process.env.GHOST_ADMIN_API_KEY
  // version defaults to "v5.0"
});

const posts = await api.posts.browse({ limit: 5, filter: "tag:hash-docs" });
console.log(posts);

// Upload an image and get its hosted URL
const { url } = await api.images.upload("./cover.png");

The client exposes the standard Ghost Admin resources (posts, pages, tags, webhooks, members, users, newsletters) with browse, read, add, edit, and delete methods, plus site.read(), config.read(), themes.activate(name), and images.upload(pathOrBuffer).

Note: images.upload uses native fetch + FormData + Blob (Node 18+) for the multipart request — still no external dependencies. Theme uploads are not included.

How it works

• Auth — HS256 JWTs are signed on the fly with Node's crypto.createHmac, scoped to a 5-minute expiry and the /admin/ audience, exactly as the Ghost Admin API expects.
• Transport — every request goes through the native fetch. Query parameters are comma-joined and URI encoded the way Ghost's NQL filters need.
• Markdown import — Markdown is wrapped in a Mobiledoc markdown card, which Ghost renders to its native format on save (no external Markdown parser needed).
• Edits — post edit first reads the post to obtain its updated_at, which Ghost requires for optimistic-concurrency collision detection.
• Errors — non-2xx responses are unwrapped into a normal Error whose message and name come from Ghost's errors[] payload.