Post to Pinterest from Claude Code

Board structure and Pin creative can be built from the terminal today. Pin creation is what Pinterest blocks for Trial-access apps in production, and the error says so.

Hermoso is a marketing MCP server: 301 tools over one OAuth’d endpoint that let an agent research the ads already running in a market, generate finished image and video ads, publish them, and build the paid campaigns behind them. Claude Code reaches all of it through one connection. This page is about one slice of that — what Claude Code can actually do on Pinterest, and what Pinterest will not let it do.

Connect Hermoso to Claude Code

  1. Create an API key. In Hermoso, open Settings → Agents & API keys and press + Create API key. It looks like hmk_… and carries real spend authority, so treat it like a password.
  2. Add the server.
    claude mcp add --transport http hermoso https://app.hermoso.ai/mcp \
      --header "Authorization: Bearer <your key>"
  3. Or run it over stdio if you would rather not hold an HTTP config:
    claude mcp add hermoso -e HERMOSO_TOKEN=hmk_… -- npx -y hermoso mcp
  4. Ask Claude Code for something. “Pull my three closest competitors’ longest-running ads and remix the best hook into a 9:16 video,” or “post this render to the channel.” The agent picks the tools; you approve the spend.

Both forms reach the same 301 tools. The HTTP form is the hosted server; the stdio form runs the published hermoso npm package locally and talks to the same account.

Then connect Pinterest itself, once, under Settings → Connectors in Hermoso. That is an OAuth consent screen, so it is the one step that needs a browser — everything after it is a tool call.

The Pinterest tools Claude Code gets

  • list_pinterest_boards — the account’s boards, including secret ones, with their ids.
  • create_pinterest_board — makes a new board.
  • post_to_pinterest — creates an image or video Pin on a board you name, with a title, a description, a destination link and alt text.
  • schedule_post — queues the Pin, carrying boardId.
  • list_pinterest_ads_campaigns / pinterest_ads_report — read the paid side.

The limit you need before you plan a Pinterest workflow: this app holds Trial access, and Pinterest refuses Pin creation in production on Trial. Their words, caught on the first real Pin: “Apps with Trial access may not create Pins in production.” Boards and reads do work on Trial — listing boards, creating boards, reading Pins — and Hermoso’s error names the access tier rather than telling you to reconnect, because reconnecting cannot fix it. An upgrade to Standard access is what unblocks Pin creation, and it is pending review. The same tier limits the paid side: on Trial, Pinterest exposes no ad accounts at all.

Pinterest limits worth knowing before you automate anything

TextA Pin description is capped at 800 characters and a Pin title at 100. It is enforced when the post is created or queued — refused while you are still there to fix it, rather than silently cut on the way out.
VisibilityPublic, and the control is the board rather than the Pin. A Pin inherits its board’s public or secret state, so “post it somewhere private” is expressed by choosing a secret board — which is why the board is a required argument rather than a default.
Carousel2 to 5 images, images only. Both bounds come straight from Pinterest’s own v5 OpenAPI (minItems: 2, maxItems: 5), which is the only machine-readable source Pinterest publishes — their developer site is a client-rendered app that returns nothing to a fetch. There is no multi-video source, so a video slide is refused rather than dropped.
Which accountboardId, and it is the only identity field refused at enqueue rather than at publish time: “A Pin has to go on a board — pass boardId. Nothing was scheduled: a Pin on the wrong board is a public mistake, so we never choose one for you.”

Try it in Claude Code

Ask for it in ordinary language — these are sentences, not a DSL:

“Create a board per product line, generate five vertical Pins for each with titles and descriptions, and write the whole plan to ./out/pinterest.json ready to publish.”

That walks list_pinterest_boardsplan_adgenerate_imagepost_to_pinterest. Claude Code asks before it runs a tool, and the transcript is right there in the terminal — so a publish step is a line you can read before you press y.

Claude Code on Pinterest: the part that bites

A script that stages everything and stops short of the Pin is the right shape right now. Boards read and write on Trial access; Pin creation is refused in production by Pinterest itself. Note also that boardId is the only identity field Hermoso refuses at enqueue rather than at publish time — “a Pin on the wrong board is a public mistake, so we never choose one for you”.

A 301-tool manifest is not free in context. For long unattended runs the hermoso CLI is the cheaper path: the agent shells out per command instead of carrying the whole manifest.

Research Pinterest before you post

There is no Pinterest ad library, so competitor research on Pinterest is not something Hermoso claims. The creative you would run there is well covered by the rest of the studio — make_template_ad and the image models produce the vertical, text-forward stills the surface rewards.

The paid half

Pinterest Ads tools exist — campaign, ad group and an ad that promotes an existing Pin, everything created paused, and archiving rather than deleting because Pinterest’s API has no delete anywhere. But the same Trial-access tier that blocks Pin creation exposes no ad accounts, so ad writes are not usable until Standard access lands. That is the honest state, and it is better in a sentence here than discovered on a deadline.

What Claude Code cannot do on its own

An agent with a budget is only useful if the blast radius is bounded, so the fence is in the server rather than in a prompt. Every ad campaign, ad set, ad group and ad is created paused, and the status switches that arm real money refuse to run without an explicit confirmation flag. Every render is quoted first — hermoso_capabilities publishes each model’s exact credit cost before anything spends — and credits are reserved before the first provider call and settled at the exact cost afterwards, so a failed dispatch refunds rather than leaving you billed for nothing. Deletes are confirm-gated too, and every campaign tree is read back from the ad platform before your agent tells you what it built.

One step is deliberately not headless: linking an account is an OAuth consent screen, so you connect the channel once in a browser. Everything after that is a tool call.

The rest of the matrix

From Claude Code, post to: Facebook · Instagram · Threads · TikTok · YouTube · X · LinkedIn — or see everything Claude Code can publish to.

Post to Pinterest from: Claude · ChatGPT · Cursor · Codex · Cline · OpenClaw · Hermes · Claude Code marketing

Frequently asked questions

Can Claude Code post to Pinterest?

Yes, through Hermoso's MCP server. Create an API key in Hermoso under Settings → Agents & API keys, then add https://app.hermoso.ai/mcp to Claude Code with an Authorization: Bearer header. Claude Code then has 301 tools, including the ones that publish to Pinterest — and the ones that research the ads already running in your market and render the creative in the first place.

How do I connect Pinterest to Claude Code?

Two steps, once each. Create an API key in Hermoso under Settings → Agents & API keys, then add https://app.hermoso.ai/mcp to Claude Code with an Authorization: Bearer header. Then connect Pinterest inside Hermoso under Settings → Connectors, which is an OAuth consent screen in a browser. After that Claude Code publishes to Pinterest as an ordinary tool call.

Can Claude Code post a carousel to Pinterest?

Yes in principle — 2 to 5 images, images only, straight from Pinterest’s own v5 OpenAPI. In practice Pin creation itself is blocked in production while this app holds Trial access. Claude Code calls the same publish tool either way, and a channel that cannot carry a carousel is refused with the real reason attached.

Can Claude Code schedule a Pinterest post for later?

Yes. schedule_post queues it on one calendar shared with every other channel, with a per-channel caption if the copy should differ, and list_scheduled and cancel_scheduled read and pull it back. Pinterest is one of the eight channels that queue.

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