Buffer
Read channels, posts, ideas and post metrics, and schedule or publish posts and save ideas.
A Buffer connection gives a playbook's functions Buffer's MCP server. It connects with a Buffer API key, since Buffer's sign-in takes the apps Buffer lists alone, and the key reaches every Buffer organization the person who made it belongs to. The connection acts as that person.
Available on Auto Cloud and on self-hosted runtimes.
What a playbook can do with Buffer
- Read your channels and the posts scheduled and published in them.
- Read your ideas, and the metrics of published posts.
- Schedule or publish a post, and save an idea.
What the server lets a function change beyond that follows the tools Buffer lists.
Buffer's MCP server lists its own tools when a function runs, and once you connect, your agent lists them with list_connection_tools.
An example workflow
Repurposing what worked. A schedule trigger runs the workflow every Monday. A lookup function reads last month's published posts with their metrics, across your channels. A computation function ranks them by the engagement measure your team uses and keeps the top five. A reasoning function reads them with the brand's voice guide in its prompt and writes, for each, two new angles on the same idea, suited to the channel it did best in. An interaction function saves each angle as an idea in Buffer, where the content team picks from them in the tool they already use, and posts a note to the marketing channel through a Slack connection. Nothing is scheduled by this workflow; a second workflow, which a person starts by hand, schedules the idea they chose through the server's tools. The run's history in Studio keeps every metric read and every idea saved.
How to connect Buffer
- Give a Buffer API key. Make a key in Buffer at Settings, API: open the Personal Access tab, select + New Key under Keys, name the key, leave every permission ticked, choose when it expires and select Generate API Key. Only the owner of a Buffer organization can make one, and the key reaches your whole Buffer account. Copy it when Buffer shows it.
Then:
- Ask your agent to connect Buffer to Auto, or open Settings, Agents, Connections in Auto Studio and choose Buffer.
- On the Studio page, check the service and its access, choose which playbooks may use the connection, and approve it. Give a key or a client secret there, never in a conversation with your agent.
- Have your agent check one small read through the connection before a function depends on it.
What it needs
- A Buffer organization whose owner makes the key; a member who is not an owner cannot.
- Your agent connected to Auto and signed in as you, with permission to change your organization, if your agent adds the connection.
- Nothing to register on a self-hosted runtime, since the connection is a key.
A Buffer key names no scopes: it carries every permission ticked when it was made, and reaches every Buffer organization its owner belongs to. Choose the key's expiry with that in mind.
Permissions Auto asks for
A key carries the permissions it was made with; the steps above name those Auto needs.
Good to know
Because the key reaches the whole account, give the Buffer connection to the one playbook that publishes, under Only select playbooks. Replace the key before it expires: the connection shows as needing attention in Studio once Buffer refuses it. What a function reads is kept in the run's history, where people with access to the playbook can read it.