Backfill & Audit¶

Backfill lets you publish old content to platforms you've added later. Audit shows you what's missing.

The Problem¶

You have existing blog posts that weren't published to all platforms:

You wrote posts before using Crier
You added a new platform (e.g., Bluesky)
Some publications failed and you didn't retry

Audit: See What's Missing¶

The audit command scans your content and shows what's missing where.

Audit a Directory¶

crier audit ./posts

Output:

Content Audit
Checking 5 file(s) against 4 platform(s)

                    Audit Results
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
│ File                 │ devto  │ bluesky │ mastodon │
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ intro-to-python.md   │   ✓    │    ✓    │    ✓     │
│ advanced-typing.md   │   ✓    │    ✗    │    ✗     │
│ cli-design.md        │   ✓    │    ✗    │    ✓     │
│ old-post-2023.md     │   ✗    │    ✗    │    ✗     │
│ recent-thoughts.md   │   ✗    │    ✗    │    ✗     │
└──────────────────────┴────────┴─────────┴──────────┘

Summary:
  Files: 5
  Platforms checked: 4
  Published: 6
  Missing: 9

Audit Against Specific Platforms¶

# Check only certain platforms
crier audit ./posts --to devto --to bluesky

# Check against a profile
crier audit ./posts --profile social

Backfill: Publish Missing Content¶

The backfill command publishes content that's missing from platforms.

Preview First¶

Always preview before publishing:

crier backfill ./posts --dry-run

Backfill Everything¶

crier backfill ./posts

You'll be prompted to confirm before publishing.

Backfill to Specific Platforms¶

# Only backfill to Bluesky
crier backfill ./posts --to bluesky

# Only backfill to a profile
crier backfill ./posts --profile social

Skip Confirmation¶

crier backfill ./posts --yes

Backfill a Single File¶

crier backfill my-old-post.md

Typical Workflow¶

Audit to see the current state:

crier audit ./posts --profile everything

Dry run to preview what would happen:

crier backfill ./posts --profile everything --dry-run

Backfill to publish missing content:

crier backfill ./posts --profile everything

Verify with another audit:

crier audit ./posts --profile everything

Notes¶

Backfill only publishes to platforms where content is not already published
Publications are recorded in the registry after success
Failed publications can be retried by running backfill again
Use --dry-run liberally to preview changes