MCP (Model Context Protocol) connectors extend Claude's reach into external services, but connector coverage is uneven across platforms. dev.to is one such gap: no MCP connector currently supports writing to it. This post documents the workaround — calling dev.to's REST API directly, converting that workflow into a reusable Claude skill, and the reasoning behind keeping the API key out of that skill entirely.
1. The Gap: No MCP Connector for dev.to Writes
Claude connects to external services through MCP (Model Context Protocol) connectors — Gmail, Google Drive, Shopify, and so on. A community-built dev-to-mcp server exists, but it only wraps dev.to's public API: get_articles, get_article, get_user, get_tags, get_comments, search_articles. Read-only, by design — the author explicitly left out the authenticated write endpoints to keep the initial release simple.
The existence of an MCP server for a service doesn't mean everything that service's API can do is exposed through it. That distinction matters when planning any AI-agent integration against a third-party platform.
2. The Workaround: dev.to's Real REST API
