I wanted a weekly carousel post — the kind of thing you’d outsource to a VA or grind through in Canva every week, rebuilding the same layout from scratch each time.
Instead I built a pipeline — one command, brainstorm to Buffer queue.
The content problem, then the code
The pipeline has four stages: generate art, composite text onto it, upload the assets, queue them for distribution. Each stage is a separate tool — an image generation skill for the claymorphic illustrations, Pillow for text compositing, a shell script to orchestrate the sequence, and the Buffer API for scheduling.
The interesting part is where I started: not with the pipeline, but with the content. I deconstructed a reference carousel post — the kind that performs well on Threads — and mapped its structure against topics from the week’s work. The system helped me brainstorm angles, combine highlights, and draft slide copy before any code ran. That brainstorming-to-outline step is where the real gain lives. The pipeline just makes the output consistent.
Here’s Where It Broke
I wanted native macOS compositing. Pixelmator Pro has a rich AppleScript dictionary — you can create layers, set text, apply styles. But the position property is missing from the scripting interface. You can create a text layer, but you cannot place it where you want it, which makes the whole thing useless for precise layouts.
So I fell back to Pillow, which is less elegant but fully scriptable. Font rendering, exact pixel placement, drop shadows — all in a Python script that doesn’t care about GUI state.
Small pieces, rewirable pipeline
Composable tools beat integrated tools when your workflow changes weekly. Canva is faster for one carousel. But when you want to change the art style, swap the distribution channel, or generate slides from a different data source, a pipeline of small pieces rewires in minutes. You build it once; that covers every week after.
First carousel — eight slides — went from brainstorm to Buffer queue in a single session. Still not sure if the claymorphic style reads well at carousel scale on mobile. That’s next week’s observation.
The live carousel is on Threads.