zhihu — search, read & publish on Zhihu

Two authentication layers, two scripts:

No browser, no third-party deps — just urllib.

The connector injects credentials as env vars:

• ZHIHU_DEVELOPER_TOKEN — Zhihu Developer Platform access secret (Bearer token). Used for search and hot-list queries. Secret — never echo or print it.
• ZHIHU_COOKIES — a JSON array of {name, value, domain, path, ...} cookies. Used for reading/writing the user's own content. Secret — never echo or print it.

Locate the scripts first (every Bash block)

The connector sets $SKILL_DIR to this skill's directory, so the scripts live at $SKILL_DIR/scripts/. Do NOT hard-code python3 $SKILL_DIR/scripts/… directly. If more than one skill was loaded in the same turn, $SKILL_DIR can point at the other skill and the call fails with No such file or directory (this is the #1 cause of a Zhihu run silently not finishing). Resolve the path defensively at the top of every Bash block — each Bash call is a fresh shell, so the variable does not carry over:

# blog.py is unique to this skill, so it anchors zhihu's dir even if $SKILL_DIR is wrong.
ZDIR="$SKILL_DIR"; [ -f "$ZDIR/scripts/blog.py" ] || ZDIR=$(find /tmp -maxdepth 8 -path '*/skills/*/scripts/blog.py' 2>/dev/null | head -1 | sed 's#/scripts/blog.py##')
[ -f "$ZDIR/scripts/blog.py" ] || { echo "zhihu scripts not found (SKILL_DIR=$SKILL_DIR) — is the skill loaded?" >&2; exit 1; }
SEARCH="$ZDIR/scripts/search.py"; BLOG="$ZDIR/scripts/blog.py"

Then use "$SEARCH" / "$BLOG" (always quoted) as shown below.

Search CLI (search.py)

scripts/search.py — search Zhihu and the web. Requires only ZHIHU_DEVELOPER_TOKEN (no cookies needed).

# Resolve the scripts first (see "Locate the scripts first" above) — robust to $SKILL_DIR.
ZDIR="$SKILL_DIR"; [ -f "$ZDIR/scripts/blog.py" ] || ZDIR=$(find /tmp -maxdepth 8 -path '*/skills/*/scripts/blog.py' 2>/dev/null | head -1 | sed 's#/scripts/blog.py##')
SEARCH="$ZDIR/scripts/search.py"

# Search Zhihu content (站内搜索) — questions, answers, articles
python3 "$SEARCH" search "Python 爬虫"
python3 "$SEARCH" search "Python 爬虫" --count 5

# Search the entire web (全网搜索) — all indexed sites
python3 "$SEARCH" global "AI Agent"
python3 "$SEARCH" global "AI Agent" --count 15

# Filter by site or time
python3 "$SEARCH" global "React" --filter 'host=="github.com"'
python3 "$SEARCH" global "新闻" --filter 'publish_time>=1720000000'
python3 "$SEARCH" global "技术" --filter 'host=="github.com" AND publish_time>=1720000000'
python3 "$SEARCH" global "实时新闻" --db realtime

# Get Zhihu trending topics (热榜)
python3 "$SEARCH" hot
python3 "$SEARCH" hot --limit 10

Search commands

Search result fields

zhihu_search returns: title, type (Article/Answer), content_id, url, excerpt, vote_up (赞同), comments, author, authority level, edit_time.

global_search returns the same fields plus has_more indicator. The url includes utm tracking params from Zhihu's platform.

hot_list returns: rank, title, url, summary, thumbnail.

global_search Filter syntax

• host=="example.com" — filter by domain (note: host=="zhihu.com" not supported — use search command instead)
• publish_time>=1720000000 — filter by publish time (unix seconds)
• Logical operators: AND, OR (must be uppercase)
• Parentheses for grouping: (host=="a.com" OR host=="b.com") AND publish_time>=T

Blog CLI (blog.py)

The skill ships scripts/blog.py — self-contained, stdlib only. Requires ZHIHU_COOKIES (login cookie).

# Resolve the scripts first (see "Locate the scripts first" above) — robust to $SKILL_DIR.
ZDIR="$SKILL_DIR"; [ -f "$ZDIR/scripts/blog.py" ] || ZDIR=$(find /tmp -maxdepth 8 -path '*/skills/*/scripts/blog.py' 2>/dev/null | head -1 | sed 's#/scripts/blog.py##')
BLOG="$ZDIR/scripts/blog.py"

# Read (run directly)
python3 "$BLOG" whoami                     # who is logged in
python3 "$BLOG" articles --limit 20        # my published articles + stats
python3 "$BLOG" article <article-id>       # one article's details + stats
python3 "$BLOG" answers --limit 20         # my published answers + stats
python3 "$BLOG" answer <answer-id>         # one answer's details + stats
python3 "$BLOG" question <question-id>     # a question's info + whether I answered it

Verify the connection first

ZDIR="$SKILL_DIR"; [ -f "$ZDIR/scripts/blog.py" ] || ZDIR=$(find /tmp -maxdepth 8 -path '*/skills/*/scripts/blog.py' 2>/dev/null | head -1 | sed 's#/scripts/blog.py##')
python3 "$ZDIR/scripts/blog.py" whoami
# → {"id": "...", "name": "<the connected display name>", "url_token": "<the connected handle>", ...}

On a 401/403 the cookie is expired — tell the user to reconnect at https://studio.acedata.cloud/console/connectors (re-capture with the ACE extension). Do not retry in a loop.

Reading recipes

Article stats: voteup_count (赞同), comment_count (评论). Zhihu does not expose per-article read counts on these endpoints.

Answer stat caveat: the answers list endpoint does not return voteup_count (赞同) — it only exposes like_count (喜欢), favorite_count (收藏) and comment_count. For the authoritative 赞同 count of an answer, call answer <id> (the single-answer endpoint returns voteup_count). question <id> reports already_answered + my_answer_id so you know whether to use answer-question (new) or edit-answer (update).

Publishing — GATED (dry-run unless trailing --confirm)

publish writes to the user's real account. Without a trailing --confirm it dry-runs (prints what it would do, changes nothing). --confirm is honored only as the last argument, so a title/content containing "--confirm" can never silently go live. Always show the dry-run to the user, get an explicit "yes", then re-run with --confirm last.

# Content is HTML. For Markdown, convert to HTML first (e.g. `pandoc -f gfm -t html`).
python3 "$BLOG" publish --title "标题" --content-file article.html               # dry-run
python3 "$BLOG" publish --title "标题" --content-file article.html --draft-only --confirm  # save a private draft
python3 "$BLOG" publish --title "标题" --content-file article.html --confirm     # PUBLIC, goes live

• --draft-only stops after saving a private draft (safe — nothing public).
• Without --draft-only, the article is published publicly under the user's name. Default to --draft-only unless the user clearly asked to go live.
• Images are auto-hosted. Zhihu strips any <img> whose src is not on its own CDN, so on --confirm the CLI re-uploads every external image (HTML <img src> and Markdown ![](url), plus data: URIs) to Zhihu's image service and rewrites the URLs first — images already on *.zhimg.com are left untouched. The result reports images: {found, rehosted, failed}; the dry-run reports images_found. Pass --no-images to skip this. So you can hand the CLI HTML/Markdown with normal public image URLs and the pictures survive.

Answering questions — GATED (dry-run unless trailing --confirm)

Two write commands cover the question/answer side. Both gate exactly like publish: no trailing --confirm → dry-run; --confirm is honored only as the last argument. Always show the dry-run, get an explicit "yes", then re-run with --confirm last.

# Content is HTML (same as articles). For Markdown, convert to HTML first.

# Post a NEW answer to a question
python3 "$BLOG" answer-question --question <qid> --content-file ans.html                       # dry-run
python3 "$BLOG" answer-question --question <qid> --content-file ans.html --draft-only --confirm  # PRIVATE draft (safe)
python3 "$BLOG" answer-question --question <qid> --content-file ans.html --confirm               # PUBLIC, goes live

# Edit an EXISTING answer (replaces its live, public content)
python3 "$BLOG" edit-answer --id <answer-id> --content-file ans.html             # dry-run
python3 "$BLOG" edit-answer --id <answer-id> --content-file ans.html --confirm   # overwrites live answer

• One answer per question. Zhihu allows a single answer per user per question. If the user already answered, answer-question --confirm returns a clear error telling you to use edit-answer instead — find the existing answer id with answers or question <qid> (which reports my_answer_id).
• --draft-only is the safe path for new answers — it saves a private draft on the question (nothing public). The user reviews it on Zhihu, then you re-run without --draft-only (with --confirm) to publish. Prefer this unless the user clearly asked to go live immediately.
• edit-answer has no private mode — the answer is already public, so any --confirm edit is live immediately. It preserves the answer's current repost setting unless you override with --repost allowed|disallowed.
• 转载授权 (--repost allowed|disallowed): new answers default to disallowed (don't grant repost rights); editing keeps the current setting.
• Images are auto-hosted for answers too — same behavior and --no-images flag as publish.

Gotchas — surface before the user is surprised

• This is the user's real Zhihu account. Confirm before any publish / answer / edit; reading exposes their own private drafts.
• Cookie expiry: Zhihu cookies are short-lived. A 401/403 means reconnect at studio.acedata.cloud/console/connectors — never loop-retry.
• ToS: cookie automation is against most platforms' terms. This only ever acts on the user's own account with their own captured cookie; the user owns that risk. Never use it to scrape other people's content at scale.
• Never print ZHIHU_COOKIES — it is full account access.
• Scope: Zhihu only. Other Chinese platforms (掘金 / CSDN / …) ship as their own per-platform skills (e.g. csdn, juejin), each with its own connector — not a --platform switch here.

Record the output

After you successfully publish and obtain the live result URL, call the built-in publish_artifact tool ONCE so the user can track this deliverable in My Outputs:

publish_artifact(kind="article", channel="zhihu", title="<title>", url="<the REAL returned URL>", status="delivered")

Use the real returned URL — never fabricate one. Call it once per published item, only after delivery is confirmed; skip it (or use status="failed") if publishing failed. See _shared/artifacts.md.