A few weeks ago, one of our engineers, Andy Yates, got an email at his personal address. It was from the team at TRMNL, who make beautifully minimal e-ink displays with a thriving plugin ecosystem behind them. Part of their job is scouting the best plugins people build on the platform, and they'd spotted a private one called "Buffer." They wanted to know if he'd be up for releasing it to everyone.
What they didn't know was that Andy actually works at Buffer. And that, by happy accident, our public API was about a week away from going live.
That coincidence turned into one of my favorite examples of what people do when you give them an open API. So with the Buffer API now generally available, I wanted to tell the story of the plugin currently glowing on Andy's desk.
The plugin that started as a personal hack
Andy had just gotten a TRMNL, was having fun building plugins for it, and wondered what his Buffer queue would look like on the screen.
TRMNL screens are built around a lovely idea: your desk should show you the handful of things you care about, calmly, without demanding anything back. People run their calendars, weather, to-do lists, and hundreds of community-built plugins on them. Andy's shows his Buffer queue: queue counts and a recently sent or upcoming post, refreshed automatically. And the plugin that started as his private build is now official — anyone with a TRMNL can install it and connect their Buffer account.
An ambient display changes how often you notice your queue
My first reaction was to want one immediately. My second was to work out why.
Most of us interact with our content schedule by going looking for it. We open Buffer, check the queue, maybe feel a small jolt of "oh no, nothing's lined up for Thursday," and close the tab. It's a deliberate act which means it's easy to skip for a few days.
With an ambient display, the information comes to you. If your queue is running low, it's a gentle reminder for anyone trying to post consistently. There's also something satisfying about seeing the work as a physical object on your desk instead of a row in a dashboard.
It runs entirely on TRMNL's side
TRMNL's platform hosts the plugin entirely on their side, so there's no server for Andy to stand up or babysit. It connects straight to our OAuth flow using PKCE, which is the modern, secure way for an app like this to get access without anyone copying API keys around. And the plugin got better on the way to going public: Ikraam from the TRMNL team worked with Andy directly, adding new features and making the setup flow far simpler than the first version. That kind of hands-on support is a big part of why their plugin ecosystem is as lively as it is.
He also contributed the Buffer connector, with our new API flow, to TRMNL's public providers repo. That means anyone who wants to build their own Buffer plugin on TRMNL gets the hard part done for them. Build once, and the next person reuses it.
Want one on your own desk? We're giving some away
To mark the launch, we're running a giveaway with TRMNL from July 13 to 20. We're giving away four TRMNL devices, plus some Buffer swag bundles.
Entering takes three steps on our LinkedIn post:
- Like the post
- Comment with your answer to one of two questions: what Buffer data you'd want to see on your TRMNL at a glance, or what you'd build if you made a TRMNL plugin with the Buffer API
- Repost it
We announce the winners on July 27. If you enter and don't win, there's a consolation: TRMNL is offering a bufferxtrmnl code for $10 off any device, live from July 27 through September 7. Full terms are linked in the first comment of the giveaway post.
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