I know this post is quite old but I just had the same question.
If you don't do anything then it just takes the first few lines of your article by default. If you want to set a custom description then there are two options that I could find. Option 1 seems much better to me.
Remove the ' before the --- below, I just added it before the --- to stop markdown reformatting it.
Add a frontmatter section containing a description field to the top of the article (it will only be visible in edit mode):
'---
description: A great article about how to set the description of an article on dev.to
'---
Change the editor to basic markdown on this page: dev.to/settings/ux. When you do that new posts will have this at the top when in edit mode. However then you have other things that you need to set manually that you :
'---
title:
published: false
description:
tags:
//cover_image: direct_url_to_image.jpg
'---
After setting that description field I see the custom description in the API.
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Huh! Not sure actually :) @ben might know maybe? (don't know if @ mentions work here)
I know this post is quite old but I just had the same question.
If you don't do anything then it just takes the first few lines of your article by default. If you want to set a custom description then there are two options that I could find. Option 1 seems much better to me.
Remove the ' before the --- below, I just added it before the --- to stop markdown reformatting it.
Add a frontmatter section containing a description field to the top of the article (it will only be visible in edit mode):
'---
description: A great article about how to set the description of an article on dev.to
'---
Change the editor to basic markdown on this page: dev.to/settings/ux. When you do that new posts will have this at the top when in edit mode. However then you have other things that you need to set manually that you :
'---
title:
published: false
description:
tags:
//cover_image: direct_url_to_image.jpg
'---
After setting that description field I see the custom description in the API.