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Om Parate
Om Parate

Posted on AI-assisted

Getting Started with OpenCode and DevRelay: Turning Struggle-Sessions into DEV Posts

#opencode #ai #agents #productivity

Getting Started with OpenCode and DevRelay: Turning Struggle-Sessions into DEV Posts

I recently set up OpenCode — an AI coding agent that lives in your terminal — together with DevRelay, a set of skills that connect that agent to the DEV community. The combo turns what would normally be a forgettable terminal session into something shareable: drafts on DEV (dev.to), community context, and challenge opportunities, all surfaced while I work.

What the setup looks like

OpenCode handles the actual coding agent work. DevRelay adds a layer of skills under ~/.agents/skills that tell the agent when to reach out to DEV — saving session transcripts, drafting posts when a milestone lands, checking DEV Challenges and MLH events, and surfacing sponsor credits.

The first thing you notice is that it's passive by design. You don't say "write a post about this" — the skills prompt the agent to offer when something worth writing about happens, and you decide.

A typical first session

  1. Open OpenCode in your project directory.
  2. The agent picks up the DevRelay skills automatically — publishing, community wisdom, challenges, offers, sessions.
  3. You work. When you hit a real milestone — a bug finally understood, a design settled — the agent offers to draft a post to your DEV drafts, with a link you can open, review, and publish from DEV yourself.
  4. Drafts are marked ai_disclosure_level: some_ai, which is the honest floor for agent-drafted content.

What I'd tell past-me

  • Connect your accounts early. Without the DevRelay MCP gateway configured, the publishing/session tools won't appear and you'll just get a normal coding session.
  • Review before publishing. The draft link DEV gives you is for editing, not the live post URL — a small thing, but it confused me the first time.
  • The community-wisdom skill is the sleeper feature: before implementing something non-obvious, the agent pulls related discussions from DEV so your approach isn't written in a vacuum.

Where I'm going from here

I'm using this workflow on a new project and will document the bumps. If you're curious about the combo, start by installing OpenCode, then add the DevRelay skills — the first draft practically writes itself once a milestone lands.

Further reading

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