rss-feeds

# RSS Feeds Skill Reads any RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0/RDF, Atom, or JSON Feed URL into a clean, date-sorted list of entries, and discovers the feed behind an ordinary page URL (`<link rel="alternate">` or the usual `/feed`, `/rss.xml`, `/atom.xml` paths). Standard library only, nothing to install. It does not fetch full article bodies — pass an entry's link to `web_extract` for that. ## When to Use - "What's new on <blog/site>", "latest releases of <GitHub repo>", "recent posts in <subreddit>", "read this feed", "does this site have an RSS feed". - Building a recurring digest with `cronjob_manage` (feeds are cheaper and more stable than scraping the HTML front page every run). For a persistent read/unread database across many feeds install the optional `blogwatcher` skill; this skill is the zero-install read. - Anything where a structured list of `title / link / date / author / summary` beats a rendered page: podcasts, changelogs, YouTube channels, newsrooms, forum categories. ## Prerequisites None. Python 3.10+, network access to the feed host. ## How to Run Run through `terminal` with the skill-relative script path: ```bash python3 scripts/feed.py read https://hnrss.org/frontpage --limit 10 python3 scripts/feed.py read https://simonwillison.net/ # page URL → discovers the feed python3 scripts/feed.py read URL --since 2026-09-01 --json # only newer entries, machine-readable python3 scripts/feed.py discover https://example.com/ # list candidate feed URLs ``` ## Quick Reference | Source | Feed URL pattern | |---|---| | GitHub releases / commits / tags | `https://github.com/OWNER/REPO/releases.atom`, `…/commits/BRANCH.atom`, `…/tags.atom` | | Subreddit / Reddit search | `https://www.reddit.com/r/NAME/.rss`, `https://www.reddit.com/search.rss?q=…` (1 req/min anon; see `reddit-reading`) | | YouTube channel | `https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC…` | | Hacker News | `https://hnrss.org/frontpage`, `https://hnrss.org/newest?q=TERM` | | arXiv category | `https://rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.CL` | | Substack / Medium / WordPress / Ghost | `SITE/feed`, `medium.com/feed/@user`, `SITE/rss/` | | Podcasts | the show's RSS URL from its hosting page (`discover` finds it) | Output fields per entry: `title`, `link`, `published` (UTC ISO 8601), `author`, `summary` (HTML stripped, ≤ 2000 chars). Entries are sorted newest-first. ## Procedure ① If you only have a site URL, run `read` on it directly; the script discovers the feed and reports which URL it used (`discovered_from`). Use `discover` when you want to choose between several advertised feeds (comments feed vs posts feed, per-category feeds). ② Bound the request: `--limit` for "latest N", `--since YYYY-MM-DD` for "since last check". For a cron digest persist the last-seen `published` value and pass it as `--since` next run. ③ For full text, hand the entry `link` to `web_extract`; feed summaries are frequently truncated or the first paragraph only. ④ Cite the entry `link`, not the feed URL, when the result feeds a report (`grounded-citations`). ## Pitfalls - A 200 response with HTML means the URL is a page, not a feed; the script falls through to discovery automatically, but a site with no `<link rel="alternate">` and none of the common paths reports `no feed found` — check the site's footer or `/sitemap.xml` before concluding there is none. - Reddit feeds share Reddit's anonymous throttle (about one request per minute per IP). Chain them through `reddit-reading`, which waits out the window, when you need more than one Reddit call. - Dates: RSS `pubDate` is RFC 822 and Atom uses ISO 8601; the script normalises both to UTC. Feeds that omit dates sort to the bottom and are dropped by `--since`. - Some feeds are Cloudflare-fronted and 403 non-browser clients; `blocked-page-recovery` handles that class. ## Verification `python3 scripts/feed.py read https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/releases.atom --limit 1` prints one entry with a `releases/tag/` link and a `[atom]` format tag; `discover https://simonwillison.net/` prints an `/atom/` URL.