rss-fetch

name	rss-fetch
description	Fetch one or more RSS 2.0 or Atom feeds in parallel and return a normalised list of items (title, URL, content, source, published). Use in research-stage directives that need to ingest blog/news feeds.
metadata	{"clawdbot":{"emoji":"📰","requires":["node"],"credentials":"none — reads public feeds"}}

RSS Fetch

General-purpose RSS/Atom feed fetcher. Parses both RSS 2.0 and Atom; errors on individual feeds are collected into an errors array rather than failing the whole call.

Install

cd ~/clawd/skills/rss-fetch
pnpm install
pnpm run build

Usage

# One feed
rss-fetch --url "https://example.com/feed.xml" --output items.json

# Multiple feeds
rss-fetch \
  --url "https://nephjc.com/feed.rss" \
  --url "https://www.medscape.com/rss/nephrology" \
  --output items.json

# Feeds from a JSON file
rss-fetch --urls-file ./research/feeds.json --output items.json

Without --output, items are included inline in the stdout JSON. Output shape:

{
  "ok": true,
  "feeds": 2,
  "count": 23,
  "errors": [],
  "items": [
    { "title": "…", "url": "https://…", "content": "…", "source": "https://feed.xml", "published": "2026-04-10T00:00:00.000Z" }
  ]
}

Flags

Flag	Default	Notes
--url <url>	—	Repeatable. At least one required.
--urls-file <path>	—	JSON array of URLs. Additive with --url.
--output <path>	—	Write items to this file
--timeout-ms <n>	15000	Per-feed timeout

Error classification

error	Meaning
config	Missing URLs / bad args
unknown	Unexpected error reading inputs/outputs

Individual feed failures (HTTP errors, timeouts, malformed XML) are surfaced in the top-level errors array and do not abort the call.

Callers

• Universal research phases ingesting blog/news feeds
• My Podcast research phases — replace per-project rss-fetcher.ts
• Any trend-watching directive (marketing-strategist, journalist)

See also

• pubmed-search — companion skill for peer-reviewed biomedical literature
• Vault Overview: 08 - System/Agent Skills/rss-fetch - Skill Overview.md