rss-news

name	rss-news
description	RSS news aggregation skill. Fetches news by category from configured RSS sources and outputs each article as a title + summary block. Suitable for getting news updates, RSS feed subscriptions, blog or site updates, news source aggregation, and browsing news by category. The script ships with local caching (default 4 hours, adjustable) and by default only shows news from the last 24 hours, with filtering by category and time window.
license	MIT
version	1.3.0

RSS News

Fetches news from RSS sources by category as defined in news-source.json, deduplicates via cache, and outputs each article as a title + summary block followed by a total count.

Quick Reference

cd skills/rss-news/scripts

# Without -c, all available categories are fetched by default
uv run rss-fetch.py

# Single category
uv run rss-fetch.py -c politics
uv run rss-fetch.py -c technology

# Multiple categories (comma-separated)
uv run rss-fetch.py -c politics,technology

# Only news from the last 48 hours (default 24, 0 means no time limit)
uv run rss-fetch.py -c politics --within-hours 48
uv run rss-fetch.py -c sports --within-hours 0

# Only refresh the cache, no news output (useful for warming cache)
uv run rss-fetch.py --fetch-only

# Force a cache refresh without outputting anything
uv run rss-fetch.py --fetch-only --refetch-interval-hours 0

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Command Options

Option	Default	Description
-c, --category	All categories	Categories to output, comma-separated, e.g. -c politics,technology. If omitted, outputs all available categories.
--refetch-interval-hours	4	Cache freshness threshold. Skips fetching when the cache exists and is younger than this many hours.
--within-hours	24	Only show news published within this many hours. 0 means no limit, showing all cached news.
--fetch-only	Off	Only refresh the cache; do not output any news. Prints one status line to stdout on completion (news fetched successfully or cache is fresh). Respects --refetch-interval-hours; combine with --refetch-interval-hours 0 to force a refresh.
--debug	Off	Enables DEBUG-level logging, outputting fetch and cache details.
-h, --help	—	Show help.
--version	—	Show version.

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Key Rules

Rule	Description
Use -c to select categories, omit for all	Category names are listed in the table below; comma-separate for multiple selections.
Cache is managed automatically	cache/rss_output.json skips fetching if younger than --refetch-interval-hours; auto-refreshes fully when stale or missing.
Use --within-hours to control time range	Defaults to showing only news from the last 24 hours; pass 0 to show all.
Use --fetch-only to warm the cache	Refreshes the cache without producing any news output; respects --refetch-interval-hours for freshness gating.
Do not manually look for a refresh command	Refresh logic is built into the output flow; pass --refetch-interval-hours 0 to force a refresh.
The script only returns RSS summaries	When full article text is needed, fetch the link with a web tool.
Fetch failures do not halt execution	A single source failure is logged and skipped; other sources return normally.

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Available Categories

Categories are defined by the script's Category enum and map to category names in news-source.json:

Category name (-c value)	Maps to news-source.json category
china	China News
international	International News
technology	Technology
finance	Business & Finance
politics	Politics
sports	Sports
science	Science
health	Health & Medicine
entertainment	Entertainment
culture	Culture & Education

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Output Format

The script outputs each article as a title + summary block: the article title on the first line and the RSS summary text on the next line, blocks separated by a single blank line. A trailing total n news line reports how many articles were shown. Empty/whitespace-only summaries are skipped.

First article headline
First article's RSS summary text appears here.

Second article headline
Second article's RSS summary text appears here.

Third article headline
Third article's RSS summary text.

total 3 news

Field descriptions:

Field	Meaning
title	The article title, printed as the first line of each block
summary	The RSS summary/description text of each article, HTML-stripped, on the line after the title

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Caching

• Cache file: cache/rss_output.json
• Fetching uses HTTP etag / modified conditional requests; when a source returns 304, cached news is preserved and not wiped
• last_sync must reach --refetch-interval-hours (default 4 hours) before refetching
• Force refresh: uv run rss-fetch.py --refetch-interval-hours 0

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