discover-oss-candidates

name	discover-oss-candidates
description	Snippet newsletter Skill A — Phase 1. Fully automated. Discovers trending OSS repos for Python, JS/TS, and C/C++, validates all repos via GitHub API, and writes a single candidates file for human review. Reads issue number from snippet/current-issue.txt. No human input required. Run on Friday nights. After reviewing the output, run /discover-oss-candidates-select to make selections.

Skill A Phase 1 — Discover OSS Candidates

You are running the first step of the Snippet newsletter content generation pipeline. Your job is to find trending OSS repos, validate them via the GitHub API, and save all candidates to a file for human review. You do NOT ask for human input at any point.

Step 1 — Load Issue Number and Date

Read snippet/current-issue.txt. Parse the contents as an integer. Add 1 — this is issue_number (the file tracks the last completed issue; the next run is always +1).

Set date to today's date in YYYY-MM-DD format.

Step 2 — Load Prior Usage

Read snippet/n8n-workflows/content/repos.json. Build a lookup of owner/repo → count to use as soft warnings in Step 4.

If the file is empty ({}) or does not exist, continue with no warnings.

Step 3 — Search for Trending OSS

Use WebSearch freely across developer news sources — GitHub Trending, Reddit (r/programming, r/python, r/javascript, r/cpp), dev.to, tech blogs, release announcements, and anything else that surfaces active discussion. Collect 5–7 real candidates per language.

For each candidate collect:

• owner/repo
• What it does — one sentence
• Why this week — the specific news hook (new release, notable discussion, viral post, etc.)

Exclude: tutorials, blog posts, awesome-lists, aggregator repos, docs-only repos.

Step 4 — Validate All Repos via GitHub API

For each candidate, use WebFetch to call https://api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}.

If the response status is 200 and the JSON contains a full_name field, the repo is valid. If 404 or any error, remove the candidate from the list silently.

Do not skip this step. Do not include unvalidated repos.

Step 5 — Write Candidates File

After validation, write the candidates file to:

snippet/n8n-workflows/content/snippet-selections/{date}-candidates.md

Create the snippet-selections/ directory if it does not exist.

File format:

# OSS Candidates — {date} — Issue #{issue_number}

Issue: #{issue_number}
Date: {date}
Status: PENDING_SELECTION

## Python

1. owner/repo — what it does (why this week: <hook>)
2. owner/repo — ...
   [used Nx before]
3. ...

## JS/TS

1. ...

## C/C++

1. ...

Include the [used Nx before] note only when the repo's count in repos.json is greater than 0.

After writing the file, commit and push it to the remote repository:

git add snippet/n8n-workflows/content/snippet-selections/{date}-candidates.md
git commit -m "chore: add OSS candidates for {date} (issue #{issue_number})"
git push

Then output:

Done. Candidates file written and pushed to snippet-selections/{date}-candidates.md.

Next: git pull on your local machine, review the candidates, and run /discover-oss-candidates-select to make your picks.