Blogwatcher — RSS/Atom Feed Monitor

Monitor RSS and Atom feeds for new content and get notified when updates are published.

Overview

This skill provides:

• RSS/Atom Parsing: Support for both RSS 2.0 and Atom feeds
• Update Detection: Track seen entries and detect new posts
• Content Filtering: Filter by keywords, authors, or categories
• Notification Integration: Send updates via Telegram, Discord, Slack, or email
• Persistent State: Store seen entries to survive restarts
• Scheduled Monitoring: Check feeds on a cron schedule

Installation

# Install required dependency
npm install feedparser

Configuration

Create a feeds config file at config/feeds.json:

{
  "feeds": [
    {
      "name": "Tech Crunch",
      "url": "https://techcrunch.com/feed/",
      "check_interval": "*/30 * * * *",
      "filters": {
        "keywords": ["AI", "startup", "funding"],
        "min_length": 100
      },
      "notifications": {
        "telegram": true,
        "discord": false
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "Hacker News",
      "url": "https://hnrss.org/frontpage",
      "check_interval": "*/15 * * * *",
      "filters": {
        "keywords": ["show hn", "launch"]
      }
    }
  ]
}

API

Monitor a Feed

const { watchFeed } = require('./blogwatcher');

const updates = await watchFeed({
  url: 'https://example.com/feed.xml',
  name: 'Example Blog'
});

console.log(`Found ${updates.length} new posts`);
for (const post of updates) {
  console.log(`- ${post.title} (${post.link})`);
}

Check All Configured Feeds

const { checkAllFeeds } = require('./blogwatcher');

const results = await checkAllFeeds();
// Returns: { feeds: [...], total_updates: N }

Get Feed History

const { getFeedHistory } = require('./blogwatcher');

const history = getFeedHistory('tech-crunch');
console.log(`Seen ${history.length} posts from Tech Crunch`);

Output Format

Each update includes:

{
  feed_name: "Tech Crunch",
  title: "Startup Raises $10M Series A",
  link: "https://techcrunch.com/2026/...",
  published: "2026-02-25T10:00:00Z",
  author: "John Doe",
  summary: "A startup has raised...",
  categories: ["AI", "Funding"],
  content: "Full article content...",
  detected_at: "2026-02-25T13:00:00Z"
}

Filtering

Filter updates by various criteria:

Keyword Filter

{
  "filters": {
    "keywords": ["AI", "machine learning"],
    "match_any": true  // Match any keyword (default: all)
  }
}

Author Filter

{
  "filters": {
    "authors": ["John Doe", "Jane Smith"]
  }
}

Category Filter

{
  "filters": {
    "categories": ["Technology", "Startups"]
  }
}

Content Length Filter

{
  "filters": {
    "min_length": 200,  // Minimum content length
    "max_length": 5000  // Maximum content length
  }
}

Notifications

Telegram

const { sendTelegramNotification } = require('./blogwatcher');

await sendTelegramNotification({
  chat_id: process.env.TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID,
  updates: [...]
});

Discord Webhook

await sendDiscordNotification({
  webhook_url: 'https://discord.com/api/webhooks/...',
  updates: [...]
});

CLI Usage

# Check all configured feeds
blogwatcher check

# Check a specific feed
blogwatcher check --url https://example.com/feed.xml

# Show feed history
blogwatcher history --feed "tech-crunch"

# Clear seen entries
blogwatcher clear --feed "tech-crunch"

# Test notification
blogwatcher test-notify --feed "tech-crunch"

State Management

Seen entries are stored in data/blogwatcher-seen.json:

{
  "tech-crunch": [
    "https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/25/post-1",
    "https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/24/post-2"
  ],
  "hacker-news": [...]
}

Maximum entries per feed: 1000 (configurable)

Best Practices

1. Respect Rate Limits: Use appropriate check_interval (15-30 minutes typical)
2. Filter Aggressively: Only notify on truly relevant content
3. Monitor Feed Health: Check for feed errors and broken URLs
4. Deduplicate: Use link-based deduplication (not title-based)
5. Archive Important Posts: Save critical updates to permanent storage

Example: Full Monitoring Setup

const { watchFeed, sendTelegramNotification } = require('./blogwatcher');

async function monitorFeeds() {
  const feeds = [
    {
      name: 'AI Weekly',
      url: 'https://aiweekly.co/feed/',
      filters: { keywords: ['agent', 'LLM'] }
    },
    {
      name: 'Developer News',
      url: 'https://devnews.io/rss',
      filters: { keywords: ['JavaScript', 'TypeScript'] }
    }
  ];

  for (const feed of feeds) {
    try {
      const updates = await watchFeed(feed);
      
      if (updates.length > 0) {
        console.log(`[${feed.name}] Found ${updates.length} new posts`);
        
        // Send notification
        await sendTelegramNotification({
          chat_id: process.env.TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID,
          message: `📰 ${feed.name} has ${updates.length} new posts:\n\n` +
            updates.slice(0, 5).map(u => `• ${u.title}\n${u.link}`).join('\n')
        });
      }
    } catch (error) {
      console.error(`[${feed.name}] Error: ${error.message}`);
    }
  }
}

// Run every 30 minutes
setInterval(monitorFeeds, 30 * 60 * 1000);

Error Handling

The skill handles common feed errors:

• HTTP 404: Feed URL not found - mark as inactive
• HTTP 429: Rate limited - backoff and retry later
• Invalid XML: Feed format error - log and skip
• Timeout: Feed too slow - skip this check