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

• Respect Rate Limits: Use appropriate check_interval (15-30 minutes typical)

• Filter Aggressively: Only notify on truly relevant content

• Monitor Feed Health: Check for feed errors and broken URLs

• Deduplicate: Use link-based deduplication (not title-based)

• 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