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