rss-fetch

Imported from okou-ai/vm0-skills (rss-fetch/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add okou-ai/vm0-skills --skill rss-fetch. Copyright stays with the author.

How to Use

1. Fetch Raw RSS Feed

curl -s "https://hnrss.org/frontpage" | head -100

2. Parse RSS with xmllint

Extract titles from RSS feed:

curl -s "https://hnrss.org/frontpage" | xmllint --xpath '//item/title/text()' - 2>/dev/null

Extract titles and links:

curl -s "https://hnrss.org/frontpage" | xmllint --format - | grep -E '<title>|<link>' | head -20

3. Get Items with Details

curl -s "https://hnrss.org/frontpage" | xmllint --xpath '//item' - 2>/dev/null | xmllint --format - | head -50

4. Parse Atom Feeds

Atom feeds use <entry> instead of <item>:

curl -s "https://github.com/blog.atom" | xmllint --xpath '//entry/title/text()' - 2>/dev/null

Popular RSS Feeds

Examples

Fetch Hacker News Top Stories

curl -s "https://hnrss.org/frontpage?count=10" | xmllint --xpath '//item/title/text()' - 2>/dev/null | tr '\n' '\n'

Get Story Links

curl -s "https://hnrss.org/frontpage?count=5" | grep -oP '<link>\K[^<]+' | grep -v hnrss

Fetch Multiple Feeds

FEEDS=(
  "https://hnrss.org/frontpage?count=5"
  "https://techcrunch.com/feed/"
)

for feed in "${FEEDS[@]}"; do
  echo "=== $feed ==="
  curl -s "$feed" | xmllint --xpath '//item/title/text()' - 2>/dev/null | head -5
  echo ""
done

Extract Title, Link, and Date

curl -s "https://hnrss.org/frontpage?count=3" | xmllint --format - | awk '
  /<item>/ { in_item=1 }
  /<\/item>/ { in_item=0; print "---" }
  in_item && /<title>/ { gsub(/<[^>]*>/, ""); print "Title: " $0 }
  in_item && /<link>/ { gsub(/<[^>]*>/, ""); print "Link: " $0 }
  in_item && /<pubDate>/ { gsub(/<[^>]*>/, ""); print "Date: " $0 }
  '

Save Feed to File

curl -s "https://hnrss.org/frontpage" -o /tmp/hn-feed.xml
xmllint --xpath '//item/title/text()' /tmp/hn-feed.xml

HN RSS Options

Hacker News RSS (hnrss.org) supports parameters:

# Top stories with 100+ points
curl -s "https://hnrss.org/frontpage?points=100&count=10"

# Search for "AI" topics
curl -s "https://hnrss.org/frontpage?q=AI&count=10"

RSS vs Atom Format

Guidelines

1. Check feed format: Use head first to see if it's RSS or Atom
2. Use xmllint: Best tool for XPath queries on XML
3. Handle errors: Some feeds may be slow or rate-limited
4. Respect robots.txt: Don't hammer feeds with requests
5. Cache results: Feeds don't update every second