Agent skill

rss-fetch

RSS feed API for fetching news and articles. Use when user mentions "RSS", "feed", "RSS reader", "fetch feed", or asks to get news from RSS sources.

View SKILL.md on GitHub Repository
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Forks 8

Install this agent skill to your Project

npx add-skill https://github.com/vm0-ai/vm0-skills/tree/main/rss-fetch

SKILL.md

RSS Feed Fetcher

Use curl to fetch and parse RSS/Atom feeds from any source.

RSS feeds return XML that can be parsed with xmllint or converted to JSON.

When to Use

Use this skill when you need to:

  • Fetch news articles from RSS feeds
  • Monitor blog updates or content sources
  • Aggregate content from multiple feeds
  • Track topics via RSS subscriptions

Prerequisites

No API key required. RSS feeds are public.

Optional tools for parsing:

  • xmllint (for XML parsing)
  • jq (for JSON output)

How to Use

1. Fetch Raw RSS Feed

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

2. Parse RSS with xmllint

Extract titles from RSS feed:

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

Extract titles and links:

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

3. Get Items with Details

bash
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>:

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

Popular RSS Feeds

Source URL
Hacker News https://hnrss.org/frontpage
HN Best https://hnrss.org/best
TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/feed/
Ars Technica https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index
The Verge https://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml
Reddit (any sub) https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/.rss
GitHub Blog https://github.blog/feed/

Examples

Fetch Hacker News Top Stories

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

Get Story Links

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

Fetch Multiple Feeds

bash
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

bash
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

bash
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:

Parameter Description
count=N Number of items (default 20)
points=N Minimum points
comments=N Minimum comments
q=keyword Search keyword
bash
# 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

Element RSS Atom
Container <item> <entry>
Title <title> <title>
Link <link> <link href="...">
Summary <description> <summary>
Date <pubDate> <published>

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

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