Feed Watchdog

The problem

Monitoring dozens of RSS and Atom feeds manually is inefficient, and paid monitoring services are often overpriced for simple keyword alerting. Developers need a way to track specific content across blogs without noise or duplicate entries.

What it does

• Initializes and manages a local SQLite-backed feed workspace using the blogwatcher CLI.
• Filters incoming posts using regex-based include and exclude rules for titles and summaries.
• Handles automated polling with built-in deduplication based on post GUIDs.
• Triggers JSON webhooks for real-time alerts or generates Markdown digests for asynchronous review.
• Tracks feed statistics to monitor post volume and source activity over time.

Frameworks & tools

Python 3.9+, SQLite, RSS/Atom standards, and the blogwatcher CLI.

Why this beats prompting it yourself

Writing a script to handle feed polling requires solving edge cases like malformed XML, GUID deduplication, and state management. This skill provides a tested CLI workflow that manages the underlying database and notification logic out of the box.

Use cases

• Automate brand monitoring by alerting on keyword mentions across industry blogs.
• Create a curated daily digest of technical announcements for team review.
• Build a research pipeline that feeds new relevant articles into a custom webhook.
• Archive post history for specific tags to analyze publishing trends.

Known limitations

Does not support feeds behind authentication walls or sub-second market data requirements. Requires a persistent environment to run the background daemon.