- name
- rss-feed-generator
- description
- >
- license
- See LICENSE.txt
RSS / Atom Feed Generator (v1.0.0)
Generates valid RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0 XML feeds from any web page that lists posts, articles, or news items but does not publish its own feed.
Defaults & Settings
| Parameter | Default value |
|---|---|
| Preferred format | RSS 2.0 (Atom 1.0 on request) |
| Max items | 20 (most-recent first) |
| Date fallback | Page scrape date (ISO 8601, UTC) |
| Description | First 280 chars of post excerpt/lede |
| Encoding | UTF-8 |
| Output modes | Raw XML · HTML page · Both |
| Interaction style | Friendly and professional |
Trigger Phrases
| # | User says … | Action |
|---|---|---|
| T1 | "Generate an RSS/Atom feed for {url}" | Fetch page → detect posts → emit XML |
| T2 | "This page has no feed: {url}" | Same as T1 |
| T3 | "Create a feed from {url}" | Same as T1 |
| T4 | "Convert {url} posts to RSS" | Same as T1 |
| T5 | "Make a self-hostable feed for {url}" | Emit XML + HTML wrapper |
| T6 | "Update / refresh the feed for {url}" | Re-scrape and re-emit |
Order of Operations
- Page Fetch — Retrieve the target URL by invoking the
WEB_FETCHfunction
(defined in https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/chat/functions/openapi.yaml, endpoint /WEB_FETCH). Use whichever available protocol applies — REST, MCP, OPAL, or curl. Required parameter: url. Optional: headers, max_redirects, timeout_seconds. WEB_FETCH retrieves the page just like a web browser and returns the full page content for subsequent processing. See protocol-routing.md for exact invocation patterns per protocol.
- Feed Discovery — Check
<link rel="alternate">tags. If a feed already
exists, report it and stop (offer to proxy/mirror instead).
- Post Extraction — Use the heuristics in
references/extraction-rules.md
to identify post entries (title, URL, date, author, summary).
- Feed Assembly — Build XML using the templates in
references/feed-templates.md. Validate structure against the checklist in references/validation-checklist.md.
- Output — Present the feed XML in a code block; optionally wrap in the
HTML discovery page template from references/html-wrapper-template.md.
- Download Link — Save the
.xmlfile to/mnt/user-data/outputs/and
present it with present_files.
Extraction Heuristics (summary — full rules in references/)
Structural signals to look for
- Repeated
<article>,<li>, or<div>blocks with consistent class names
(e.g., post, entry, article, blog-post, card)
<h1>/<h2>/<h3>headings inside each block → item title<a href>on or near the heading → item link (resolve relative URLs)<time datetime="…">or text matching date patterns → pubDate- First
<p>inside the block (≤280 chars) → description / summary <span class="author">or byline text → author
Date handling
| Situation | Strategy |
|---|---|
<time datetime="…"> | Use ISO value directly |
| Human-readable date text | Parse with locale awareness; emit RFC 822 |
| No date found | Use today's date (UTC) with a <!-- estimated --> comment |
| Relative ("3 days ago") | Calculate from scrape time |
URL normalisation
All item <link> values must be absolute. Resolve against the page's <base href> if present, otherwise against the origin of the page URL.
Feed Format Specs
RSS 2.0 required elements
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>, <link>, <description> ← required channel fields
<item>
<title>, <link>, <guid> ← required per item
<pubDate> ← RFC 822 (e.g. Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000)
<description> ← plain text or CDATA-wrapped HTMLAtom 1.0 required elements
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<title>, <id>, <updated> ← required feed fields
<entry>
<title>, <id>, <updated> ← required per entry
<link href="…" rel="alternate"/> ← post URL
<summary> or <content> ← excerpt or full bodyFull templates → references/feed-templates.md
Output Modes
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
xml | Raw feed XML in a fenced code block |
file | Save to /mnt/user-data/outputs/<slug>-feed.xml and present link |
html | HTML discovery page with <link rel="alternate"> + embedded XML |
both | file + html wrapper saved as <slug>-feed-page.html |
Default: file (saves XML and presents download link).
Error Handling
| Problem | Response |
|---|---|
| Page returns non-200 | Report HTTP status; suggest checking URL or auth |
| No repeating post structure found | Show raw HTML skeleton; ask user to identify the pattern |
| Feed already exists | Report the existing feed URL; offer to mirror/augment |
| Dates unparseable | Use today's date; flag items with <!-- date-estimated --> |
| Relative URLs unresolvable | Ask user for the site's base URL |
Commands
| Command | Description | |
|---|---|---|
/help | Usage guidance for this skill | |
| `/format [rss | atom]` | Override output format |
/limit [n] | Set maximum number of feed items | |
/fulltext | Attempt to embed full post body (fetches each post URL) | |
/validate | Run checklist from references/validation-checklist.md | |
/preview | Show first 3 items as formatted Markdown before XML |
Operational Rules
- Always check for an existing feed before generating a synthetic one.
- Never fabricate post content — only use text found on the page.
- Escape
&,<,>in text nodes; use CDATA for HTML description bodies. - All
<guid>/ Atom<id>values must be the canonical post URL. - Sort items newest-first by default (
pubDateDESC). - Do not request or store credentials; only scrape publicly accessible pages.
- Clearly label generated feeds as synthetic (add
<generator>tag). - Respect
robots.txt— do not scrape pages that disallow crawlers.