freshrss-category

Category digest

Summarize recent unread posts from a specific FreshRSS category. For the People category, the output is person-centric: one paragraph per active person, written like a catch-up with someone you follow. For any other category, write one paragraph per active feed — what's the thread or mood of that feed this week?

When to use

• "What's new in my People feeds?"
• "Catch me up on Tech"
• Invoked as /freshrss-category <category> (with optional timeframe)

Arguments

<category> [timeframe]

• category — the FreshRSS category name (case-sensitive, e.g. People, Tech, News)
• timeframe — optional, defaults to 7 days (e.g. 1d, 3d, 2w, last month)

Instructions

1. Parse arguments and compute cutoff timestamp

Extract category (first token) and timeframe (remainder, default 7d) from args.

# macOS — substitute the parsed timeframe, e.g. for 7d:
date -v-7d +%s

# Linux
date -d '7 days ago' +%s

2. Fetch the feeds list

If mcp__freshrss__list_feeds schema isn't loaded: ToolSearch with select:mcp__freshrss__list_feeds.

Call it (no arguments). The result is usually large and will be saved to a file — note the path. This gives you feed names with their FreshRSS categories.

3. Fetch unread articles

If mcp__freshrss__get_unread_articles schema isn't loaded: ToolSearch with select:mcp__freshrss__get_unread_articles.

Call with:

• since_timestamp: cutoff from step 1
• limit: 2000
• max_summary_length: 300

Note the saved file path.

4. Filter to the target category

python skills/freshrss-digest/scripts/process_articles.py \
  "$articles_path" "$cutoff" \
  --category "$category" \
  --feeds-json "$feeds_path" \
  > /tmp/freshrss_category.json

The script prints a per-feed post count survey to stderr — check it to see who's been active before writing.

4b. Print the stats header

python skills/freshrss-digest/scripts/stats_header.py /tmp/freshrss_category.json "category · {category} · {timeframe}"

Include this output verbatim at the top of your response.

5. Read the articles

python skills/freshrss-category/scripts/show_feeds.py /tmp/freshrss_category.json

This groups articles by feed with cleaned-up display names and full summaries. Read through all of it before writing.

6. Write the summary

If category is People: one paragraph per active person, ordered by post count (most active first).

• Lead with the person's name (use the clean display name from the script).
• Synthesize across their posts — what's the thread or mood?
• Inline-link to specific posts naturally within the prose.
• Tone: warm and conversational — this is a catch-up, not a news brief.
• If someone only posted a link or a short reaction, say what it was about and why it seemed to matter to them.

For any other category: one paragraph per active feed, ordered by post count.

• Lead with the feed name.
• Summarize the week's posts for that feed — what topics, what angle?
• Inline-link to notable posts.
• Tone can be more neutral/informational than for People.

In both cases:

• Skip feeds/people with no posts in the window without mentioning them.
• Do not group by topic across feeds — keep each feed/person together.

7. Offer mark-as-read

After the summary, ask the user if they'd like to mark all articles in the category as read. Load mcp__freshrss__mark_as_read via ToolSearch if needed, then call it with the article IDs from the filtered JSON:

import json
articles = json.load(open("/tmp/freshrss_category.json"))
article_ids = [a["id"] for a in articles]

The tool returns {"ok": true} on success; confirm to the user.

Notes

• Category names are case-sensitive — use the exact name as it appears in FreshRSS (e.g. People, not people).
• process_articles.py --category requires --feeds-json pointing at the saved list_feeds output.
• If the feeds list came back inline (rare, small subscriber count), save it to a temp file and pass that path.
• For a broader digest across all feeds, use /freshrss-digest.
• For searching within a category, use /freshrss-search.