freshrss

What This Skill Does

The freshrss skill enables OpenClaw to interface directly with a self-hosted FreshRSS instance, acting as an intelligent bridge between your curated news feeds and your AI agent. By utilizing the Google Reader compatible API, this skill allows the agent to retrieve, filter, and summarize headlines and articles from your preferred RSS sources. It abstracts the technical complexity of API calls into simple CLI commands, providing a streamlined way to track updates, monitor specific categories of information, or catch up on unread content without ever leaving the terminal or the agent's chat interface. Whether you are tracking tech news, market updates, or personal blogs, this skill transforms your FreshRSS instance into a dynamic, queryable database for your AI assistant.

Installation

To integrate this skill, ensure you have a running FreshRSS instance accessible via URL. Obtain your API credentials by navigating to Settings → Profile → API Management within your FreshRSS web interface. Once you have your URL, username, and API password, configure your environment variables as follows:

export FRESHRSS_URL="https://your-freshrss-instance.com" export FRESHRSS_USER="your-username" export FRESHRSS_API_PASSWORD="your-api-password"

Finally, execute the installation command: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/nickian/freshrss-reader. Ensure your environment has the necessary permissions to execute the underlying shell scripts.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for power users who maintain a diverse set of RSS subscriptions and want to avoid information overload. You can use it to maintain a morning news summary by pulling unread items from specific categories, filter content by recency to stay current with breaking news, or batch-process headlines from multiple feeds simultaneously. It is particularly effective for developers or researchers who need to aggregate documentation updates, security advisories, or industry blog posts into a single, manageable view.

Example Prompts

1. "What are the latest 10 unread tech headlines from my FreshRSS reader?"
2. "Show me all news articles from the last 4 hours in my 'General' category."
3. "List all my feed categories so I can decide what to check for updates."

Tips & Limitations

• The skill relies on exact matching for category names, so always run the categories command first to verify nomenclature.
• Time-based filtering is relative; use the --hours flag to narrow down content to recent publications.
• If you encounter connectivity issues, verify that your API password is correct and that the FRESHRSS_URL is accessible from the machine where OpenClaw is running.
• The default limit for queries is 20 items; specify a higher count if you have a high-volume feed.