blogwatcher skill

Blogwatcher

Track blog and RSS/Atom feed updates with the blogwatcher-cli tool. Supports automatic feed discovery, HTML scraping fallback, OPML import, and read/unread article management.

Working with Hermes tools (read this first)

blogwatcher-cli is the feed database; Hermes tools do the automation around it:

• Recurring watch — use the cronjob tool's monitor field, not a bare schedule. monitor runs a script each tick and only wakes the agent when output changes: set it to a script that runs blogwatcher-cli scan >/dev/null 2>&1 && blogwatcher-cli articles (deterministic output; new articles = changed output = agent wakes with the diff injected). Unchanged ticks cost zero LLM calls. Set deliver to route digests to a chat/channel; add continuity: true so consecutive digests can dedupe.
• Reading an article the user asks about: web_extract([url]) on the article URL from blogwatcher-cli articles — do not re-scrape by hand.
• One-off "watch this page for changes" without feed semantics: skip this skill; the cronjob tool's monitor field accepts an http(s) URL directly.
• One-off read of a feed or a site's latest posts, nothing to install: the bundled rss-feeds skill (scripts/feed.py read URL); blogwatcher earns its install when you track many feeds with read/unread state.
• Company/competitor tracking with analysis and citations: prefer the competitor-news-monitor skill; blogwatcher is the lighter raw-feed layer it can sit on.

Installation

Pick one method:

• Go: go install github.com/JulienTant/blogwatcher-cli/cmd/blogwatcher-cli@latest
• Docker: docker run --rm -v blogwatcher-cli:/data ghcr.io/julientant/blogwatcher-cli
• Binary (Linux amd64): curl -sL https://github.com/JulienTant/blogwatcher-cli/releases/latest/download/blogwatcher-clilinuxamd64.tar.gz | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin blogwatcher-cli
• Binary (Linux arm64): curl -sL https://github.com/JulienTant/blogwatcher-cli/releases/latest/download/blogwatcher-clilinuxarm64.tar.gz | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin blogwatcher-cli
• Binary (macOS Apple Silicon): curl -sL https://github.com/JulienTant/blogwatcher-cli/releases/latest/download/blogwatcher-clidarwinarm64.tar.gz | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin blogwatcher-cli
• Binary (macOS Intel): curl -sL https://github.com/JulienTant/blogwatcher-cli/releases/latest/download/blogwatcher-clidarwinamd64.tar.gz | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin blogwatcher-cli

All releases: https://github.com/JulienTant/blogwatcher-cli/releases

Docker with persistent storage

By default the database lives at ~/.blogwatcher-cli/blogwatcher-cli.db. In Docker this is lost on container restart. Use BLOGWATCHER_DB or a volume mount to persist it:

# Named volume (simplest)
docker run --rm -v blogwatcher-cli:/data -e BLOGWATCHER_DB=/data/blogwatcher-cli.db ghcr.io/julientant/blogwatcher-cli scan

# Host bind mount
docker run --rm -v /path/on/host:/data -e BLOGWATCHER_DB=/data/blogwatcher-cli.db ghcr.io/julientant/blogwatcher-cli scan

Migrating from the original blogwatcher

If upgrading from Hyaxia/blogwatcher, move your database:

mv ~/.blogwatcher/blogwatcher.db ~/.blogwatcher-cli/blogwatcher-cli.db

The binary name changed from blogwatcher to blogwatcher-cli.

Common Commands

Managing blogs

• Add a blog: blogwatcher-cli add "My Blog" https://example.com
• Add with explicit feed: blogwatcher-cli add "My Blog" https://example.com --feed-url https://example.com/feed.xml
• Add with HTML scraping: blogwatcher-cli add "My Blog" https://example.com --scrape-selector "article h2 a"
• List tracked blogs: blogwatcher-cli blogs
• Remove a blog: blogwatcher-cli remove "My Blog" --yes
• Import from OPML: blogwatcher-cli import subscriptions.opml

Scanning and reading

• Scan all blogs: blogwatcher-cli scan
• Scan one blog: blogwatcher-cli scan "My Blog"
• List unread articles: blogwatcher-cli articles
• List all articles: blogwatcher-cli articles --all
• Filter by blog: blogwatcher-cli articles --blog "My Blog"
• Filter by category: blogwatcher-cli articles --category "Engineering"
• Mark article read: blogwatcher-cli read 1
• Mark article unread: blogwatcher-cli unread 1
• Mark all read: blogwatcher-cli read-all
• Mark all read for a blog: blogwatcher-cli read-all --blog "My Blog" --yes

Environment Variables

All flags can be set via environment variables with the BLOGWATCHER_ prefix:

Example Output

$ blogwatcher-cli blogs
Tracked blogs (1):

  xkcd
    URL: https://xkcd.com
    Feed: https://xkcd.com/atom.xml
    Last scanned: 2026-04-03 10:30

$ blogwatcher-cli scan
Scanning 1 blog(s)...

  xkcd
    Source: RSS | Found: 4 | New: 4

Found 4 new article(s) total!

$ blogwatcher-cli articles
Unread articles (2):

  [1] [new] Barrel - Part 13
       Blog: xkcd
       URL: https://xkcd.com/3095/
       Published: 2026-04-02
       Categories: Comics, Science

  [2] [new] Volcano Fact
       Blog: xkcd
       URL: https://xkcd.com/3094/
       Published: 2026-04-01
       Categories: Comics

Notes

• Auto-discovers RSS/Atom feeds from blog homepages when no --feed-url is provided.
• Falls back to HTML scraping if RSS fails and --scrape-selector is configured.
• Categories from RSS/Atom feeds are stored and can be used to filter articles.
• Import blogs in bulk from OPML files exported by Feedly, Inoreader, NewsBlur, etc.
• Database stored at ~/.blogwatcher-cli/blogwatcher-cli.db by default (override with --db or BLOGWATCHER_DB).
• Use blogwatcher-cli --help to discover all flags and options.