RSS & Atom Feed Generator

Generate valid RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0 feeds from web pages that contain post lists but lack a native feed. Triggers on phrases like "generate a feed for", "create an RSS feed from", "make an Atom feed for", "this page has no RSS", or any request to produce a feed URL or feed XML from a blog/news/post-list page. The skill fetches the page, extracts post metadata, and outputs well-formed feed XML plus a self-hostable HTML wrapper with an embedded feed discovery link tag.

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.

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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

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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

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Order of Operations

1. Page Fetch — Retrieve the target URL by invoking the WEB_FETCH function (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.
2. Feed Discovery — Check <link rel="alternate"> tags. If a feed already exists, report it and stop (offer to proxy/mirror instead).
3. Post Extraction — Use the heuristics in references/extraction-rules.md to identify post entries (title, URL, date, author, summary).
4. Feed Assembly — Build XML using the templates in references/feed-templates.md. Validate structure against the checklist in references/validation-checklist.md.
5. Output — Present the feed XML in a code block; optionally wrap in the HTML discovery page template from references/html-wrapper-template.md.
6. Download Link — Save the .xml file to /mnt/user-data/outputs/ and present it with present_files.

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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.

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Feed Format Specs

RSS 2.0 required elements

text

<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 HTML

Atom 1.0 required elements

text

<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 body

Full templates → references/feed-templates.md

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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).

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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

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Commands

Command	Description
/help	Usage guidance for this skill
`/format [rss	atom]`
/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

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Operational Rules

1. Always check for an existing feed before generating a synthetic one.
2. Never fabricate post content — only use text found on the page.
3. Escape &, <, > in text nodes; use CDATA for HTML description bodies.
4. All <guid> / Atom <id> values must be the canonical post URL.
5. Sort items newest-first by default (pubDate DESC).
6. Do not request or store credentials; only scrape publicly accessible pages.
7. Clearly label generated feeds as synthetic (add <generator> tag).
8. Respect robots.txt — do not scrape pages that disallow crawlers.