newsfeed-grok

Small tool with two personalities:

• No args in a real terminal → interactive TUI that copies a Super Grok prompt to your clipboard
• CLI subcommands → non-interactive mode for scripts and coding agents

It reads topic definitions from JSON files, builds a structured X/Twitter search prompt, and writes data to stdout.

Quick Start

npm install
npm run dev              # interactive TUI
npm run dev -- list      # non-interactive list

Build the compiled CLI:

npm run build
npm start -- list

Run the package-style integration tests:

npm test

Release helpers are also available:

npm run release:patch   # or release:minor / release:major
npm run release:push
npm run release:publish

Or link it globally:

npm link
newsfeed

Commands

newsfeed
newsfeed list [--json]
newsfeed show <slug>
newsfeed prompt <slug> [--json]
newsfeed create <slug> \
  --name "Rust Async" \
  --description "Rust async ecosystem" \
  --keywords "tokio,async-std,futures" \
  --accounts "@tokio_rs,@withoutboats" \
  --horizon 7d \
  [--extra "Focus on runtime performance"] \
  [--dir user|bundled] \
  [--force]
newsfeed delete <slug> [--yes]

Command behavior

| Command | Behavior | |---|---| | newsfeed | Launch the TUI when stdin/stdout are TTYs | | newsfeed list | Print topic slug<TAB>name pairs | | newsfeed list --json | Print [{"slug":"...","name":"..."}] | | newsfeed show <slug> | Print the topic JSON | | newsfeed prompt <slug> | Print the Grok prompt | | newsfeed prompt <slug> --json | Print { "prompt": "..." } | | newsfeed create <slug> ... | Create or overwrite a topic file and echo the resulting topic JSON | | newsfeed delete <slug> | Delete the currently visible topic file; prompts unless --yes is set |

Notes for scripts

• show already emits JSON
• create already emits JSON
• --json matters for the commands that otherwise have a text mode: list and prompt
• create --force overwrites the destination file without asking
• Broken pipes are treated as normal CLI behavior, so newsfeed prompt ... | head does not dump an EPIPE stack trace like a clown show

Output rules

• stdout is data only
• stderr is for errors
• Exit codes:
  • 0 success
  • 1 runtime failure (missing topic, create collision without --force, aborted delete, invalid topic file)
  • 2 usage error (bad flags, missing args, trying to launch the TUI without a TTY)

Topics

Topics are loaded from two places:

• ~/.config/newsfeed/ — user topics
• topics/ — bundled topics shipped with the project

Each topic is a JSON file named <slug>.json.

If the same slug exists in both places, the user topic wins. That is the sane default: local config should override bundled defaults.

See what is available:

newsfeed list
newsfeed list --json

Creating Topics

From the TUI

Choose “➕ Create new topic” and answer the prompts.

The interactive save picker now puts ~/.config/newsfeed/ first, because defaulting to writing into bundled repo files is backwards.

From the CLI

newsfeed create rust-async \
  --name "Rust Async" \
  --description "Rust async ecosystem" \
  --keywords "tokio,async-std,futures" \
  --accounts "@tokio_rs,@withoutboats" \
  --horizon 7d \
  --extra "Focus on runtime performance"

By default, create writes to ~/.config/newsfeed/.

Use --dir bundled to write into topics/ instead.

Use --force to overwrite an existing file at the chosen destination:

newsfeed create rust-async \
  --name "Rust Async" \
  --description "Rust async ecosystem" \
  --keywords "tokio,async-std,futures" \
  --accounts "@tokio_rs,@withoutboats" \
  --horizon 7d \
  --force

Topic schema

{
  "name": "Anthropic Third Party Ban",
  "description": "Latest progress on Anthropic banning subscription access of third party access",
  "keywords": ["Anthropic", "LLM", "Model"],
  "xAccounts": ["@steipete", "@badlogicgames"],
  "horizon": "24h",
  "extraInstructions": "Suggest to me the people I should follow later"
}

The filename without .json is the topic slug.

Examples

newsfeed list
newsfeed list --json
newsfeed show anthropic-third-party-ban
newsfeed prompt anthropic-third-party-ban
newsfeed prompt anthropic-third-party-ban --json
newsfeed create rust-async \
  --name "Rust Async" \
  --description "Rust async ecosystem" \
  --keywords "tokio,async-std,futures" \
  --accounts "@tokio_rs,@withoutboats" \
  --horizon 7d
newsfeed create rust-async \
  --name "Rust Async" \
  --description "Rust async ecosystem" \
  --keywords "tokio,async-std,futures" \
  --accounts "@tokio_rs,@withoutboats" \
  --horizon 7d \
  --force
newsfeed delete rust-async --yes

Testing

The package now has a real npm test path using Node's built-in test runner. A GitHub Actions workflow runs that same test command on every push and pull request.

What it covers:

• create, list, show, and prompt
• overwrite behavior with create --force
• user-topic precedence over bundled topics
• non-TTY error handling for delete and no-arg invocation
• invalid topic file errors
• prompt output surviving a broken pipe

Tests run against the compiled CLI in dist/ and isolate HOME in a temp directory so they do not depend on or mutate your real ~/.config/newsfeed/.

Releasing

Recommended flow:

npm test
npm run release:patch   # or release:minor / release:major
npm run release:push
npm run release:publish

release:patch|minor|major bumps the version, creates the git commit, and creates the tag. release:push pushes the release commit and tag. release:publish publishes to npm, and prepublishOnly rebuilds first.

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 18
• Clipboard support for TUI prompt copy:
  • pbcopy on macOS
  • xclip on Linux
  • clip on Windows