Open Antenna

Daily intelligence briefing, delivered to your phone. Open Antenna scans YouTube channels and Hacker News, filters for what matters to you, processes everything through Claude, and sends a PDF digest via WhatsApp or email — automatically, every morning.

Optionally: a two-way WhatsApp AI assistant. Send URLs, questions, or commands from WhatsApp and get Claude-powered replies back.

Quick Start

npm install -g open-antenna
claude login        # authenticate with your Claude account (one-time)
antenna init

antenna init handles everything in one terminal session: dependency checks, Claude auth, WhatsApp auth, email setup, source configuration, profile setup, and cron scheduling.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js 18+
• Claude Code CLI — install, then run claude login
• Python 3
• A WhatsApp account (for WhatsApp delivery or the bridge)

Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | antenna init | Full setup wizard — run once to configure everything | | antenna run | Generate today's digest and send it | | antenna run --no-notify | Generate digest without sending | | antenna run --no-pdf | Output markdown instead of PDF | | antenna test-notify | Send a test through configured channels | | antenna schedule | View the current cron schedule | | antenna schedule --time 08:00 --timezone Europe/Berlin | Update the schedule | | antenna skills | List installed skills | | antenna skills --detail | Show descriptions | | antenna create-skill "<description>" | Create a new skill from plain language | | antenna bridge start | Start the two-way WhatsApp assistant | | antenna bridge stop | Stop the bridge daemon | | antenna bridge status | Check if the bridge is running | | antenna bridge logs | Tail the bridge log |

Config Format

Config lives in ./config.yaml. Created by antenna init, editable directly.

# Sources to scan
sources:
  youtube:
    enabled: true
    channels:
      - handle: "@allin"
        label: "All-In Podcast"
      - handle: "@LennysPodcast"
        label: "Lenny's Podcast"
    max_age_hours: 24
    exclude_shorts: true

  hackernews:
    enabled: true
    top_n: 20
    min_score: 50

# About you — personalizes filtering and digest tone
profile:
  name: "Marcus"
  role: "VP Engineering"
  topics:
    - AI
    - developer tools
    - cloud infrastructure

# AI processing
processing:
  relevance_filter: "useful for a VP Engineering interested in AI and developer tools"
  claude_model: "sonnet"

# Output
output:
  dir: "./output"
  format: "pdf"            # pdf or markdown

# Notifications
notifications:
  whatsapp:
    enabled: true
    recipient: "+1234567890"

  email:
    enabled: false
    smtp_host: "smtp.gmail.com"
    smtp_port: 587
    smtp_user: "[email protected]"
    smtp_pass_env: "ANTENNA_SMTP_PASS"   # env var holding your SMTP password
    to: "[email protected]"
    subject_prefix: "[Daily Intel]"

# WhatsApp Bridge (two-way AI assistant)
bridge:
  enabled: false
  sender_id: ""              # WhatsApp internal ID of the authorized sender
  poll_interval: 30          # seconds between polls
  message_timeout: 600
  antenna_timeout: 900

# Schedule
schedule:
  time: "07:00"
  timezone: "America/New_York"

SMTP password: Never stored in config.yaml. Set an environment variable (ANTENNA_SMTP_PASS by default) and point smtp_pass_env to its name.

Adding Custom Skills

Skills are plain .md files in the skills/ directory. Claude reads them at runtime — no restart required.

Create a skill from plain language

antenna create-skill "summarize Slack threads from #engineering"
antenna create-skill "weekly digest from Linear tickets assigned to me"
antenna create-skill "top posts from r/MachineLearning"

Claude will research the implementation, ask for any credentials, generate the SKILL.md, test it, and install it. The skill is available immediately.

Edit existing skills

Skills are in skills/{name}/SKILL.md. Open in any editor, save, and the next run picks up changes.

List skills

antenna skills           # names only
antenna skills --detail  # with descriptions

Use a skill via WhatsApp (bridge required)

Once the bridge is running, send a WhatsApp message like:

/slack-digest
summarize this article: https://...

WhatsApp Bridge — Two-Way AI Assistant

The bridge is a daemon that polls WhatsApp every 30 seconds, pipes messages to Claude, and replies back. It's a full AI assistant accessible from your phone.

Setup

antenna init   # sets up bridge during initial setup
# or
antenna bridge start

The bridge runs as a system daemon:

• macOS: launchd (~/Library/LaunchAgents/io.open-antenna.bridge.plist)
• Linux: systemd user service (~/.config/systemd/user/open-antenna-bridge.*)

Features

• Persistent session — context preserved across messages
• Long-task acknowledgment — sends "On it..." immediately for slow requests
• Poison message skip — after 3 consecutive failures, advances past the bad message
• Session recovery — detects corrupted sessions and resets automatically
• Log rotation at 1MB
• Lock file prevents overlapping runs

Commands

antenna bridge start    # install and start daemon
antenna bridge stop     # stop daemon
antenna bridge status   # check if running
antenna bridge logs     # tail bridge.log (Ctrl+C to stop)
antenna bridge logs -n 100   # show last 100 lines

Scheduling

antenna init installs a cron job for daily runs. To change the schedule:

antenna schedule                                    # view current
antenna schedule --time 08:30                       # update time
antenna schedule --time 08:30 --timezone US/Pacific # update time + timezone

Logs for cron runs go to ~/.antenna/cron.log.

Requirements

| Dependency | Purpose | Install | |-----------|---------|---------| | Node.js 18+ | Runtime | nodejs.org | | Claude Code CLI | AI processing | claude.ai/code — then run claude login | | Python 3 | YouTube + HN scanners | brew install python3 or python.org | | wacli | WhatsApp CLI | Auto-installed by antenna init |

Authentication: Open Antenna uses claude login (OAuth) — no API key required. Any Claude plan works: Pro, Max, Teams, or Enterprise. If you have an ANTHROPIC_API_KEY set in your environment, Claude will use that instead.

Python packages (requests, feedparser) are installed automatically by antenna init.

Troubleshooting

Digest file not generated

• Check Claude is in your PATH: which claude
• Run antenna run manually and look at the output
• Check ~/.antenna/cron.log for scheduled run errors

WhatsApp not receiving

• Run antenna test-notify to test the channel
• Verify wacli is authenticated: wacli status
• Check recipient phone number format (+ prefix required)

Bridge not responding

• antenna bridge status — is it running?
• antenna bridge logs — check for errors
• Restart: antenna bridge stop && antenna bridge start

Email not sending

• Verify the env var is set: echo $ANTENNA_SMTP_PASS
• For Gmail: use an App Password (not your account password). How to generate one

License

MIT