google-news-rss-digesting

google-news-rss-digesting is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from davidtoby/agent-skills. It costs 34 tokens per session (2,971 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A method for gathering recent public news through Google News RSS and checking the original sources. Google News RSS is a feed that lists search results as they are published.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for scanning several current-events topics and preparing news digests, newsletters, or briefings.
Why use it?
It provides a fallback when normal web search is blocked, rate-limited, or returning errors, while helping verify which publication originally reported an item.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit It is for scanning several current-events topics and preparing news digests, newsletters, or briefings.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/davidtoby/agent-skills/google-news-rss-digesting
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add davidtoby/agent-skills --skill google-news-rss-digesting
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/davidtoby/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for google-news-rss-digesting

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/davidtoby/agent-skills/google-news-rss-digesting/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/davidtoby/agent-skills/google-news-rss-digesting)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/davidtoby/agent-skills/google-news-rss-digesting"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/davidtoby/agent-skills/google-news-rss-digesting/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for google-news-rss-digesting

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/davidtoby/agent-skills/google-news-rss-digesting"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/davidtoby/agent-skills/google-news-rss-digesting.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 34 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,971 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00034 $0.02971
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.01486
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00594
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00297

Measured 6d ago against content hash c432d491784d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

google-news-rss-digesting scanned grade A with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

- Use Python stdlib (`urllib`, `xml.etree.ElementTree`) to query:
skills/.archive/umbrella-curation-2026-04-29/research/google-news-rss-digesting/SKILL.md · 189 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 189 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Google News RSS Digesting

Use this when you need current public news and your preferred search tool is unavailable, rate-limited, or blocked by anti-bot measures.

When to use

  • Brave/Tavily/browser search is failing, returning 429s, or blocked
  • You need a fast current-events scan for a digest/newsletter/briefing
  • You want broad coverage first, then source-prioritized verification

Core approach

  1. Get the live date/time first

    • Use terminal("date '+%F %T %Z'") so the digest date is grounded.
  2. Try primary web search first

    • If using the brave-search skill, remember:
      • Run npm ci in the skill directory if dependencies are missing.
      • If ./search.js gives Permission denied, run it as node ./search.js ....
    • If search starts returning HTTP 429, stop hammering it and switch methods.
  3. Fallback to Google News RSS via execute_code

    • Use Python stdlib (urllib, xml.etree.ElementTree) to query:
      • https://news.google.com/rss/search?q={query}&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
    • Add when:1d to emphasize the last 24 hours.
    • Use multiple topic queries instead of one giant query, e.g.:
      • AI: OpenAI OR Anthropic OR Google OR Meta OR xAI when:1d
      • World: politics economy security markets when:1d
      • Livelihood: housing healthcare transport weather jobs consumer when:1d
  4. Refine with targeted follow-up queries

    • After the broad scan, run narrower Reuters/source-specific searches for candidate items.
    • Good pattern:
      • "US pending home sales beat expectations in March Reuters"
      • "Trump says Anthropic is shaping up open to deal with Pentagon Reuters"
    • If a broad Google News RSS query comes back sparse or empty, switch to source-specific queries such as site:bbc.com/news technology AI when:1d or site:bbc.com/news world diplomacy security when:1d.
    • This improves confidence without browsing dozens of pages.
  5. Use direct BBC RSS feeds as a practical fallback when search is noisy

    • BBC RSS is often easier to fetch reliably than Reuters/AP pages in automated environments.
    • Useful feeds:
      • http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml
      • http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/technology/rss.xml
      • http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/health/rss.xml
      • http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/business/rss.xml
      • http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/science_and_environment/rss.xml
    • Parse the latest items, then open the article page directly for fact extraction.

Read the full file on GitHub · 189 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 189 lines · 34 tokens per session scan A c432d491784d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

google-news-rss-digesting is a skill published in the GitHub repository davidtoby/agent-skills (10 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 34 tokens to every session and 2,971 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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