rss2podcast 0.12.0

Turn an RSS feed into a podcast by synthesizing entries with Piper TTS

rss2podcast

Turn an RSS feed into a listenable podcast. Fetches each entry, extracts the article body, sends it to gopipertts for Piper TTS synthesis, and publishes the resulting MP3s as a standards-compliant podcast RSS feed.

How it works

1. Parse the source RSS feed.
2. For each entry not yet processed (tracked in state.json):
   • Fetch the linked article and extract the body with trafilatura (falls back to RSS summary).
   • Strip HTML to plain speakable text.
   • POST to gopipertts /api/tts, save the MP3 to disk.
   • Append the entry to state.json immediately (crash-safe).
3. Rewrite feed.xml from the full state with feedgen (iTunes namespace).
4. Write style.xsl to the output root so browsers render feeds as a readable HTML page.

Install

uv sync

Or install as a tool:

uv tool install .

Usage

Single feed (CLI)

EFF Updates (equivalent to the config.sample.yaml entry):

uv run rss2podcast --feed-url https://www.eff.org/rss/updates.xml --feed-name "EFF Updates" --output-dir podcasts --url-root https://podcasts.example.com --tts-endpoint http://localhost:8080/ --voice en_US-amy-medium --description "EFF updates, narrated by Piper TTS" --author EFF --limit 5

Ars Technica:

uv run rss2podcast --feed-url https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index --feed-name "Ars Technica" --output-dir podcasts --url-root https://podcasts.example.com --tts-endpoint http://localhost:8080/ --voice en_US-amy-medium --description "Ars Technica articles, narrated by Piper TTS" --author "Ars Technica" --limit 1 --prune-xpath '//div[contains(@class,"author-bio")]' --merge-xpath '//div[contains(@class,"post-content")]'

Hackaday:

uv run rss2podcast --feed-url https://hackaday.com/blog/feed/ --feed-name Hackaday --output-dir podcasts --url-root https://podcasts.example.com --tts-endpoint http://localhost:8080/ --voice en_US-amy-low --description "Hackaday articles, narrated by Piper TTS" --author Hackaday --prune-xpath '//div[contains(@class,"author-bio")]' --prune-xpath '//section[contains(@class,"related")]'

Multi-feed (YAML)

uv run rss2podcast --config config.yaml

See config.sample.yaml for a fully annotated example.

Output layout

{output_dir}/
  style.xsl
  {feed-slug}/
    state.json
    feed.xml
    2026-04-16-some-post-title-abc12345.mp3
    ...

Serve {output_dir} over HTTP at {url_root} and subscribe to {url_root}/{feed-slug}/feed.xml in a podcast app. When style_rss_feed is enabled (the default), opening feed.xml directly in a browser renders it as a human-readable HTML page with an inline audio player.

Scheduling

Designed to run as a cron / scheduled job. Re-runs are idempotent — entries already in state.json are skipped. Long runs are fine (no time limits, state is committed after each entry).

CLI reference

Feed selection

Flag	Default	Description
--config PATH	—	YAML config file; enables multi-feed mode (--limit may still be used to override the YAML value)
--feed-url URL	—	Source RSS feed URL (single-feed mode)
--feed-name NAME	—	Feed display name; also determines the output subdirectory slug
--output-dir PATH	—	Directory to write state.json, feed.xml, and MP3s
--url-root URL	—	Public base URL where output-dir is served

TTS

Flag	Default	Description
--tts-endpoint URL	http://localhost:8080	gopipertts base URL
--voice MODEL	en_US-amy-low	Piper voice model name

Feed metadata

Flag	Default	Description
--description TEXT	—	Channel description
--author TEXT	—	Channel author
--image-url URL	—	Channel artwork URL

Processing

Flag	Default	Description
--limit N	—	Keep only the N newest articles per feed; entries that roll out of the window are evicted from state and removed from the podcast feed
--save-text	off	Persist raw/clean text in state.json (useful for debugging)
--no-fetch	off	Skip external crawling; use only RSS content/description
--no-style-rss-feed	style on	Disable XSLT styling; skip style.xsl and omit the processing instruction from feed.xml

Extraction tuning

These control how trafilatura extracts article text from fetched pages. Defaults are tuned for broad recall; tighten them for noisy feeds.

Flag	Default	Description
--no-favor-recall	recall on	Disable recall-biased extraction; fall back to trafilatura's default balanced mode
--favor-precision	off	Prefer fewer, higher-confidence text blocks; reduces sidebar/bio bleed-through at the cost of occasionally truncating real content
--include-comments	off	Include comment sections in extracted text
--include-tables	off	Include table content
--deduplicate	off	Remove duplicate text blocks (useful for feeds that repeat headlines or teasers)
--fast-extraction	off	Skip fallback extractors; faster but may miss content on harder pages
--prune-xpath XPATH	—	XPath expression to remove from the DOM before extraction; repeatable. Use this to surgically excise author bios, related-article widgets, cookie banners, etc.
--merge-xpath XPATH	—	XPath matching split article containers; children of all matches are concatenated into the first match before extraction. Repeatable. Use this when a site breaks the article body across sibling containers around mid-article ads (e.g. Ars Technica's split post-content divs), which otherwise causes trafilatura to truncate at the first ad break.

--prune-xpath examples:

# Remove Ars Technica author bio
--prune-xpath '//div[contains(@class,"author-bio")]'

# Remove multiple sections
--prune-xpath '//aside' --prune-xpath '//div[@id="related"]'

--merge-xpath example:

# Ars Technica splits the article body across multiple <div class="post-content">
# siblings separated by ad wrappers; merging them avoids mid-article truncation.
--merge-xpath '//div[contains(@class,"post-content")]'

YAML config reference

Top-level keys:

output_dir: /var/www/podcasts        # required
url_root: https://podcasts.example.com  # required
tts_endpoint: http://gopipertts:8080 # default: http://localhost:8080
limit: 5                             # optional: process only N newest per feed
save_text: false                     # optional: persist text in state.json
no_fetch: false                      # optional: skip external crawling globally
style_rss_feed: true                 # default: true; set to false to disable XSLT browser rendering

Per-feed keys:

feeds:
  - name: My Feed        # required
    url: https://...     # required

    # TTS
    voice: en_US-amy-medium   # default: en_US-amy-low

    # Feed metadata
    description: "..."
    author: "..."
    image_url: "https://..."

    # Processing (override top-level defaults)
    limit: 5             # optional: overrides top-level limit for this feed

    # Extraction tuning
    favor_recall: true         # default: true
    favor_precision: false     # default: false
    include_comments: false    # default: false
    include_tables: false      # default: false
    deduplicate: false         # default: false
    fast_extraction: false     # default: false
    prune_xpath:               # default: null
      - '//div[contains(@class,"author-bio")]'
      - '//section[@id="related"]'
    merge_xpath:               # default: null
      - '//div[contains(@class,"post-content")]'

favor_recall and favor_precision are independent trafilatura flags. Setting both to true is valid; trafilatura will apply both biases simultaneously.

Tests

uv sync --extra test
uv run pytest