Papernews

A self-hosted daily newspaper delivered to your Telegram. Fetches RSS feeds from your chosen news sources, summarizes the top stories with Claude AI, and compiles everything into a clean newspaper-style PDF — once a day, no feeds to scroll, no algorithm pulling you back.

Inspired by a Reddit post on r/RemarkableTablet.

How it works

1. RSS feeds are fetched from configured news sources
2. Claude picks and summarizes the 4–6 most newsworthy stories per section
3. A LaTeX PDF is compiled in newspaper layout (two-column, masthead header)
4. The PDF is delivered to your Telegram chat
5. PDFs older than 5 days are automatically pruned

Requirements

• Docker + Docker Compose
• A Telegram bot token (create one via @BotFather)
• An Anthropic API key

Setup

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/papernews.git
cd papernews

2. Configure

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env and fill in:

• TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN — from @BotFather
• TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID — your Telegram user ID (send /start to @userinfobot to find it)
• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY — from console.anthropic.com
• LOCATION — shown in the masthead (e.g. Kansas City, Missouri)

3. Build and run

docker compose up -d --build

The container will start and wait for the scheduled time. To test immediately:

docker compose run --rm -e RUN_NOW=true papernews

Configuration

All configuration is via environment variables in .env:

Variable	Default	Description
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN	required	Bot token from @BotFather
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID	required	Your Telegram chat ID
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	required	Anthropic API key
LOCATION	Your City	City/region shown in the masthead
SCHEDULE_HOUR	7	Hour to deliver (24-hour)
SCHEDULE_MINUTE	0	Minute to deliver
TIMEZONE	America/Chicago	Any IANA timezone name
RETENTION_DAYS	5	Days to keep PDFs before pruning
RUN_NOW	false	Set true to run immediately on start

Customizing news sources

Edit the SECTIONS list in papernews.py. Each section has a title and a list of RSS feed URLs:

SECTIONS = [
    {
        "title": "Local --- My City",
        "feeds": [
            ("Local Paper", "https://localpaper.com/feed"),
            ("Local TV",    "https://localtv.com/rss"),
        ],
    },
    {
        "title": "National",
        "feeds": [
            ("AP News", "https://feeds.apnews.com/rss/apf-topnews"),
            ("NPR",     "https://feeds.npr.org/1001/rss.xml"),
        ],
    },
    # add as many sections as you like
]

The --- in section titles renders as an em dash in the PDF.

Checking logs

docker logs papernews

Notes

• The Docker image is ~700MB due to the LaTeX install. This is a one-time cost.
• PDFs are saved to ./output/ and pruned automatically.
• The bot token is only used to send outbound documents — the container does not poll for incoming messages.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.