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reader

Quick start

reader requires Node 22+ and pnpm.

Terminal window
git clone https://github.com/standardbeagle/reader.git
cd reader
pnpm install
pnpm -r build

Run the web app

Section titled “Run the web app”

Two processes: the API server on port 3737 and the Vite dev server on 5173.

Terminal window
READER_PORT=3737 pnpm dev:server   # terminal 1
pnpm dev:web                       # terminal 2

Open http://localhost:5173. The SPA proxies /api/* to the server.

Run the desktop app

Section titled “Run the desktop app”

The Electron shell forks the server on 127.0.0.1 with a random port, so the same codebase powers both. better-sqlite3 needs a one-time native rebuild against Electron’s ABI — see apps/desktop/README.md — then:

Terminal window
pnpm --filter @reader/desktop dev

Run the tests

Section titled “Run the tests”
Terminal window
pnpm -r test

Tests cover the core parsers (RSS, Atom, JSON Feed, h-feed, transcripts) and the sanitizer; the server API, OAuth flows and real-time streams, against local fake servers; and the web app’s URL, error, and grouping logic. No test needs network access or platform credentials.

Subscribe to something

Section titled “Subscribe to something”

Click + Add source in the sidebar and paste a feed or a site’s home page. The server finds the site’s RSS, Atom or JSON feed, or reads the page itself when it is an IndieWeb h-feed. Articles appear within seconds of the first fetch, and feeds that page their history fill in older items after that. Private feeds take a username and password, a token, or an OAuth sign-in in the same step. Adding sources covers the details.

Move your subscriptions in

Section titled “Move your subscriptions in”

+ Add source → OPML import reads an OPML file exported from any other reader (Feedly, Inoreader, FreshRSS, …) and subscribes to every feed in it at once. Feeds you already follow are skipped; the first fetch runs in the background, so large imports fill in over the next minutes.

+ Add source → YouTube subscriptions does the same for YouTube, which has no subscriptions feed of its own: give it the subscriptions.csv from a Google Takeout export and it follows each channel’s feed.

Try the demo

Section titled “Try the demo”

dev.standardbeagle.com/reader/demo/ runs the full web app on bundled content — no install, no server. Read, snooze, and list changes stay in your browser.