Publish and read on the open web. Own both sides of the feed.
RSS Lobster is a personal publishing and reading system built on RSS. Publish from your phone to your own site. Subscribe to feeds and read them in the same CLI. No algorithms. No platform.
Cost: $12/year for a domain. Hosting: free.
Get started
npm install -g rsslobster
rsslobster onboardThree questions. Thirty seconds. Your site is live.
See what it looks like: computationalsubstrate.com — a real site running on RSS Lobster right now.
Publish
Send a message from Telegram. The lobster classifies it, generates static HTML with inlined CSS, updates your RSS feed, and deploys via git push. Under 4 seconds. Your words are never rewritten.
| Type | You send | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Microblog | A short thought | Tweet-style post |
| Post | Longer writing | Full article with title |
| Image | Photo with caption | Image post with <figure> |
| Link | URL with commentary | Link card with metadata |
Read
A full RSS reader. Subscribe, poll, star, reblog, OPML import/export, notification schedules, AI recaps.
The surface is a CLI.
rsslobster feed add https://simonwillison.net
rsslobster feedSubscribe. Poll. Star what matters. Reblog to any of your sites as link posts. Notifications are per-feed with quiet hours, keyword filters, and configurable schedules (immediate, hourly, daily, weekly). Anything that can call a command can drive it: scripts, cron jobs, LLM agents. The lobster itself uses the reader as a tool.
How it works
RSS reader. Subscribe, poll, read, star. Full reader with notifications, OPML import/export, and AI recaps. The surface is a CLI.
Multi-feed publisher. Publish to any of your sites from one CLI. Blog, photos, personal page. Phone → classify → HTML + RSS → git push → deploy → live in 4 seconds.
Reblog. See something good in your subscriptions? Reblog it to any of your feeds with your own commentary. feed reblog 1 --to blog -m "This is worth reading" and it becomes a link post on your blog.
Files as the API. Git is the database. Zero JavaScript in output.
Setup is progressive
rsslobster enable telegram # publish from your phone
rsslobster enable model # AI-powered classification
rsslobster enable deploy # auto-deploy via git pushEach capability is independent. Use what you need, skip what you don’t.