Retro Reader

A retro, TV-themed RSS/Atom feed reader you run locally — aggregate news sites, Substack newsletters, and any RSS/Atom feed into one dashboard. Built as a vanilla Node.js app (built-in http/https modules only, zero npm dependencies) with no build step and no database, running entirely locally as a single process serving a static page and a small JSON-file-backed API.

If you find this useful, you can buy me a coffee — appreciated, never expected.

Features

• Two views: a classic article list, and a "TV Wall" view that renders posts as a grid of retro CRT-television screens
• Aggregates RSS and Atom feeds (including Reddit's RSS/Atom output)
• Presets picker — browse and one-click-add from ~80 curated feeds across many categories
• Bulk "Add Your Own" — paste multiple feed URLs at once, with automatic Substack resolution (point it at a .substack.com URL or post link and it resolves the feed)
• Automatic feed validation and discovery (tries /feed if a URL isn't itself a feed)
• Drag-and-drop feeds between categories to reorganize them
• Categories can exist empty — create a category before you've added any feeds to it
• Read/unread tracking
• Pulls Open Graph images for feeds that don't include their own
• Stock watchlist — a ticker bar with live prices, % change, and sparklines (via Yahoo Finance), a search dropdown to add tickers by name, drag-and-drop reordering, and a click-through detail view with a larger chart (1mo/6mo/1y/5y) and a link to Yahoo Finance
• Zero dependencies, zero build step, zero database — just flat JSON files

Screenshots

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/ANDRS-Projects/retro-reader.git
cd retro-reader
./setup.sh
node server.js

Then open http://localhost:3334 in your browser.

On macOS you can skip the terminal entirely — double-click Start RSS Reader.command to start the server and open the browser automatically. This is the easiest way to run Retro Reader if you don't want to touch a command line.

See CLAUDE.md for the full command/API/architecture reference.

Requirements

• Node.js (no external dependencies — only built-in http, https, fs, path, url modules)

Configuration

This app does not currently use environment variables — see .env.example for details. The port is a hardcoded constant (PORT = 3334) in server.js; change it there if you need a different port.

Data Files

• feeds.json — your subscribed feeds, grouped by category. Ships with a small set of example feeds (Hacker News, Ars Technica, BBC News, The Guardian) — edit freely to add your own.
• categories.json — the list of feed categories/groups.
• presets.json — a larger curated list of popular feeds across many categories, used to power a "quick add" feature in the UI.
• seen.json — tracks which article links you've already opened, so they can be marked as read. Starts empty.
• watchlist.json — your stock watchlist, a flat array of ticker symbols (e.g. ^AEX for indices, SHELL.AS for a specific exchange listing). Ships with a small example set — edit freely or use the in-app search to add your own.

Using with Claude Code

This project includes a CLAUDE.md that gives Claude Code full context on the architecture, API endpoints, and data files.

claude    # Start Claude Code — reads CLAUDE.md automatically

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.