FirstByte

A self-hostable daily news digest — delivered to your inbox every morning.

Aggregates RSS feeds from sources you care about and emails a curated digest.

Quick Start

Copy config and secrets:

cp config.example.yaml config.yaml
cp .env.example .env

Edit config.yaml — add your RSS sources and email settings.

Edit .env — set SMTP_USER (Gmail address) and SMTP_PASSWORD (16-char App Password).

All config values can also be overridden via environment variables:

MAX_AGE_DAYS=3 EMAIL_TO=me@example.com ./firstbyte

Run:

go build -o firstbyte .
./firstbyte

Deploy on a server

Cross-compile for Linux, copy files, set up cron:

GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o firstbyte .
scp firstbyte config.yaml .env template/email.html root@server:/opt/firstbyte/

On the server:

cd /opt/firstbyte && ./firstbyte
echo '0 8 * * * cd /opt/firstbyte && ./firstbyte' | crontab -

Override any setting at runtime without editing config.yaml:

MAX_AGE_DAYS=3 EMAIL_TO=me@example.com ./firstbyte

Default Sources

• Hacker News
• GitHub Blog
• Lobsters
• OpenAI Blog
• Engadget
• Wired
• The Verge
• Ars Technica
• TNW
• Electrek
• TechCrunch

Deploy with Docker

docker compose run --rm firstbyte