Frust CLI

A lightweight RSS/Atom feed aggregator and filter that generates static files served by any web server.

Why

Most self-hosted feed readers run as a persistent web service requiring a port, a database, and ongoing maintenance. Frust takes a different approach: run it from cron, write static files, serve them with Nginx. No port to expose, no daemon to babysit, and low enough resource use to run on a home router.

Features

• Filtering — include or exclude articles by keyword, phrase, or regex; scoped to title, summary, or content

• Grouping — aggregate multiple feeds into a single output file

• Force mode — scrape full article body from the source page using a CSS selector when the feed only provides a summary

• Multiple export formats — output file format is chosen by extension:

  Extension	Format
  .rss / .xml	RSS 2.0
  .atom	Atom 1.0
  .json	JSON Feed 1.1
  .md	Markdown with YAML frontmatter
  .epub	EPUB 3.0 (grouped long-read book)

• Lightweight — written in Rust; pure-Rust dependencies (no OpenSSL, no zlib); runs on ARM MUSL

• Stateless — designed to run via cron, not as a background daemon

• Privacy — no telemetry; runs as a non-root user; source on Codeberg and GitHub

Installation

From source

cargo install --path .

Cross-compile for ARM devices

It can be useful to have Frust on router or NAS (e.g. Linksys WRT1200ACS, Banana Pi R3, Helios 4, Helios64) since they may be always on.

rustup target add armv7-unknown-linux-musleabihf
# requires arm-linux-musleabihf-gcc in PATH, or use the `cross` tool:
cargo install cross
cross build --release --target armv7-unknown-linux-musleabihf

The resulting binary at target/armv7-unknown-linux-musleabihf/release/frust is statically linked and has no runtime dependencies.

Configuration

Copy and edit my-config.yaml:

output: /var/www/rss          # default output directory
timeout: 10                   # HTTP timeout in seconds
workers: 4                    # parallel fetch workers
retention: 30                 # days to keep articles (0 = forever)
media: false                  # download enclosures and inline images
media_max_size: 5242880       # max asset size in bytes

filters:
  - slug: no-ads
    expressions: [sponsored, advertisement]
    keep: false               # exclude matching articles

groups:
  - slug: tech
    output: /var/www/rss/tech.atom
    feeds:
      - title: "Example Blog"
        url: https://example.com/feed.xml
        filters: [no-ads]

See my-config.yaml for a full example with all options.

Usage

frust path/to/config.yaml

Typical cron entry (every 30 minutes, log to file):

*/30 * * * * /usr/local/bin/frust /etc/frust/config.yaml >> /var/log/frust.log 2>&1