Twitter News Bot

An automated Twitter/X bot that monitors RSS feeds across multiple news categories and tweets breaking news as it happens — completely free using GitHub Actions. No server required. Supports multiple Twitter accounts with different feed sets.

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What It Does

Every 6 hours, the bot polls all feeds concurrently, finds articles published since the last run that haven't been tweeted yet, and posts them one by one. It never tweets the same article twice.

Two feed sets included:

File	Feeds	Categories
data/rss_feeds.json	290	World, Tech, Cybersecurity, Business, Science, Environment, Health, Space, Africa
data/tech_feeds.json	143	Tech, Cybersecurity, Science

Coverage highlights:

Category	Sources
World	Reuters, BBC, AP, Al Jazeera, Guardian, NYT, Washington Post, CNN, and 50+ more
Tech	TechCrunch, The Verge, Wired, Ars Technica, VentureBeat, OpenAI, GitHub, Nvidia, and 75+ more
Cybersecurity	Krebs on Security, BleepingComputer, CISA, CrowdStrike, Google Security, and 25+ more
Business	Bloomberg, Financial Times, WSJ, Forbes, CNBC, The Economist, and 30+ more
Science	Nature, Quanta, MIT News, Scientific American, arXiv, and 20+ more
Environment	Carbon Brief, CleanTechnica, Inside Climate News, Electrek, and 20+ more
Health	STAT News, The Lancet, BMJ, Fierce Healthcare, and 10+ more
Space	Space.com, NASA, ESA, SpaceflightNow, The Planetary Society, and more
Africa	TechCabal, AllAfrica, The Africa Report, Nairametrics, and more

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Prerequisites

• GitHub — runs the bot for free
• One or more Twitter/X accounts to post to

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Setup Guide

Step 1 — Fork this repository

Click Fork on GitHub to copy this repo to your account.

Step 2 — Export your Twitter cookies

The bot logs into Twitter using browser cookies from your real session to avoid bot detection.

1. Log into x.com in Chrome or Firefox
2. Install the Cookie-Editor browser extension
3. Click the Cookie-Editor icon → Export → Export as JSON
4. Copy the JSON — it must be pasted as a single line with no surrounding quotes

Step 3 — Add secrets and variables to GitHub

Go to your repo → Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions.

Secrets (sensitive — never visible after saving):

Under the Secrets tab → New repository secret:

Secret	Value
TWITTER_USERNAME	Main account username (without @)
TWITTER_PASSWORD	Main account password
TWITTER_COOKIES	Single-line cookie JSON from Step 2
TECH_TWITTER_USERNAME	Tech account username (without @)
TECH_TWITTER_PASSWORD	Tech account password
TECH_TWITTER_COOKIES	Single-line cookie JSON for tech account
GROQ_API_KEY	Free at console.groq.com — for meme/mixed mode
IMGFLIP_USERNAME	Free at imgflip.com — for meme images
IMGFLIP_PASSWORD	Your Imgflip password

If you only want one account, skip the TECH_TWITTER_* secrets and disable post_tech.yml.

Variables (non-sensitive config — visible in logs):

Under the Variables tab → New repository variable:

Variable	Recommended value	Description
POST_MODE	news	news, meme, or mixed
FEEDS_FILE	data/rss_feeds.json	Feed file path
CATEGORY	(leave empty)	Filter to one category or leave blank for all
MAX_ARTICLE_AGE_HOURS	7	Look back window — set to cron interval + 1h
TWEET_DELAY_SECONDS	90	Gap between tweets
MAX_TWEETS_PER_RUN	5	Max tweets per run

Step 4 — Enable GitHub Actions

1. Go to the Actions tab in your repository
2. If prompted, click "I understand my workflows, go ahead and enable them"
3. Both workflows will now run automatically every 6 hours

To test immediately: Actions → select a workflow → Run workflow.

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Workflows

Workflow	Schedule	Feeds	Mode	Account secrets
post.yml	Every 6 hours	data/rss_feeds.json (290 feeds, all categories)	news	TWITTER_*
post_tech.yml	Every 6 hours	data/tech_feeds.json (143 feeds, tech/cyber/science)	mixed	TECH_TWITTER_*

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Configuration

All settings are controlled via environment variables. Copy .env.example to .env for local use.

Variable	Default	Description
TWITTER_USERNAME	—	Twitter/X username
TWITTER_PASSWORD	—	Twitter/X password
TWITTER_COOKIES	—	Session cookies (single-line JSON array)
FEEDS_FILE	data/rss_feeds.json	Path to the feeds file to use
CATEGORY	(all)	Filter to one category within the feeds file
POST_MODE	news	Content mode: news, meme, or mixed
POLL_INTERVAL_MINUTES	5	Poll interval in continuous mode
MAX_ARTICLE_AGE_HOURS	7	Ignore articles older than this
TWEET_DELAY_SECONDS	90	Gap between consecutive tweets
MAX_TWEETS_PER_RUN	5	Max tweets per run (0 = unlimited)
RUN_ONCE	false	Poll once then exit. Set true in GitHub Actions — prevents the bot from looping forever inside a workflow run. Use false for local continuous mode or Docker.
GROQ_API_KEY	—	Groq API key for AI post generation (free at console.groq.com)
IMGFLIP_USERNAME	—	Imgflip username for meme images (free at imgflip.com)
IMGFLIP_PASSWORD	—	Imgflip password

Filtering by category

Set CATEGORY to focus on a single topic within whichever FEEDS_FILE you're using:

CATEGORY=cybersecurity

Valid values: world, tech, cybersecurity, business, environment, science, space, health, africa

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Post Modes

Control what the bot posts with POST_MODE:

Mode	Behaviour
news	News articles only with article thumbnail images when available (default)
meme	AI-generated humor posts with Imgflip meme images
mixed	News articles + one AI meme post injected per run

Meme post formats (AI-generated via Groq)

• Dev humor — "it works on my machine", merge conflicts, CSS pain
• Hot takes — "Unpopular opinion: tabs are better than spaces"
• Relatable observations — "me at 9am vs me debugging at 11pm"
• Polls — "🅰️ Vim 🅱️ VS Code"
• Thread starters — "Things nobody tells you about Kubernetes 🧵"
• Trending reactions — reacts to a live headline with dev humor

Meme images (via Imgflip)

When IMGFLIP_USERNAME and IMGFLIP_PASSWORD are set, meme posts get a generated image using classic templates: Drake, Distracted Boyfriend, Expanding Brain, UNO Draw 25, Two Buttons, and more. Falls back to text-only if credentials are missing.

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Customizing Feeds

Each entry in a feeds file has three fields:

{
  "name": "Feed Name",
  "category": "tech",
  "url": "https://example.com/feed.rss"
}

Any RSS or Atom feed URL works. To create a new feed set, copy rss_feeds.json, filter or add entries, and point FEEDS_FILE at it.

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Running Locally

Requires Go 1.21+ and Google Chrome installed.

On Ubuntu/Debian:

wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb && sudo apt-get install -f -y

cp .env.example .env
# fill in credentials, TWITTER_COOKIES, and optionally FEEDS_FILE
go run .

Single run (same behaviour as GitHub Actions):

RUN_ONCE=true go run .

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Troubleshooting

"session invalid or expired" Cookies have expired. Re-export from your browser and update the secret. Cookies typically last 30–90 days.

Bot hangs at "Launching browser..." Install Google Chrome stable (see above). On Ubuntu 24.04, snap Chromium does not work for headless automation.

"tweet composer not found" Twitter updated their UI. Check debug screenshots in the failed Actions run → Summary → Artifacts.

Bot tweets the same articles every run seen_articles.json doesn't persist between GitHub Actions runs. The bot relies on MAX_ARTICLE_AGE_HOURS to avoid re-tweeting — keep it set to your cron interval + 1 hour (default 7 for a 6-hour schedule).

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How It Works

1. GitHub Actions triggers on cron every 6 hours with RUN_ONCE=true — the bot polls once and exits cleanly in ~2-3 minutes instead of running forever
2. The bot loads feeds from the configured FEEDS_FILE
3. All feeds are fetched concurrently (15 at a time) with a 15s timeout each
4. Articles newer than MAX_ARTICLE_AGE_HOURS that haven't been seen are collected
5. Results are sorted newest-first, capped at MAX_TWEETS_PER_RUN, and tweeted with a TWEET_DELAY_SECONDS gap
6. News posts attach the article's thumbnail image when available; meme posts attach an Imgflip-generated image
7. A headless Chrome browser injects session cookies, navigates to x.com, and posts each tweet
8. Screenshots are saved automatically on failure

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License

MIT