Claude Code News Headlines

News headlines in your Claude Code status line. Every time you send a message, a new headline appears from one of 14 sources — no API keys, no paid services.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sterlingcrispin/claudenews/main/install.sh | bash

Then restart Claude Code.

What it does

• On every message you send: A background hook fetches headlines from a random news source and queues the next headline
• In your status line: The current headline is displayed with its description, word-wrapped to your terminal width
• No repeats: Headlines cycle through a shuffled queue so you see every story before any repeat

Example output:

BBC News: First-time buyers hit as mortgage rates keep rising — More than 200
  first-time buyer deals have disappeared from the market since 6 March.
  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y7gnkez3lo

Sources

Headlines are fetched via RSS using curl + Python's built-in XML parser. No API keys or third-party services required.

Source	Feed
BBC News	feeds.bbci.co.uk
NPR	feeds.npr.org
Al Jazeera	aljazeera.com
The Guardian	theguardian.com
NBC News	feeds.nbcnews.com
CBS News	cbsnews.com
NYT	rss.nytimes.com
PBS NewsHour	pbs.org
Fox News	foxnews.com
Politico	politico.com
Bloomberg	bloomberg.com
TechCrunch	techcrunch.com
Ars Technica	arstechnica.com
Hacker News	Firebase API

Requirements

• macOS or Linux
• curl
• python3 (standard library only, no pip packages)
• Claude Code

Customizing Sources

The feed list lives in ~/.claude/news/fetch_headlines.sh — it's just a bash array called FEEDS. You can edit it directly, or ask Claude to do it:

"Open ~/.claude/news/fetch_headlines.sh and remove Fox News and Bloomberg from the FEEDS list"

"Add the NASA RSS feed to ~/.claude/news/fetch_headlines.sh"

Any RSS feed works. The format is "Name|https://example.com/feed.xml".

After editing, run rm ~/.claude/news_cache/queue.tsv to reset the headline queue.

Uninstall

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sterlingcrispin/claudenews/main/uninstall.sh | bash

How it works

Three scripts in ~/.claude/news/:

• fetch_headlines.sh — Runs as a UserPromptSubmit hook. Picks a random RSS source, fetches headlines, manages a shuffle queue, and promotes the next headline for display.
• parse_rss.py — Parses RSS/Atom XML and extracts title, description (first sentence), and link as TSV.
• news_statusline.sh — Reads the current headline and word-wraps it to your terminal width for the status line.

Cache lives in ~/.claude/news_cache/.