How do RSS.app Bots Work?
The Simple Mental Model
A bot is a relay between a feed and a channel. It forwards new posts into the channel as messages. The bot does not create content, modify content, or make decisions about content. It transfers what appears in the feed to where you want it delivered.
The bot's output quality depends on the feed's content quality. The bot's update frequency depends on how often the feed changes. The bot's reliability depends on both the feed's availability and the messaging platform's availability.
Mental model: Feed → Bot → Channel. The bot is the bridge. It watches one side and writes to the other. Everything else is configuration detail.
Technical Stages of Operation
The lifecycle of an update (from the moment it is published to the moment it appears in your channel) occurs in four distinct phases:
1. Centralized Refreshing
The process begins with the RSS.app Refresh Cycle. This system checks the source URL on a schedule, regardless of whether the feed is native or generated.
The Schedule: The engine "polls" the URL at regular intervals (every 15–60 minutes) based on your plan's refresh rate.
Source Reliability: If the source URL is unreachable or returns an error during a refresh cycle, that interval will be skipped and reconnection will be attempted during the next scheduled check.
2. Update Identification
To determine what content is "new," RSS.app performs a comparison between the current state of the page and the previous version.
URL-Based Identification: The system primarily identifies new items by their unique URL. If a link appears that has not been seen before, it is flagged as a new update.
Deduplication: This logic prevents duplicate posts. If an item remains on the page across multiple refresh cycles, the system recognizes the URL and ignores it, ensuring each update is only shared once.
3. Message Transformation
When the bot detects a new item, it transforms feed data into a message format appropriate for the target platform. This transformation maps feed fields to message components.
Headline: The title is extracted and used as the primary message text.
Description: The feed item's description or summary becomes supporting text. Depending on length and configuration, this may be truncated to fit messaging platform constraints.
Link: The item's URL becomes a clickable link in the message, allowing readers to access the full content at its source.
Image: If the feed item includes an image (thumbnail, featured image, or enclosure), the bot may include it in the message as a preview or attachment, depending on platform support.
4. Delivery and Auto-Posting
The final stage is the delivery of the message to your channel.
Native Formatting: The bot adapts the message to the specific UI of the destination. Slack messages use "Blocks," Discord uses "Embeds," and Telegram uses "Formatted Messages."
Pacing: To follow the "Rate Limits" set by platforms like Discord or Slack, the bot manages the delivery speed. If a refresh cycle identifies multiple new items at once, the bot queues them to ensure they post sequentially and reliably.
Limits and Reliability
Dependent on platform availability. If the messaging platform is unreachable, the bot cannot deliver messages. Platform outages cause delivery delays. Queued messages deliver when the platform recovers.
Dependent on refresh rate. The bot cannot forward items faster than the feed refreshes. A 15-minute refresh rate means up to 15 minutes of lag time between publication and detection in the worst case.
Feed quality affects message quality. If the feed provides incomplete data (missing descriptions, broken images, malformed dates), the messages will be incomplete as well. The bot cannot enhance data the feed does not provide.
Historical limits. Bots focus on new items, not historical archives. If you connect a bot to a feed with years of history, the bot does not post every historical item. It establishes a baseline and monitors forward.
Platform-specific constraints. Each messaging platform has its own limits on message length, attachment size, formatting options, and posting frequency. The bot operates within these constraints, which may truncate messages compared to the source feed content.
Frequently Asked Questions
How quickly do new feed items get posted?
Posting speed depends on the feed check interval and platform delivery time. Most new items appear in channels within minutes of being detected. The exact timing depends on your configuration and plan settings.
What happens if the same item appears in the feed again?
The bot tracks which items it has already posted using unique identifiers. If an item reappears in the feed, the bot recognizes it and skips posting a duplicate. This prevents message spam from feed quirks.
Can the bot detect edits to existing feed items?
Bots are designed to detect new items, not edits to existing ones. If a feed publisher modifies an item after publication, the bot typically does not repost it. This behavior prevents confusion from repeated messages about the same content.
What if my feed contains many items at once?
When a feed adds multiple items simultaneously, the bot posts them in sequence with brief delays to avoid overwhelming the channel. Rate limiting prevents message floods while ensuring all items eventually appear.
Does the bot run continuously or on a schedule?
The bot checks feeds on a recurring schedule rather than maintaining a constant connection. Check frequency depends on your plan. Between checks, the bot is idle; during checks, it processes any new items found.
What happens during platform maintenance windows?
If the messaging platform is undergoing maintenance when the bot attempts to post, delivery is queued and retried. Maintenance windows cause temporary delays but do not result in lost messages.