pwr (paced web reader) is a script and terminal-centric workflow I use for keeping up to date with various sources online, shared on the off chance it's useful to you too.
The internet is (mostly) a wonderful thing, but it's kind of a lot. It can be
distracting and I thnk we all know the unhealthy loops of scrolling and
refreshing the same sites. pwr provides a structured workflow for keeping up
to date with a preferred set of sites in an incremental fashion (willpower
required). It takes some inspiration from a widely reported
workflow
that involved sending a URL to a server and having it returned via email to be
read in a batch later. pwr adopts the delayed gratification aspect of this
but doesn't involve downloading for offline reading.
One-time setup:
pwr script so it supports your desired feed sources (RSS or
using hand-written extractors for those that don't have a good feed).Regular workflow (just run pwr with no arguments to initiate this sequence
in one invocation):
pwr read to open any URLs that were previously queued for reading.pwr fetch to get any new URLs from the configured sources.pwr filter to open an editor window where you can quickly mark which
retrieved articles to queue for reading.In my preferred usage, the above is run once a day as a replacement for unstructured web browsing. This flow means you're always reading items that were identified the previous day. Although comments on sites such as Hacker News or Reddit are much maligned, I do find they can be a source of additional insight, and this flow means that by the time you're reading a post ~24 hours after initially found, discussion has died down so there's little reason to keep refreshing.
pwr filter is the main part requiring active input, and involves the editor
in a way that is somewhat inspired by git rebase -i. For instance, at the
time of writing it produces the following output (and you would simply replace
the d prefix with r for any you want to queue to read:
------------------------------------------------------------
Filter file generated at 2024-07-01 08:51:54 UTC
DO NOT DELETE OR MOVE ANY LINES
To mark an item for reading, replace the 'd' prefix with 'r'
Exit editor with non-zero return code (:cq in vim) to abort
------------------------------------------------------------
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Ultimately pwr is a tool that happens to scratch an itch for me. It's out
there in case any aspect of it is useful to you. It's very explicitly written
a script, where the expected usage is that you take a copy and make what
modifications you need for yourself (changing sources, new fetchers, or other
improvements).