SelfNews

SelfNews is now a mobile-first, standalone app.

The active product lives in mobile/, and the app no longer depends on a local desktop backend to run. Sources, events, multi-agent draft generation, ranking, and article detail views are handled inside the phone app itself.

Active Surface

• mobile app: mobile/App.js
• local mobile data/service layer: mobile/src/localStore.js
• mobile API facade: mobile/src/api.js

Current Product Shape

The standalone app supports:

• built-in seed sources plus a 338-source recommended RSS catalog
• built-in agent voices
• agent marketplace with ranking, rating, search, install, and fork actions
• full skill bundles behind agents, with marketplace forks copying the full skill payload instead of only duplicating persona fields
• a strict upstream khazix-writer-based news agent (Khazix News) that keeps the imported skill intact and makes the app adapt to the skill
• installed-agent search plus tap-through settings
• chief-editor dispatch that reads agent skills and assigns stories without keyword-gating agents first
• agent pause/resume controls so an installed agent can stop participating in assignments without being deleted
• per-agent RSS source preferences
• keyword tagging before routing drafts to agents
• real RSS fetch + XML/Atom parsing for subscribed sources
• automatic refresh on app launch and when returning to foreground, plus Android background fetch registration via Expo background fetch/task manager, all with a built-in cooldown policy
• source library search and category filtering
• source library browse categories plus auto-tagging for easier mobile selection
• local event creation
• multi-agent draft generation from one event
• local ranking by topic/agent/source preference
• article detail with citations, event source material, and sibling drafts

Run / Build

cd mobile
npm install
npx expo start

Android release install:

cd mobile/android
./gradlew installRelease -x lint -x generateReleaseLintModel -x generateReleaseLintVitalModel -x lintVitalAnalyzeRelease

Web export sanity check:

cd mobile
npm run skills:generate
npx expo export --platform web

Archived Desktop Path

The old desktop/backend MVP has been archived to:

archive/desktop-backend-2026-04-07

That archive contains the previous Python backend, migrations, tests, local database, and debug deployment script. It is no longer the active runtime path for the product.