developtheweb/engine/nightly.py
developtheweb@protonmail.com 0b31ebf801 fix(nightly): repoint feed to rss.xml, parse read-time, repair scraper
The FEED table had been frozen since 2026-07-08 — 37 nightly runs that all
went green while updating nothing. Both paths were dead at once, which is why
it left no trace: FEED_URL requested /feed.xml, which 404s (the site serves
/rss.xml), and the HTML fallback then matched zero articles because it looks
for a thumbnail alt= attribute and a Title-Case date, and the redesign has
neither — no feature images on the index, and uppercase abbreviated months.
It looked current only because no post has been published since July 2025, so
the four titles it froze with are still the four newest.

FEED_URL now points at the real feed, which also carries read-time in the
site's own namespace — so the meta column comes from the publisher instead of
being scraped back out of a page. The fallback is rewritten against the
markup the index actually emits: one `row` div holding an anchor and a `meta`
span.

Failures stay fail-safe and stop being invisible. A skipped section now emits
a GitHub Actions ::warning annotation that shows up in the run summary, plus
a count of how many sections did not update. A silent skip and a successful
run looked identical, and that is the whole reason this went unnoticed.

Verified against the live site: the fallback parses all 25 articles with
dates and read-times, and the feed path yields the same four rows the table
already shows.
2026-08-15 04:35:09 -04:00

264 lines
9.4 KiB
Python

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Nightly telemetry refresh for the profile README.
Updates the marker-fenced sections of README.md:
FEED — 4 newest Strange Quarks articles (RSS if populated, else the
server-rendered blog HTML)
STATS — telemetry row with live star/repo totals
FEATURED — star counts on the featured project cards
and bumps the entropy field's chaos generation so the field differs daily.
Every section is fail-safe: if a fetch or parse fails, that section is left
untouched and the script still exits 0. Stdlib only.
"""
import datetime
import html as htmllib
import json
import os
import re
import subprocess
import sys
import urllib.request
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
ROOT = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
README = os.path.join(ROOT, "README.md")
STATE_PATH = os.path.join(ROOT, "state", "demon.json")
SITE = "https://stevenmilanese.com"
# The real feed. /feed.xml was a guess that 404'd for weeks while the HTML
# fallback silently matched nothing, so the FEED table quietly froze; it now
# also 301s here, but point at the canonical URL rather than lean on that.
FEED_URL = f"{SITE}/rss.xml"
BLOG_URL = f"{SITE}/blog"
# The site publishes read-time in its own namespace — valid for strict parsers,
# unambiguous for this one.
MANUSCRIPT_NS = "https://stevenmilanese.com/ns/manuscript"
FEATURED_REPOS = [
("anthropic-certs", "Verified Anthropic certifications — Claude, API, Claude Code CLI, MCP."),
("slTrain", "A steam locomotive for your terminal, smoke trail included."),
("meowchi-releases", "A desktop pet that evolves when you actually get work done."),
("mpl", "Mathematics Programming Language — write the equation, run the equation."),
]
def fetch(url, accept=None):
req = urllib.request.Request(url, headers={"User-Agent": "developtheweb-nightly/1.0"})
if accept:
req.add_header("Accept", accept)
token = os.environ.get("GITHUB_TOKEN")
if token and url.startswith("https://api.github.com"):
req.add_header("Authorization", f"Bearer {token}")
with urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=30) as resp:
return resp.read().decode("utf-8", errors="replace")
def gh_api(path):
return json.loads(fetch(f"https://api.github.com{path}", accept="application/vnd.github+json"))
def replace_section(text, marker, body):
start, end = f"<!-- {marker}:START -->", f"<!-- {marker}:END -->"
if start not in text or end not in text:
raise ValueError(f"missing {marker} markers")
pre = text.split(start)[0]
post = text.split(end)[1]
return f"{pre}{start}\n{body}\n{end}{post}"
def articles_from_rss():
"""Primary source: the site's real feed.
The feed carries read-time in the site's own namespace, so the meta column
comes from the publisher rather than being scraped back out of a page.
"""
root = ET.fromstring(fetch(FEED_URL))
items = []
for item in root.iter("item"):
title = (item.findtext("title") or "").strip()
link = (item.findtext("link") or "").strip()
pub = (item.findtext("pubDate") or "").strip()
date = None
try:
date = datetime.datetime.strptime(pub[:16].strip(), "%a, %d %b %Y")
except ValueError:
pass
mins = (item.findtext(f"{{{MANUSCRIPT_NS}}}readingMinutes") or "").strip()
meta = f"{mins} min read" if mins.isdigit() else ""
if title and link:
items.append({"title": title, "url": link, "date": date, "meta": meta})
return items
def articles_from_html():
"""Fallback: parse the blog index.
Written against the Manuscript's markup, which is regular enough not to
need heuristics — each entry is a `row` div holding one anchor and one
`meta` span:
<div class="row">
<a href="/blog/<slug>">Title</a>
<span class="meta"> JUL 28, 2025 · 19 MIN </span>
</div>
The previous version looked for a thumbnail `alt=` attribute and a
Title-Case date. The redesign has neither — no feature images on the index
and uppercase abbreviated months — so it matched nothing and silently
returned an empty list for weeks.
"""
page = fetch(BLOG_URL)
skip = ("/blog/tag/", "/blog/author/")
articles, seen = [], set()
row_re = re.compile(
r'<a[^>]+href="(/blog/[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]*)"[^>]*>(.*?)</a>'
r'.{0,400}?<span[^>]*class="meta"[^>]*>(.*?)</span>',
re.S,
)
for m in row_re.finditer(page):
slug, raw_title, raw_meta = m.group(1), m.group(2), m.group(3)
if slug.startswith(skip) or slug in seen:
continue
title = htmllib.unescape(re.sub(r"<[^>]+>", "", raw_title)).strip()
meta_text = htmllib.unescape(re.sub(r"<[^>]+>", " ", raw_meta))
meta_text = re.sub(r"\s+", " ", meta_text).strip()
# "JUL 28, 2025" — uppercase, abbreviated month.
date_m = re.search(r"([A-Za-z]{3,}) (\d{1,2}), (\d{4})", meta_text)
if not (title and date_m):
continue
month, day, year = date_m.groups()
date = None
for fmt in ("%b %d %Y", "%B %d %Y"):
try:
date = datetime.datetime.strptime(f"{month.title()} {day} {year}", fmt)
break
except ValueError:
continue
if date is None:
continue
mins_m = re.search(r"(\d+)\s*MIN", meta_text, re.I)
seen.add(slug)
articles.append({
"title": title,
"url": f"{SITE}{slug}",
"date": date,
"meta": f"{mins_m.group(1)} min read" if mins_m else "",
})
return articles
def update_feed(text):
articles = []
try:
articles = articles_from_rss()
except Exception as exc:
print(f"::warning title=nightly FEED rss::rss unusable ({exc}); falling back to html")
if not articles:
print("::warning title=nightly FEED fallback::rss yielded nothing; scraping /blog")
articles = articles_from_html()
dated = [a for a in articles if a["date"]]
dated.sort(key=lambda a: a["date"], reverse=True)
newest = dated[:4]
if len(newest) < 4:
raise ValueError(f"only {len(newest)} parseable articles")
rows = ["| Article | |", "|:---|---:|"]
for a in newest:
title = a["title"].replace("|", "\\|")
when = a["date"].strftime("%b %d, %Y").replace(" 0", " ")
meta = f"{when} · {a['meta']}" if a["meta"] else when
rows.append(f"| [{title}]({a['url']}) | {meta} |")
return replace_section(text, "FEED", "\n".join(rows))
def update_stats(text):
repos = gh_api("/users/developtheweb/repos?per_page=100&type=owner")
public = [r for r in repos if not r["private"]]
stars = sum(r["stargazers_count"] for r in public)
line = (
"<div align=\"center\">\n\n"
"`10¹⁰⁶ yr until heat death — the deadline` · "
"`2.9 zJ of order per bit sorted (kT ln 2, 300 K)` · "
f"`★ {stars} stars across {len(public)} public repos`\n\n"
"</div>"
)
return replace_section(text, "STATS", line)
def update_featured(text):
cards = []
for name, blurb in FEATURED_REPOS:
repo = gh_api(f"/repos/developtheweb/{name}")
cards.append(
f'<td width="50%" valign="top">\n'
f'<h3 align="center"><a href="{repo["html_url"]}">{name}</a></h3>\n'
f'<p align="center"><code>★ {repo["stargazers_count"]}</code></p>\n'
f'<p align="center">{blurb}</p>\n'
f'</td>'
)
table = (
'<div align="center">\n<table>\n'
f'<tr>\n{cards[0]}\n{cards[1]}\n</tr>\n'
f'<tr>\n{cards[2]}\n{cards[3]}\n</tr>\n'
'</table>\n</div>'
)
return replace_section(text, "FEATURED", table)
def bump_entropy():
with open(STATE_PATH) as fh:
state = json.load(fh)
state["generation"] += 1
with open(STATE_PATH, "w") as fh:
json.dump(state, fh, indent=2)
fh.write("\n")
subprocess.run(
[sys.executable, os.path.join(ROOT, "engine", "generate_entropy_svg.py")],
check=True,
)
def warn(label, exc):
"""Fail-safe, but never quiet.
Every section still degrades to 'leave it alone and exit 0' — a broken
fetch must not wedge the profile. What changed is visibility: a section
that stops updating now announces itself as a GitHub Actions warning
annotation, which surfaces in the run summary instead of scrolling past in
a log nobody opens. The FEED table sat frozen for 37 days precisely
because a silent skip and a successful run looked identical.
"""
print(f"::warning title=nightly {label} skipped::{label} left untouched — {exc}")
print(f"{label}: left untouched ({exc})", file=sys.stderr)
def main():
with open(README) as fh:
text = fh.read()
failures = 0
for label, fn in (("FEED", update_feed), ("STATS", update_stats), ("FEATURED", update_featured)):
try:
text = fn(text)
print(f"{label}: updated")
except Exception as exc:
failures += 1
warn(label, exc)
with open(README, "w") as fh:
fh.write(text)
try:
bump_entropy()
print("ENTROPY: regenerated")
except Exception as exc:
failures += 1
warn("ENTROPY", exc)
if failures:
print(f"::warning title=nightly incomplete::{failures} of 4 sections did not update")
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()