HN Podcast Transcribe

Automated pipeline: RSS feed → download audio → Whisper transcription → markdown archive.

Quick Start

List episodes from a feed

python3 scripts/hn_podcast_feed.py --feed roundup --limit 10
python3 scripts/hn_podcast_feed.py --json --limit 50

Feeds: roundup (Hacker News Roundup), recap (Hacker News Recap), highlights (HN Highlights), or pass a custom URL with --url \x3CRSS_URL>.

Download and transcribe a single episode

bash scripts/fetch_and_transcribe.sh \x3Caudio_url> ./output

Full archive pipeline (download → transcribe → markdown)

By direct audio URL:

bash scripts/archive_episode.sh "https://media.transistor.fm/ac6c95a2/8dc4e7fe.mp3" ./archive

Batch archive recent episodes (with dedup)

# Archive latest 5 from a feed, skip already-processed
bash scripts/batch_archive.sh roundup 5 ./archive
bash scripts/batch_archive.sh highlights 10 ./archive

Processed episodes are tracked in ./archive/.processed_episodes.json to avoid duplicate work.

Configuration

Use turbo for speed, large for best accuracy, tiny for quick testing.

Output

Each archived episode produces:

• \x3Cstem>.md — Markdown with metadata header + full transcript
• \x3Cstem>.mp3 — Original audio file

Batch runs maintain .processed_episodes.json for dedup tracking.

Requirements

• whisper (pip install openai-whisper)
• yt-dlp (optional, for non-direct URLs)
• ffmpeg
• Python 3.8+