Name: podcastfy-clawdbot
Author: win4r

Imported from win4r/podcastfy-clawdbot-skill (SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add win4r/podcastfy-clawdbot-skill. Copyright stays with the author.

Podcastfy (Clawdbot)

Generate a podcast-style audio conversation (MP3) from a URL (or multiple URLs) using podcastfy.

This skill provides a wrapper script that:

creates/uses a local venv ({baseDir}/.venv)
installs/updates podcastfy
runs Podcastfy with Gemini for transcript generation and Edge for TTS

One-time setup

Ensure ffmpeg is installed on the host.

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y ffmpeg

Provide a Gemini API key:

Set env var GEMINI_API_KEY (recommended), or create a project .env and export it before running.

Example keys file: {baseDir}/references/env.example

Quick start

Generate an MP3 from a single URL:

cd {baseDir}
export GEMINI_API_KEY="..."
./scripts/podcastfy_generate.py --url "https://example.com/article"

Multiple URLs:

cd {baseDir}
./scripts/podcastfy_generate.py --url "https://a" --url "https://b"

Long-form:

cd {baseDir}
./scripts/podcastfy_generate.py --url "https://example.com/long" --longform

Output

The script writes outputs under:

{baseDir}/output/audio/ (MP3)
{baseDir}/output/transcripts/ (transcript)

Podcastfy prints the final MP3 path on success.

Optional tuning

PODCASTFY_LLM_MODEL (default: gemini-1.5-flash)
PODCASTFY_EDGE_VOICE_Q (default: en-US-JennyNeural)
PODCASTFY_EDGE_VOICE_A (default: en-US-EricNeural)

Automation / reliability tips (important)

Prefer RSS feeds over browser automation for cron jobs

In isolated cron jobs, avoid relying on a system browser (Chrome/Chromium) or extra Python deps (e.g. bs4). For TechCrunch categories, prefer the RSS feed:

https://techcrunch.com/category/artificial-intelligence/feed/

This reduces breakage from:

“No supported browser found …”
missing site parsing dependencies in the cron runtime

Validate MP3 output (avoid 0-second audio)

We observed podcastfy can occasionally produce an MP3 that is effectively empty/truncated (e.g., a ~261-byte file), which shows up as 0s in Telegram.

This wrapper now validates MP3 output and will automatically fall back to edge-tts synthesis from the latest transcript when the MP3 is invalid.

Safety / workflow

Prefer “draft-first”: tell the user what will be generated (language/length) before running.
Never paste API keys into chat logs.

Install podcastfy-clawdbot and it becomes one more candidate the router can pick - when it fits.

A listing is a routing target with a manifest: what it does, which domains it covers, what it costs and who publishes it. Once installed it sits beside your own models and tools, is scored like any other candidate for each request, and shows up in the trace when it wins. Ratings come from workspaces that installed it, one per account.

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podcastfy-clawdbot

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