Show HN: Read-It-Later Using Only GitHub (Actions and Pages)

A serverless "Read It Later" service that automatically extracts and saves web articles to a GitHub Pages site using GitHub Actions. Perfect for creating your own personal reading archive without any hosting costs.

Demo

In our information-rich world, we constantly come across interesting articles but don't always have time to read them immediately. Traditional read-later services are great, but they:

• Store your data on third-party servers
• Often require subscriptions for advanced features
• May disappear or change their terms of service
• Don't give you full control over your reading archive

This project solves these problems by:

• Using GitHub as your backend - Your articles are stored in your own repository
• Zero hosting costs - Leverages GitHub Pages for free hosting
• Complete ownership - All your data stays in your GitHub account
• Automatic archiving - Articles are extracted and formatted for offline reading
• Simple interface - Clean, readable HTML pages with navigation

The system uses GitHub's repository dispatch feature to trigger article extraction:

1. You send a URL via HTTP POST request to GitHub's API
2. GitHub Actions triggers and checks out your repository
3. Article extraction happens using Python's newspaper library
4. Content is saved as a formatted HTML file in the /entries directory
5. Index is updated with a link to the new article
6. GitHub Pages deploys the updated site automatically

1. Go to your repository's Settings tab
2. Scroll down to Pages section
3. Set Source to "Deploy from a branch"
4. Select gh-pages branch and / (root) folder
5. Click Save

1. Go to GitHub Settings → Developer settings → Personal access tokens → Tokens (classic)
2. Click Generate new token (classic)
3. Give it a descriptive name like "ReadItLater Dispatch"
4. Select these scopes:
   • repo (Full control of private repositories)
   • workflow (Update GitHub Action workflows)
5. Copy the generated token (you won't see it again!)

Send a test request to add your first article:

Replace:

• YOUR_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN with your token
• YOUR_USERNAME with your GitHub username
• YOUR_REPO_NAME with your repository name
• The URL with an actual article you want to save

Create a bookmarklet for one-click saving. Add this as a bookmark:

Create an iOS Shortcut that:

1. Gets the current webpage URL
2. Makes the HTTP request to GitHub API
3. Shows a confirmation message

Once articles are processed, visit your GitHub Pages URL: https://YOUR_USERNAME.github.io/YOUR_REPO_NAME

Edit the CSS in extract.py within the html_content strings to customize:

• Colors and fonts
• Layout and spacing
• Mobile responsiveness

Modify extract.py to:

• Change filename format
• Add metadata extraction
• Include article images
• Filter content

Edit .github/workflows/publish.yaml to:

• Change trigger conditions
• Add notifications
• Modify deployment settings

• Article quality depends on the source - Some sites may not extract cleanly
• JavaScript-heavy sites may not work well with the newspaper library
• Rate limits - GitHub API has rate limits (5000 requests/hour for authenticated users)
• Repository size - Large numbers of articles may impact repository size

1. Check the Actions tab for workflow errors
2. Verify your personal access token has correct permissions
3. Ensure the repository dispatch payload is correctly formatted

• Some sites block automated access
• Try the URL in a private browser to ensure it's publicly accessible
• Check if the site requires JavaScript to load content

• Check if GitHub Pages is enabled in repository settings
• Verify the gh-pages branch exists and has content
• GitHub Pages updates may take a few minutes to propagate

Feel free to submit issues and enhancement requests! Some ideas for improvements:

• Better mobile interface
• Search functionality
• Tag/category system
• Export options
• Better error handling

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.

Happy Reading! 📚