paper-daily-feed

The AI era’s paper bloom is exhausting to track. If you are tired of endlessly chasing new publications, use this repository to curate a daily recommendation & summary tailored exactly to your vibe.

The recommendation can be produced via two sources (enable either one or both):

• Interest profile: describe your research area directly in text.
• Zotero library: use papers and abstracts in Zotero library.

Get started

1. Fork the Repository

• Fork the repository: https://github.com/nehSgnaiL/paper-daily-feed/fork
• Select your GitHub account as the destination

2. Create Repository Secrets

Go to your GitHub repository → Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → Secrets. Then create these secrets as needed:

Key	Description	Example
RECEIVER	Required Email address for receiving recommendations.	reader@example.com
SENDER	Required Email account used to send recommendations via SMTP server.	example@qq.com
SENDER_PASSWORD	Required Sender account password or SMTP authentication code.	app-password-or-token
SMTP_SERVER	Required SMTP server of the sender account. Get to know SMTP in English / Chinese.	smtp.example.com
SMTP_PORT	Required Corresponding SMTP server port.	465
OPENAI_BASE_URL	Recommended OpenAI-compatible LLM API used for summarying paper. If the API is not set, the summary of recommended papers will be the corresponding abstract. You can get FREE API in SiliconFlow for using open source LLMs (e.g., Qwen/Qwen3-8B).	https://api.siliconflow.cn/v1
OPENAI_API_KEY	Recommended Set corresponding API key if you use API for TLDR summaries.	sk-...
ZOTERO_ID	Recommended Set it when using Zotero Library. Get ZOTERO_ID from Zotero Settings. See steps 1&2 in Zotero API Key Guide.	1234567
ZOTERO_KEY	Recommended Corresponding Zotero API key with read access. Get ZOTERO_KEY from Zotero Settings.	zotero-api-key
EMBEDDING_BASE_URL	Optional Embeddings API for text matching. Generally leave it empty, since the performance of local embedding model is acceptable.	https://api.openai.com/v1
EMBEDDING_API_KEY	Optional Set corresponding key if you use Embeddings API.	sk-...

3. Create Repository Variable APP_CONFIG

In Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → Variables, create a variable named APP_CONFIG.

[!TIP]

• Keep passwords and API keys in GitHub Secrets, not directly in APP_CONFIG. The default secret names from step 2 will be read automatically.
• You can enable either one or both interest sources: Textual profile and Zotero.
• Below examples show minimal configs for each source. You can add additional parameters by refering to full APP_CONFIG template in config/app.example.jsonc to achieve more customization.

Example: Profile-First APP_CONFIG:

{
  "interests": {
    "profile": {
      "enabled": true,
      "summary": "Urban mobility, transport equity, and climate adaptation."
    }
  }
}

Example: Zotero-First APP_CONFIG:

{
  "interests": {
    "zotero": {
      "enabled": true,
      "includeCollections": ["2026/survey/**"],
      "excludeCollections": ["archive/**"]
    }
  }
}

4. Validation

1. Go to Actions tab in your forked repo
2. Run the workflow: “Test paper feeds”
3. Check logs to confirm config loads correctly
4. If everything goes smoothly, you will :white_check_mark: see the test run successfully and :bell: receive daily paper recommendations starting tomorrow.

The default schedule in .github/workflows/daily.yml is 0 1 * * *, which is 09:00 at UTC+8. To change when the daily workflow runs, edit the workflow cron value directly.

Local Run

npm install
cp .env.example .env.local
cp config/app.example.jsonc config/app.jsonc
npm run test:config
npm run preview-email
npm run test:feeds:live

For local development, keep non-secret app settings in config/app.jsonc and secrets in .env.local.

npm start -- run
npm run preview-email
npm run setup-profile
npm run test:config

Modes:

• run: fetch, match, summarize if enabled, render, and send.
• preview-email: fetch, match, render HTML, and print it without sending.
• setup-profile: print a starter profile JSON fragment.
• test-config: validate that APP_CONFIG, config/app.jsonc, or config/app.json can load.

Feeds

The app supports bundled catalog feeds and direct RSS feeds.

• feeds.catalogSelections: names or abbreviations from data/journals.config.ts; empty means all bundled feeds.
• feeds.customRss: direct RSS entries with name and rss.

Run npm run test:feeds:live to smoke-test the current bundled publisher feeds against live RSS. Default tests use fixtures and do not require network access.

Reference

Inspired by TideDra/zotero-arxiv-daily.