ResearchDrops

Automated daily research digest — fetches papers from RSS feeds, filters out based on topics of interest.

A GitHub Actions workflow runs every weekday: a Python script pulls entries from arXiv and Microsoft Research, then a Copilot CLI agent applies two skills — research-filter and research-digest — to separate signal from noise and publish a digest as a GitHub Discussion.

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How It Works

RSS Feeds → fetch.py → /tmp/research-monitor/feeds/ → Copilot Agent → output.json → GitHub Discussion

1. Fetch — fetch.py reads conf/feeds.yml and downloads all RSS/Atom feeds. Entries are written as individual Markdown files (YAML frontmatter + body) with a titles.jsonl index per feed.

2. Filter — The Copilot CLI agent loads skills/research-filter/SKILL.md and applies a two-phase filter: broad title scan, then strict abstract review using positive/negative signals from conf/topics.yml. Default: exclude.

3. Format — Surviving entries are tiered (High / Medium / Low) and formatted into a Markdown digest using skills/research-digest/SKILL.md and its FOR_EACH template.

4. Publish — The agent writes output.json. The workflow creates a GitHub Discussion with the formatted digest.

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Setup

Prerequisites

• A GitHub repository (public or private)
• GitHub Copilot access (for the Copilot CLI agent step)

1. Create a GitHub Personal Access Token (Copilot)

The Copilot CLI agent authenticates via the COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable. Follow the Copilot CLI authentication docs:

1. Go to Fine-grained personal access tokens
2. Under Permissions, click Add permissions and select Copilot Requests
3. Click Generate token
4. Copy the token

2. Create a Discussions token (optional)

The workflow publishes digests as GitHub Discussions. This requires a separate token with Discussions write access. If not set, the workflow runs normally but skips publishing.

1. Go to Fine-grained personal access tokens
2. Set Repository access to your ResearchDrops repo
3. Under Repository permissions, set Discussions → Read and write
4. Click Generate token
5. Copy the token

3. Add repository secrets

Go to your repo → Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → New repository secret:

Secret	Value	Required
COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN	The Copilot token from step 1	Yes
DISCUSSIONS_WRITE_TOKEN	The Discussions token from step 2	No

4. Enable Discussions

1. Go to Settings → General → Features
2. Check Discussions
3. Make sure a "General" category exists (it's created by default)

5. Run it

The workflow runs automatically every weekday at 6 AM PST (arXiv doesn't update on weekends). To trigger it manually:

1. Go to Actions → Daily Research Monitor → Run workflow
2. Optionally override the model (default: claude-sonnet-4.6)
3. Check the job summary for the digest, or look in Discussions

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Customizing

Adding feeds

Edit conf/feeds.yml. Each entry has:

- id: my-feed
  name: "Human-readable name"
  url: "https://example.com/rss"
  description: "What this feed covers"
  format: rss          # rss or atom
  update_frequency: daily

Changing topics

Edit conf/topics.yml. Each topic has:

- id: my-topic
  name: "Topic Name"
  description: "What this topic cares about"
  keywords:
    - relevant-keyword
  positive_signals:
    - "Framings that make a paper worth surfacing"
  negative_signals:
    - "Look-alike traps to exclude"

The skills read these at runtime — no code changes needed.