podcastfy-clawdbot
# 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
1) Ensure `ffmpeg` is installed on the host.
Ubuntu/Debian:
```bash
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y ffmpeg
```
2) 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:
```bash
cd {baseDir}
export GEMINI_API_KEY="..."
./scripts/podcastfy_generate.py --url "https://example.com/article"
```
Multiple URLs:
```bash
cd {baseDir}
./scripts/podcastfy_generate.py --url "https://a" --url "https://b"
```
Long-form:
```bash
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.
标签
skill
ai
