How I Built a $0 AI News Bot That Posts to Discord (Full Guide)

The Problem: 45 Minutes a Day Wasted Every morning I was doing the same thing: opening 7 news sites, scanning headlines, deciding what mattered, writing summaries, and pasting them into a Discord community. It took 30, 45 minutes a day, and honestly? I kept missing stories. So I built a bot that does it all automatically. It's been running for months, costs $0/month, and posts curated AI news to Discord six times a day. This guide shows you exactly how it works so you can build the same thing, for your niche, your community, your use case. Full disclosure: this is the exact system powering the Apex Nexus daily AI news digest. --- ## What the Bot Does Every 4 hours, on schedule: 1. Fetches articles from 7+ RSS feeds (Hacker News, Hugging Face, Google AI, Lobste.rs, plus niche sources)

1. Deduplicates by title so nothing repeats
2. Categorizes each article (AI/ML, Security, Automation, Dev/Infra, Industry)
3. Summarizes the top stories into a clean digest
4. Posts the digest to Discord with a link back to the blog
5. Rebuilds + deploys the website with the latest posts Total processing: ~3 minutes. Human effort: zero. --- ## The Architecture (Three Pieces) ### 1. The Fetcher (RSS + Python) RSS feeds are the backbone. Every feed is free and structured, no APIs, no keys, no rate limits to beg for. python import feedparser FEEDS = [ "https://hnrss.org/frontpage", "https://huggingface.co/blog/feed.xml", "https://blog.google/technology/ai/rss/", # add your niche feeds here ] def fetch_all(): articles = [] for url in FEEDS: feed = feedparser.parse(url) for entry in feed.entries[:10]: articles.append({ "title": entry.title, "link": entry.link, "summary": clean_html(entry.summary), "source": url, }) return articles Key lesson: always set a User-Agent header. Many feeds reject default library requests. ### 2. The Brain (Filter + Categorize) The magic is that this doesn't need to call an AI model at all. Deterministic keyword matching handles 90% of it for free: python CATEGORIES = { "AI/ML": ["machine learning", "llm", "openai", "anthropic", "model", "neural"], "Security": ["vulnerability", "breach", "malware", "ransomware", "exploit"], "Automation": ["automation", "workflow", "agent", "rpa", "pipeline"], } def categorize(title, summary): text = f"{title} {summary}".lower() for category, keywords in CATEGORIES.items(): if any(k in text for k in keywords): return category return "General" Why this matters: AI model calls cost money. Keyword categorization costs nothing, runs in milliseconds, and for a news digester it's plenty smart. We only call a model when we want a polished summary, and even that is optional. ### 3. The Output (Discord Webhook) Posting to Discord is one HTTP request. No bot token needed, just a webhook URL: python import requests WEBHOOK_URL = "https://discord.com/api/webhooks/." # from Discord channel settings def send_to_discord(stories): message = "📡 **AI News Digest**\n\n" + "\n".join( f"• **{s['title']}**\n {s['link']}" for s in stories ) requests.post(WEBHOOK_URL, json={"content": message[:1900]}) Pro tip: use Discord embeds for prettier posts, title, link, color, footer. Same API, much better look. --- ## Scheduling: The Piece Everyone Forgets A bot that doesn't run on schedule isn't a bot, it's a script. We use cron through OpenClaw: cron # Every 4 hours 0 */4 * * * cd /path/to/project && python3 news_bot.py The lesson we learned the hard way: webhooks expire and break silently. Your bot should check its webhook before every run and recreate it if it's gone, ours did 404 for a week before we noticed. Add one line of health-checking, not a week of silence. --- ## The Complete Cost Breakdown | Component | Monthly Cost | |---|---| | RSS feeds (all free) | $0 | | Python + feedparser (open source) | $0 | | Discord webhooks (free tier) | $0 | | Static site hosting (Vercel free tier) | $0 | | Cron scheduling (local) | $0 | | AI summaries (optional, only when wanted) | $0, few dollars | | Total | $0/month | The whole thing runs on free tiers and open source. This is the killer feature: a production automation with zero recurring cost. --- ## How to Build Yours (Today) Beginner path (no code, 30 minutes):
6. Create a Discord channel → Settings → Integrations → Webhooks → copy URL
7. Use Zapier or IFTTT: trigger = RSS feed, action = Discord webhook
8. Done. You have a news bot. Intermediate path (n8n, 1 hour):
9. RSS Read node → Filter node (keywords) → Discord node
10. Add an AI node if you want summaries
11. Schedule with the cron trigger Advanced path (Python, this guide, 1 afternoon):
12. Copy the three code blocks above into a project
13. Add your niche feeds and keywords
14. Set up cron
15. Add error handling + webhook health checks (seriously) --- ## What I'd Do Differently If I built this again, I'd start with the advanced path from day one. The beginner tools work, but you hit their walls fast: per-task fees, black-box failures, no way to customize. Python + RSS + webhooks is the same effort and gives you everything. And the one thing that made the biggest difference for growth: every digest post links back to the blog, and every blog post links back to the community. Bot → content → community → more members → more reason to build. The loop is the product. --- ## Build It With Us We run this exact system, and a weekly automation challenge where community members build their own versions. Free to join: https://discord.gg/E5vuXxRtu9E5vuXxRtu9 - 🗺️ Roadmaps & cheat sheets: https://apexnexus.site/resources.html
16. ☕ Enjoyed this guide? Support the free hub: https://ko-fi.com/apexnexus Ship your bot. Post your build. That's the whole assignment.

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