NebulaPicker: A Self-Hosted App to Easily Generate Filtered RSS Feeds

Daniel Silva — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 23:41:57 +0000

RSS is still one of the best ways to follow websites without relying on algorithms or centralized platforms. But if you follow many feeds, the signal-to-noise ratio can quickly become a problem.

Sometimes you only want specific types of posts, articles matching keywords, or content from multiple feeds combined into a curated stream.

That’s exactly why I built NebulaPicker.

NebulaPicker is a self-hosted app that generates filtered RSS feeds in a simple way. It allows you to take existing feeds, apply filtering rules, and produce new clean RSS feeds you can use anywhere.

GitHub: https://github.com/djsilva99/nebulapicker

The Problem

Many RSS users face a few common challenges:

Feeds often contain too much content
You may only care about specific topics or keywords
Curating feeds manually is tedious
Many tools are hosted services, not self-hosted

What I wanted was a tool that could:

take multiple RSS feeds
filter them
generate a new RSS feed with only the relevant items
and do this in a simple, self-hosted way.

What NebulaPicker Does

NebulaPicker lets you:

Subscribe to existing RSS feeds using CRON jobs
Filter items based on rules
Generate new curated RSS feeds
Combine multiple sources into one clean feed

The result is a filtered feed you can plug into any RSS reader.

Many RSS tools today are cloud services. NebulaPicker is different: it is self-hosted.

Running it yourself means:

You own your data
No API limits
No subscriptions
Full control over your feeds

NebulaPicker is designed to be simple to run and maintain.

Example Use Case

Imagine you want a feed that only contains AI-related articles from several tech blogs.

With NebulaPicker you can:

Add multiple RSS feeds
Create a filter for keywords like AI, LLM, or machine learning
Generate a new RSS feed containing only those articles

You can then subscribe to that filtered feed in any RSS reader.

Tech Stack

NebulaPicker is built with a modern and lightweight stack designed for simplicity and reliability.

Backend API: Built with FastAPI, providing a fast and efficient REST API.

Database: Uses PostgreSQL for storing feeds, pickers, and generated data.

Frontend: The web interface is built with Next.js, offering a responsive and smooth user experience.

This architecture makes NebulaPicker easy to deploy while remaining powerful enough to handle feed filtering and content extraction workflows.

Available Editions

NebulaPicker currently comes in two editions, each designed for a slightly different workflow.

1. Original Edition

The Original Edition represents the original vision of NebulaPicker.

It focuses on the core idea: generating filtered RSS feeds in a simple and self-hosted way.

With this edition you can:

Add RSS feeds as sources
Apply filtering rules to select relevant items
Generate new curated RSS feeds
Use those feeds in any RSS reader

This edition is ideal if you want a lightweight tool to filter and curate RSS content without additional processing.

2. Content Extractor Edition

The Content Extractor Edition extends NebulaPicker with full article extraction capabilities.

It integrates with Wallabag to retrieve the complete article content, not just the RSS summary.

This is useful when:

RSS feeds only provide short excerpts
You want full-text content in the generated feeds
You use read-later tools or offline readers
You want better searching or archiving

By combining NebulaPicker filtering with Wallabag extraction, you can build filtered RSS feeds that also include the full article text. Nebulapicker is also responsive, so it is mobile friendly.

Getting Started

NebulaPicker is open source and easy to run. It can be started quickly using Docker Compose, without complex setup. You can find the instructions in the nebulapicker github repository.

Feedback Welcome

NebulaPicker is still evolving, and feedback is very welcome.

⭐ If NebulaPicker sounds useful to you, feel free to try it and leave a star on GitHub — it really helps the project grow.

DEV Community: Daniel Silva