News Agents: Scalable RSS Summarization with Amazon Q and tmux

News Agents utilizes the Amazon Q CLI as a primary agent runner, treating RSS parsing as a specialized tool via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). By leveraging tmux to split the terminal interface, the system provides a real-time view of the entire process. The result is a news aggregator that operates entirely within the command line.

The system deploys multiple agents to work concurrently. They extract stories from various sources, including Hacker News, TechCrunch, and The Wall Street Journal, before condensing the information. Each agent generates its findings as a series of clean, readable Markdown files.

How News Agents Operates

The Main Agent

1. Extracts feed URLs from a centralized feeds.txt file.
2. Partitions the list into three distinct segments.
3. Spawns three sub-agents, each assigned to its own tmux pane.
4. Monitors the sub-agents throughout the execution phase.
5. Consolidates every summary once the individual tasks are complete.

The Sub-Agents

1. Each sub-agent is assigned a specific "chunk" of the feeds.
2. For every feed in its queue, the sub-agent:
   • Downloads the raw feed content.
   • Parses the individual articles.
   • Drafts a concise summary.
   • Exports the summary to summaries/[feed-name].md.
3. Notifies the main agent once its assigned chunk has been fully processed.

The Operational Flow:

Main agent (in the primary tmux pane)
├── Parses feeds.txt
├── Distributes feeds into 3 chunks
├── Initializes 3 sub-agents (each in a dedicated tmux pane)
│   ├── Sub-agent #1
│   │   ├── Processes chunk 1
│   │   └── Signals completion
│   ├── Sub-agent #2
│   │   ├── Processes chunk 2
│   │   └── Signals completion
│   └── Sub-agent #3
│       ├── Processes chunk 3
│       └── Signals completion
└── Merges all individual summaries into main-summary.md

The Technical Stack

• Amazon Q CLI: The foundational environment for agent execution.
• MCP (Model Context Protocol): Standardizes RSS feed parsing as a callable tool for the AI.
• tmux: A terminal multiplexer that facilitates simultaneous visual monitoring of all active agents.

The system gathers data from global tech and business outlets, converging all insights into your terminal as formatted summary files.

Getting Started with News Agents

Configure Amazon Q

1. Follow the official installation guide for the Amazon Q CLI.
2. Set up your AWS credentials as required.
3. Confirm the installation by running: q --version.

Installation and Execution

1. Clone the repository:
   git clone https://github.com/eugeneyan/news-agents.git

2. Navigate into the project folder:
   cd news-agents

3. Synchronize your environment:
   uv sync

4. Ensure httpx and mcp[cli] are correctly installed:
   uv tree

5. Initialize Amazon Q with tool trust enabled:
   q chat --trust-all-tools

6. Load the global system context:
   /context add --global context/agents.md

7. Initiate the workflow:
   Instruct Q to read context/main-agent.md and trigger the sub-agent distribution.

Once initiated, the system automatically manages parallel processes across tmux panes. You can monitor the real-time progress as agents fetch, parse, and summarize news without ever leaving your terminal environment.