# News Intelligence Crawler (`m_ctim/news-intelligence-crawler`) Actor

Discover, fetch, parse, and deduplicate publicly available news articles from configurable RSS feeds and Google News search, respecting robots.txt.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/m\_ctim/news-intelligence-crawler.md
- **Developed by:** [Timothy Kelvin](https://apify.com/m_ctim) (community)
- **Categories:** News, SEO tools, Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$20.00 / 1,000 article storeds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## News Intelligence Crawler (MVP)

An [Apify actor](https://apify.com). Minimal slice of the full
[engineering spec](./docs/spec-source.md): discover → fetch → parse → dedupe
→ store, for a handful of configurable sources. No NLP pipeline, no REST
API — this proves the core loop before layering those on.

### What's here

- **Discovery**: RSS feeds and Google News RSS search, configurable via
  Actor input (`sources`) or `src/config.ts` (used as the default when no
  input is given).
- **Fetching**: per-domain rate limiting, timeouts, exponential-backoff
  retries on transient failures, a descriptive User-Agent, and a
  `robots.txt` check before every article fetch. No proxy.
- **Parsing**: title, author, publication, publish date, canonical URL, raw
  HTML, and cleaned body text via `@extractus/article-extractor` (strips
  nav/ads/cookie banners, then whitespace-normalized).
- **Dedupe**: SHA-256 fingerprint over canonical URL + normalized title +
  publish timestamp + body hash. The set of seen fingerprints lives in a
  named, persistent Apify key-value store (`article-fingerprints`) so
  dedupe holds across separate runs, not just within one.
- **Storage**: accepted articles are pushed to the run's Apify dataset.

### What's deliberately not here yet

NLP (summary/entities/sentiment), the REST API, Prometheus metrics/alerts,
Kubernetes/multi-cloud deployment, scheduling. Same architecture, add
incrementally once validated against real sources.

### Input

```json
{
  "sources": [
    { "type": "rss", "name": "techcrunch", "feedUrl": "https://techcrunch.com/feed/", "keywordFilter": ["tesla", "battery"] },
    { "type": "google-news", "name": "google-news-tesla", "query": "Tesla OR robotaxi" }
  ]
}
```

Leave `sources` empty (or omit it) to use the built-in defaults in
`src/config.ts`. Note: a source's `robots.txt` gets checked per article at
run time — a source that works today can start getting skipped if a
publisher changes its policy; that's enforced by design, not a bug to route
around.

### Output

One dataset record per stored article: `url`, `canonicalUrl`, `title`,
`author`, `publication`, `publishedAt`, `body` (cleaned text), `rawHtml`,
`imageUrl`, `sourceName`, `fingerprint`, `discoveredAt`.

### Run it locally

```bash
npm install
npm start        # runs src/main.ts directly via tsx
```

Or as the Actor would run it in production:

```bash
npm run build     # compiles src/ -> dist/
npm run start:prod
```

### Test

```bash
npm test
```

### Configuring default sources

Edit `src/config.ts` — add a `{ type: 'rss', name, feedUrl, keywordFilter? }`
or `{ type: 'google-news', name, query }` entry. No other code changes
needed. (Per-run overrides go through Actor input instead — see above.)

# Actor input Schema

## `sources` (type: `array`):

List of sources to crawl. Each item is either { "type": "rss", "name": "...", "feedUrl": "...", "keywordFilter"?: \["..."] } or { "type": "google-news", "name": "...", "query": "..." }. Leave empty to use the built-in default source list (src/config.ts).

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "sources": []
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("m_ctim/news-intelligence-crawler").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("m_ctim/news-intelligence-crawler").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{}' |
apify call m_ctim/news-intelligence-crawler --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,m_ctim/news-intelligence-crawler"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/DuBTfcJheKeDPg3kj/builds/ruC2N778D2vDmQ1bs/openapi.json