kill-the-news

Convert email newsletters into private RSS feeds using Cloudflare Workers.

Self-hosted, uses your own domain, and keeps your data in your own Cloudflare account. Live at kill-the.news.

Why this exists

Many newsletters only support email delivery. RSS readers offer a better reading experience, but getting email-only newsletters into RSS usually means relying on shared third-party infrastructure.

kill-the-news keeps the same workflow while avoiding shared domains and shared data stores.

Features

• One-click feed creation from an admin dashboard
• Bulk feed/email deletion from the admin dashboard (safe checkbox-based flow)
• Inline double-confirm delete interactions with toast feedback in the admin dashboard
• Resizable + sortable table columns in the admin dashboard (Table view)
• Unique newsletter addresses per feed (for example apple.mountain.42@yourdomain.com)
• Cloudflare Email Workers ingestion (no third-party service)
• ForwardEmail webhook ingestion with source-IP verification (optional alternative)
• Optional per-feed sender allowlist (email@domain.com or domain.com)
• RSS generation on demand (/rss/:feedId)
• Atom feed at /atom/:feedId
• Per-feed favicon derived from the last sender's domain (/favicon/:feedId), cached and shown in feeds + admin
• Automatic RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe when a feed is deleted — stops newsletters from mailing the now-dead address
• Email attachments stored in Cloudflare R2 and exposed as RSS enclosures (optional)
• Cloudflare KV storage for feed config + email metadata/content
• Password-protected admin UI

Architecture

Two ingestion methods are supported — pick one or use both:

Method	How it works
Cloudflare Email Workers	Cloudflare Email Routing delivers the raw message directly to the Worker via the email() handler — no outbound webhook needed
ForwardEmail webhook	ForwardEmail parses the message and POSTs a JSON payload to POST /api/inbound; the Worker verifies the source IP before processing

Common path:

1. Incoming email arrives at user@yourdomain.com.
2. The Worker resolves the feed from the recipient address and stores the email in KV.
3. https://yourdomain.com/rss/:feedId renders RSS from stored items.
4. /admin provides feed management and email deletion.
5. https://yourdomain.com/ shows a public status page with monitoring counters and a link to the admin.

Main routes:

• src/lib/cloudflare-email.ts: Cloudflare Email Workers ingestion
• src/routes/inbound.ts: ForwardEmail webhook ingestion
• src/routes/rss.ts: RSS rendering
• src/routes/atom.ts: Atom feed rendering
• src/routes/files.ts: attachment file serving from R2
• src/routes/admin.ts: admin UI + feed CRUD
• src/routes/home.tsx: public status page (GET /)
• src/routes/stats.ts: monitoring counters API (GET /api/stats)

Monitoring

GET /api/stats returns JSON counters (public, no auth) for uptime/monitoring tools:

Field	Meaning
active_feeds	Feeds currently configured (live)
feeds_created	Total feeds ever created (cumulative)
feeds_deleted	Total feeds ever deleted (cumulative)
emails_received	Total emails ingested successfully (cumulative)
emails_rejected	Total emails rejected during validation (cumulative)
websub_subscriptions_active	Active WebSub subscriptions (live)
last_email_at	ISO 8601 date-time of the last ingested email
last_feed_created_at	ISO 8601 date-time of the last feed creation
first_seen	ISO 8601 date-time the instance first recorded a counter

The same figures are rendered on the public status page at GET /. Cumulative counters are persisted in the EMAIL_STORAGE KV under the stats:counters key.

Installation

See INSTALL.md for the full setup, deployment, and configuration guide. Quick start:

npx wrangler login
bash setup.sh        # prompts for admin password + domain, provisions KV, generates wrangler.toml
npm run deploy       # deploys the Worker and registers your custom domain

Then enable email ingestion (Cloudflare Email Workers or ForwardEmail) and open https://yourdomain.com/admin. Details, options, and configuration knobs (feed size limit, R2 attachments, reverse-proxy auth, CI deploys) are all in INSTALL.md.

Security notes

• When using Option B (ForwardEmail), inbound webhook access is IP-restricted to ForwardEmail MX sources.
• Admin auth uses a signed, HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite=Strict cookie.
• Admin responses are no-store to avoid cache leakage.
• For high-value feeds, set Allowed senders so only known sender addresses/domains are accepted.
• You should use a strong admin password and rotate periodically.
• All secret comparisons (admin password, proxy secret) use constant-time comparison to prevent timing attacks.

Acknowledgements

• kill-the-newsletter by Leandro Facchinetti — the inspiration for this project and the reference implementation for feature ideas (Atom feeds, attachment enclosures, entry HTML views, and more).
• Email-to-RSS by yl8976 — the initial codebase this project is based on.

License

MIT