Show HN: Rexfeed – A tech feed in a Rex side pane while your coding agent works

Developer Alpcan Aydın released rexfeed, an unofficial open-source add-on for the Rex terminal that opens a side pane of rotating tech cards — news, tips, product launches, and YouTube and Reddit videos — while a coding agent works. rexfeed hooks into Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Pi via each agent's lifecycle hooks, opening the pane when a prompt is sent and closing it when the agent finishes, and requires a Mac with Apple silicon, Rex, Homebrew and Python 3. The add-on is opt-in per session through /rexfeed-start and /rexfeed-stop, uses Rex's own rex CLI to open a rex split without modifying Rex, and is not affiliated with Rex maker Superlogical.

Something worth a glance while your coding agent works, in a side pane of Rex https://rex.superlogical.com . For Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Pi. How it works how-it-works • Install install • Usage usage • Sources sources • Video how-video-works • Config config • FAQ faq demo.mp4 <sub Three Claude Code turns, sped up 4×: the pane opens as the agent starts and closes when it's done. No player? Download the video https://github.com/alpcanaydin/rexfeed/blob/main/assets/demo.mp4 .</sub While your agent thinks, you wait. rexfeed fills that wait: a pane opens beside the agent and rotates short tech cards news, tips, product launches, YouTube and Reddit videos . Images and videos play right in the terminal through the kitty graphics protocol. When the agent finishes, the pane pauses, so your attention goes back to the agent. Note rexfeed is an unofficial add-on, not made by or affiliated with Superlogical. It uses Rex's own rex CLI to open its pane and doesn't modify Rex. rexfeed is opt-in per session. Turn it on in an agent session inside Rex; from then on the agent's hooks drive the pane: | Agent | How it hooks in | Opt-in | |---|---|---| | Claude Code | UserPromptSubmit / Stop / SessionEnd hooks | /rexfeed-start , /rexfeed-stop | | Codex | the same hooks in ~/.codex/hooks.json trust them once with /hooks | rexfeed on , rexfeed off | | OpenCode | server plugin + TUI plugin | /rexfeed-start , /rexfeed-stop or rexfeed on | | Pi | extension before agent start , agent settled , session shutdown | /rexfeed-start , /rexfeed-stop | | Event | Pane | |---|---| | /rexfeed-start | Turns rexfeed on for this session; no pane yet | | Prompt sent the agent starts working | Opens the pane | | Agent finishes | Closes the pane; the next prompt opens it again with unseen cards | | Pane has focus | Pauses so you can read; resumes when focus leaves | | 30 cards shown | Loads the next batch of unseen cards | | No unseen cards left | Starts a background refresh and closes | | /rexfeed-stop rexfeed off | Closes and turns off for this session | | Session ends Claude Code, Codex, Pi | Closes | Without opting in the hooks do nothing, so other sessions stay untouched. State is kept per Rex pane in ~/.cache/rexfeed/state/ . Claude Code, Codex and Pi run inside their pane, so the hooks read the pane id from $REX BLOCK . OpenCode runs plugins in one shared background server, so its TUI plugin records which pane shows each session ~/.cache/rexfeed/opencode/<session and the server plugin passes that pane as rexfeed hook … --block <pane . The pane is a rex split beside the agent's pane, opened without taking focus. Cards are picked round-robin across sources, so one feed doesn't take over, and a card you've seen doesn't come back. When the cache is older than refresh minutes , a prompt starts a fetch in the background. You need a Mac with Apple silicon, Rex https://rex.superlogical.com , at least one of Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode or Pi, Homebrew https://brew.sh and Python 3 the installer edits the agents' JSON config with it . For images and videos: ffmpeg and yt-dlp Homebrew installs them for you . With Homebrew: brew trust --tap alpcanaydin/rexfeed Homebrew asks you to trust third-party taps brew install alpcanaydin/rexfeed/rexfeed rexfeed-setup rexfeed-setup hooks rexfeed into your agents. Upgrades need nothing else: the hooks point at Homebrew's stable opt path. From a release: download rexfeed-<version -aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz from Releases https://github.com/alpcanaydin/rexfeed/releases , unpack it and run ./install.sh inside. Keep the folder where it is: ~/.local/bin/rexfeed links to the binary in it. From a checkout needs Rust : git clone https://github.com/alpcanaydin/rexfeed && cd rexfeed ./install.sh brew install ffmpeg yt-dlp if you don't have them What the installer does - Builds the binary from a checkout and links ~/.local/bin/rexfeed to it. - Tells you if ffmpeg or yt-dlp is missing. - Runs scripts/install-hooks.sh , which hooks into each agent it finds command on PATH or config dir present . JSON files are backed up to .bak-rexfeed first; running it again doesn't duplicate anything. Config dirs follow CLAUDE CONFIG DIR , CODEX HOME , OPENCODE CONFIG DIR or XDG CONFIG HOME and PI CODING AGENT DIR . - Claude Code: UserPromptSubmit , Stop and SessionEnd hooks in ~/.claude/settings.json ; /rexfeed-start and /rexfeed-stop in ~/.claude/commands/ . - Codex: the same three hooks in ~/.codex/hooks.json . - OpenCode: plugins/rexfeed.js and plugins/rexfeed-tui/tui.js in ~/.config/opencode , the TUI plugin listed in tui.json OpenCode 1 and cli.json OpenCode 2 , and /rexfeed-start and /rexfeed-stop in commands/ . - Pi: ~/.pi/agent/extensions/rexfeed.ts , which also registers /rexfeed-start and /rexfeed-stop . - Claude Code: - Migrates an older techfeed install: removes its hooks, commands and link, and moves ~/.cache/techfeed to ~/.cache/rexfeed . - Runs a first rexfeed fetch . ~/.local/bin has to be on your PATH for the Claude Code commands and rexfeed on to find rexfeed . Important Codex runs new hooks only after you trust them: start Codex and run /hooks once. OpenCode loads plugins when its background server starts, so quit OpenCode once after installing or run pkill -f 'opencode serve' . Pi picks up the extension on its next start. In an agent session in Rex, run /rexfeed-start Claude Code, OpenCode, Pi or rexfeed on Codex . Send prompts as usual. /rexfeed-stop or rexfeed off turns it off again. | Keys | What | |---|---| | n → ↓ l j | Next card | | p ← ↑ h k | Previous card | | space | Pause / resume | | o / enter | Open the link in your browser | | q / esc / ctrl+c | Close the pane | The link line is also an OSC 8 hyperlink, so ⌘ -click opens it too. rexfeed fetch refresh the cache ~/.cache/rexfeed rexfeed on | off --block B enable or disable for the current Rex pane rexfeed pane run the pane by hand never pauses for the agent rexfeed list print cached items rexfeed hook start|stop|end --block B agent hook entry points; the pane defaults to $REX BLOCK - News: Hacker News, Show HN, Lobsters, TLDR Tech/AI, The Verge, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, Hackaday, Changelog, JavaScript Weekly, This Week in Rust, GitHub Trending, dev.to - Reddit: r/programming, ClaudeAI, LocalLLaMA, commandline, rust, webdev, neovim, selfhosted, MachineLearning one combined RSS request; Reddit rate-limits hard - Products: Product Hunt - Blogs: Simon Willison, GitHub, OpenAI, Hugging Face, Vercel, Cloudflare, Rust, Latent Space, Smashing, Josh Comeau - Tips: Simon's TIL, tldr-pages, jbranchaud/til both cloned locally, refreshed every 3 days - Releases: Claude Code - Video: Fireship, Beyond Fireship, ThePrimeTime, Theo, Two Minute Papers, Computerphile, Low Level, Linus Tech Tips, Web Dev Simplified, Kurzgesagt Cards without media get the page's og:image . Code in tips is syntax-highlighted. Each refresh downloads the first seconds of the next few unseen videos in the background YouTube through yt-dlp , Reddit from its v.redd.it/<id /HLSPlaylist.m3u8 playlist, both with ffmpeg , and a video card only joins the queue once its clip is on disk. So a video starts the moment its card shows. ffmpeg decodes the clip into small frames at most 640px wide . Each frame is zlib-compressed and sent with the kitty graphics protocol under a new image id, and the previous frame is deleted only after the new one is placed, so there's no flicker. The terminal scales it to the card. Playback stops after video max seconds, pauses with the pane, and has no sound. Images are converted with ffmpeg and drawn the same way. ~/.config/rexfeed/config.json , every key optional: { "dwell": 10, "video max": 20, "queue size": 30, "refresh minutes": 45, "pane ratio": 38, "idle close minutes": 30 } | Key | What | |---|---| | dwell | Seconds a card without video stays | | video max | Seconds of a video to play and to download ahead | | queue size | Cards per batch | | refresh minutes | Cache age that triggers a background fetch | | pane ratio | Pane size passed to rex split --ratio | | idle close minutes | Minutes paused pane focused before it closes | To keep rexfeed out of a single session, start it with REXFEED OFF=1 . The pane doesn't open It only opens inside Rex after you opt in for the session, and only when there are unseen cards. Codex: run /hooks once to trust the hooks. OpenCode: restart it after installing so the plugins load, and keep the session open in its TUI the TUI plugin tells rexfeed which pane it's in . Run rexfeed list to see the cache and rexfeed fetch to fill it. Errors go to ~/.cache/rexfeed/log.txt . Videos don't play Check ffmpeg and yt-dlp are on your PATH . YouTube changes often, so brew upgrade yt-dlp fixes most failures. Does it work outside Rex, or with other agents? It works with the agents Rex supports: Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Pi. It doesn't work outside Rex: the pane is opened with rex split and keyed on Rex's pane id. rexfeed pane runs in any terminal with kitty graphics, but nothing pauses it. Does it send anything anywhere? No account, no telemetry. It fetches the public feeds above and linked pages, for their og:image and keeps everything in ~/.cache/rexfeed . ./uninstall.sh hooks, plugins, commands, ~/.local/bin/rexfeed ./uninstall.sh --purge also ~/.cache/rexfeed and ~/.config/rexfeed It runs scripts/install-hooks.sh --remove , which takes out only rexfeed's own pieces: hook entries whose command contains rexfeed hook or an old techfeed hook in Claude Code's and Codex's JSON, backed up first, the OpenCode plugins and their tui.json / cli.json entries, the Pi extension and the /rexfeed-start / /rexfeed-stop commands.