# Guardian Daily Newscast Pipeline

Turns The Guardian's daily US news headlines into a spoken MP3 newscast.

Three scripts run in sequence: **scrape** the articles, **generate** teleprompter scripts via a local LLM, **convert** scripts to audio.

## Prerequisites

External tools you must have installed before running:

- **Ollama** — with the `gemma4:e2b` model pulled (`ollama pull gemma4:e2b`). Used in stage 2 to generate newscast scripts.
- **ffmpeg** — used in stage 3 to convert WAV to MP3 (`brew install ffmpeg` on macOS, `apt install ffmpeg` on Ubuntu).

## Quick Start

```bash
# 1. Install Python dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 2. Run the full pipeline (stages 1, 2, 3 in order)
python main.py && python reader.py && python tts_generator.py

# 3. Find your newscast files in data/audio/*.mp3
ls data/audio/
```

## Installation

```bash
pip install -r requirements.txt
```

Dependencies: `httpx`, `beautifulsoup4`, `pydantic`, `loguru`, `kokoro`, `soundfile`, `torch`.

## The Pipeline

The project has three distinct stages that **must be run in order**:

```
[Stage 1] main.py (Guardian Scraper)
              |
              v
       data/output.json
              |
              v
[Stage 2] reader.py (LLM Script Generator)
              |
              v
       data/scripts.json
              |
              v
[Stage 3] tts_generator.py (TTS Audio Generator)
              |
              v
       data/audio/*.mp3
```

### Stage 1: Guardian Scraper (`main.py`)

- Fetches today's Guardian US news home page (URL built from current date).
- Extracts all article links, then fetches each article's body text concurrently (semaphore-limited to 5).
- **Output:** `data/output.json` — a JSON object with an `articles` array (each entry: `headline`, `url`, `body`, `scraped_at`).

### Stage 2: LLM Script Generator (`reader.py`)

- Reads `data/output.json`.
- Sends each article body to a local Ollama instance (`http://127.0.0.1:11434/api/generate`, model `gemma4:e2b`).
- System prompt instructs the model to produce clean teleprompter-ready spoken text (no stage directions, no speaker labels).
- Retries failed requests up to 3 times (exponential backoff: 10s, 20s). 2s delay between each request to avoid overloading Ollama.
- **Output:** `data/scripts.json` — a JSON array of objects (each: `headline`, `script`).

### Stage 3: TTS Audio Generator (`tts_generator.py`)

- Reads `data/scripts.json`.
- Uses Kokoro TTS (local, voice `af_heart`, 24kHz) to generate WAV audio.
- Converts WAV to MP3 via ffmpeg (`-q:a 2`).
- Cleans up intermediate WAV files after conversion.
- **Output:** `data/audio/<sanitized_headline>.mp3` files — one MP3 per article.

## Usage

Run all three stages in order:

```bash
python main.py
python reader.py
python tts_generator.py
```

Or chain them with `&&`:

```bash
python main.py && python reader.py && python tts_generator.py
```

Each stage is independent and can be re-run without re-running earlier stages (e.g., re-run stage 3 if audio quality needs to change, without re-scraping).

## Project Structure

```
.
├── main.py                    # Stage 1: Guardian scraper
├── reader.py                  # Stage 2: LLM script generation
├── tts_generator.py           # Stage 3: TTS audio generation
├── pipeline.py                # Pipeline orchestrator (Docker)
├── requirements.txt           # Python dependencies
├── README.md                  # This file
├── CLAUDE.md                  # Developer guide
├── Dockerfile                 # Docker container build
├── docker-compose.yml         # Docker Compose (optional Ollama sidecar)
├── .env.example               # Environment variable defaults
├── server/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── app.py                 # Web server (MP3 index + file serving)
├── scraper/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── client.py              # GuardianClient (HTTP + concurrency)
│   ├── parser.py              # GuardianParser (HTML extraction)
│   ├── models.py              # Pydantic models (Article, ScrapeResult)
│   └── utils.py               # Disk I/O helpers
├── data/
│   ├── output.json            # Stage 1 output (scraped articles)
│   ├── scripts.json           # Stage 2 output (generated scripts)
│   └── audio/                 # Stage 3 output (MP3 files)
│       ├── article_1.mp3
│       ├── article_2.mp3
│       └── ...
└── .claude/
    └── settings.local.json
```

## Dependencies

### Python (via `pip install -r requirements.txt`)

| Package | Purpose |
|---|---|
| httpx | Async HTTP client for scraping |
| beautifulsoup4 | HTML parsing |
| pydantic | Data validation models |
| loguru | Logging |
| kokoro | Local TTS engine |
| soundfile | WAV audio I/O |
| torch | Required by kokoro |

### External (not installed via pip)

| Tool | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Ollama | Running locally, with `gemma4:e2b` |
| ffmpeg | Available on PATH |

## Output Files

| File | Description |
|---|---|
| `data/output.json` | JSON object containing scraped articles with `headline`, `url`, `body`, and `scraped_at` fields. |
| `data/scripts.json` | JSON array of objects with `headline` and `script` fields. |
| `data/audio/*.mp3` | One MP3 file per article, named from the sanitized headline. |

## Docker Deployment

Run the pipeline as a self-contained Docker container with a built-in web UI for browsing and downloading newscast files.

### Quick Start

```bash
# 1. Build the image
docker build -t guardian-newscast .

# 2. Run (web UI on port 8080, data persisted in ./data/)
docker run -d \
  --name guardian-newscast \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v ./data:/app/data \
  guardian-newscast

# 3. Open the web UI
open http://localhost:8080
```

### Volume Mapping

| Mount Point | Purpose |
|-------------|---------|
| `./data:/app/data` | **Required** — stores all pipeline outputs (output.json, scripts.json, audio/*.mp3). Host path is your choice. |

### Environment Variables

| Variable | Default | Purpose |
|----------|---------|---------|
| `OLLAMA_URL` | `http://host.docker.internal:11434/api/generate` | Ollama API endpoint |
| `MODEL_NAME` | `gemma4:e2b` | Ollama model for script generation |
| `PORT` | `8080` | Web server HTTP port |
| `POLL_INTERVAL` | `21600` (6h) | Seconds between pipeline runs |
| `DATA_DIR` | `/app/data` | Data directory inside container |
| `TTS_VOICE` | `af_heart` | Kokoro TTS voice name |

Override via `.env` file (copy `.env.example`), `docker run -e`, or docker-compose.

### Web Server

The container serves a dark-themed page at `/` listing all MP3 files with:
- Inline audio playback
- Direct download links
- Auto-refresh every 5 minutes

Access at `http://<host>:<PORT>` (default `http://localhost:8080`).

### Publishing

```bash
docker build -t guardian-newscast .
docker tag guardian-newscast truenas.local:30095/guardian-newscast:latest
docker push truenas.local:30095/guardian-newscast:latest
```

### Deploying on TrueNAS

```bash
docker pull truenas.local:30095/guardian-newscast:latest
docker run -d \
  --name guardian-newscast \
  --network host \
  -v /path/to/data:/app/data \
  -e OLLAMA_URL=http://127.0.0.1:11434/api/generate \
  -e PORT=30095 \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  truenas.local:30095/guardian-newscast:latest
```

### Docker Compose

```bash
# Minimal (pipeline only, Ollama on host)
docker compose up -d

# Full (pipeline + Ollama sidecar)
docker compose --profile full up -d
```

### GPU Acceleration

The default Dockerfile uses `python:3.11-slim` (Debian), which has glibc — fully compatible with NVIDIA CUDA.

To run with GPU acceleration on TrueNAS:
1. Install the [NVIDIA Container Toolkit](https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/cloud-native/container-toolkit/latest/install-guide.html).
2. Build with CUDA-enabled torch:
   ```bash
   docker build --target gpu -t guardian-newscast:gpu .
   ```
   (Add a `FROM python:3.11-slim AS gpu` stage with `pip install torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu121`)
3. Run with `--gpus all`.
4. Minimum **4 GB VRAM** recommended for Ollama + Kokoro in the same container.