Auto-Post Rules (RSS)

Automatically create posts from RSS and Atom feeds.

Overview

Auto-post rules let you connect an RSS or Atom feed URL to your social accounts. The system checks the feed at a configurable interval and automatically creates scheduled posts from new items.

This is a Pro feature and requires workspace scoping when workspaces are enabled.

How It Works

1. Create a rule with a feed URL, target accounts, and a polling interval
2. Activate the rule — it starts in paused status by default
3. Every polling cycle, the system fetches the feed, finds new items since the last check, and creates posts
4. Posts are published immediately through the same pipeline as manually scheduled posts

# Create a rule
curl -X POST https://api.relayapi.dev/v1/auto-post-rules \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer rlay_live_your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Company Blog",
    "feed_url": "https://blog.example.com/feed.xml",
    "polling_interval_minutes": 60,
    "content_template": "New post: {{title}}\n\n{{description}}",
    "append_feed_url": true,
    "account_ids": []
  }'

# Activate it
curl -X POST https://api.relayapi.dev/v1/auto-post-rules/apr_abc123/activate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer rlay_live_your_api_key"

Content Templates

Use template variables to control what gets posted. If no template is provided, the post content defaults to the article title.

Example template:

{{title}}

{{description}}

When append_feed_url is true (default), the article URL is automatically appended to the post if it's not already included in the template output.

Polling Intervals

The polling_interval_minutes field controls how often the feed is checked. Valid range: 15 to 1440 minutes (24 hours).

The system checks for due rules every 5 minutes. A rule is "due" when last_processed_at + polling_interval_minutes <= now.

Deduplication

Each rule tracks last_processed_url — the URL of the most recently processed feed item. On each cycle, the system processes all items newer than this URL (up to 5 per cycle). This prevents flooding on the first sync with a busy feed while ensuring no items are silently skipped between checks.

Error Handling

If a feed check fails (network error, invalid XML, etc.), the rule's consecutive_errors counter increments. After 5 consecutive failures, the rule's status automatically changes to error and an auto_post.error webhook event is fired.

To recover, fix the underlying issue and call the activate endpoint again — this resets the error counter and reactivates the rule.

Test Feed

Before creating a rule, you can test-parse any feed URL to verify it works:

curl -X POST https://api.relayapi.dev/v1/auto-post-rules/test-feed \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer rlay_live_your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"feed_url": "https://blog.example.com/feed.xml"}'

This returns the 5 most recent items with their title, URL, description, publication date, and image URL.

Feed URL Requirements

• Only http:// and https:// URLs are allowed
• Private/local URLs (localhost, 10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x, etc.) are rejected for security
• The feed must be publicly accessible — no authentication is supported

Webhook Events

API Endpoints