OpinionBot — OpenClaw Opinion Writer for WordPress

OpinionBot is an autonomous OpenClaw agent that acts as your AI opinion columnist. It monitors RSS news feeds every hour, identifies stories worth commenting on, researches them in depth, writes substantive 600–1,000 word opinion articles in your editorial voice, and publishes them directly as draft posts to your WordPress blog — never live, always pending your review.

It is not a content mill. It does not summarize. It takes positions, backs them up, acknowledges counterarguments, and writes for readers who are smart and impatient. The quality of what it produces is determined entirely by how precisely you define your editorial voice in VOICE.md.

What It Does

• Reads RSS feeds hourly from any number of sources, with configurable priority tiers
• Selects for opinion potential — skips pure news briefs, press releases, and sports scores; looks for stories where there's an argument to be made
• Deduplicates automatically — maintains a rolling list of covered story URLs so it never writes about the same thing twice
• Reads the full article before forming a thesis — never writes from headlines alone
• Writes in your voice — VOICE.md defines the editorial stance, tone, categories, and style; OpinionBot applies it consistently
• Posts as WordPress drafts — always status: draft, never publish; the agent is hardcoded to refuse live publishing
• Attaches an editor's note — every draft includes an invisible HTML comment with the source URL, research confidence, and anything the human editor should verify
• Logs everything — deduplication list, article history, daily activity

File Overview

opinion-writer-agent/
├── AGENTS.md          ← Pipeline rules: fetch → research → thesis → write → draft → log
├── SOUL.md            ← Columnist character and writing philosophy
├── VOICE.md           ← ★ YOUR editorial stance, style, WP categories — edit this first
├── IDENTITY.md        ← Agent name, emoji, operator notification style
├── HEARTBEAT.md       ← Scheduled task definitions and rate limit guards
├── NEWS_SOURCES.md    ← ★ YOUR RSS sources, topic filters, daily article limits
├── MEMORY.md          ← Auto-managed list of covered story URLs (deduplication)
├── ARTICLE_LOG.md     ← Append-only record of every draft created
├── TOOLS.md           ← Tool usage reference for the agent
├── memory/            ← Daily log files (auto-created by OpinionBot)
└── skills/
    └── wp-opinion/
        ├── SKILL.md              ← OpenClaw skill descriptor with credential gates
        └── scripts/
            ├── wp-post.js        ← WordPress REST API draft poster (OAuth Basic + App Password)
            ├── wp-categories.js  ← Utility: list WP categories with real IDs
            ├── parse-rss.js      ← RSS/Atom feed parser → newline-delimited JSON
            └── log-article.js    ← Post-draft logger: updates MEMORY, ARTICLE_LOG, daily log

Key Design Decisions

VOICE.md is the product. Everything else is infrastructure. OpinionBot will write whatever editorial character you give it. A vague VOICE.md produces vague articles. A specific one — with real stances, named style preferences, and a clear sense of audience — produces articles that actually sound like someone wrote them.

Thesis before writing. The agent is instructed to formulate a clear, arguable claim before composing a single sentence. This prevents the most common AI writing failure: producing a summary disguised as an opinion.

Hardcoded draft-only. The wp-post.js script will refuse to run with --status publish and exit with an error. This is intentional and not configurable via NEWS_SOURCES.md or VOICE.md. A human always approves before anything goes live.

Editor's notes in every draft. An invisible HTML comment at the end of every post tells you what the agent did, how confident it was in its research, and what you should double-check. This makes human review faster and more targeted.

Deduplication by URL, not by topic. The agent tracks exact story URLs, not subject matter. This means it can write multiple pieces about the same topic (e.g., AI regulation) as long as each piece is based on a different source story. It will never write about the same source article twice.

No external dependencies in the skill scripts. All four Node.js scripts use only the standard library (https, http, fs, path, crypto). Drop them anywhere Node 18+ is installed and they work.

Configurable Parameters

Set in NEWS_SOURCES.md:

Article Format

Every article OpinionBot writes:

• Is 600–1,000 words
• Opens with the thesis in the first paragraph
• Has a <!-- more --> read-more break after paragraph 2–3
• Uses proper HTML tags (<p>, <h2>, <strong>, <blockquote>, <ul>)
• Includes inline citations as hyperlinks to source material
• Ends with a <!-- OPINIONBOT NOTE: ... --> comment for the editor
• Is assigned a WordPress category and 3–5 tags from VOICE.md

Requirements

• OpenClaw installed and running
• Node.js 22+ (no npm packages required — stdlib only)
• WordPress 5.0+ with REST API enabled (default)
• A WordPress user with Editor or Administrator role
• A WordPress Application Password (generated in WP Admin → Users → Profile)