How do you build a crypto news aggregator from scratch?
Category:AI Integration & Development
Quick Answer
Building a crypto news aggregator involves setting up RSS/API feeds from news sources, implementing NLP-based content filtering with embeddings, creating a deduplication pipeline using similarity hashing, scoring articles for relevance, and building a frontend to display curated results.
Detailed Answer
Building a Crypto News Aggregator: Architecture Overview
Core Components
[Data Sources] → [Ingestion] → [Processing] → [Storage] → [API] → [Frontend] ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ RSS/APIs Schedulers NLP Pipeline Database REST/GQL React/Next
Step 1: Data Collection
- RSS feeds: Most crypto news sites offer RSS (CoinDesk, The Block, Decrypt, etc.)
- APIs: Twitter/X API for breaking news, Reddit API for community sentiment
- Web scraping: For sources without feeds (use respectfully, check robots.txt)
- Tip: Start with 20-30 quality sources, expand later
Step 2: Content Processing Pipeline
| Component | Purpose | Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Text extraction | Clean HTML to plain text | Cheerio, readability |
| NER | Extract token names, people, companies | spaCy, Claude API |
| Embeddings | Vector representation for similarity | OpenAI embeddings, sentence-transformers |
| Classification | Topic categorization | Fine-tuned classifiers or LLM prompts |
Step 3: Deduplication
- Generate embeddings for each article
- Compare against recent articles using cosine similarity
- Threshold: > 0.85 similarity = likely duplicate
- Group duplicates, keep the most informative version
Step 4: Relevance Scoring
Combine signals into a final relevance score:
- Source reputation (pre-configured weights)
- Content quality (length, data density, originality)
- Freshness (exponential decay from publication time)
- Topic relevance (match against user interests or global priorities)
Step 5: Storage & API
- PostgreSQL for article metadata and scores
- Vector database (Pinecone, pgvector) for embeddings
- REST API with filtering, pagination, and search
- Cache layer (Redis) for frequently accessed feeds
Step 6: Frontend
- Real-time feed with infinite scroll or pagination
- Topic filters and search
- Save/bookmark functionality
- Mobile-responsive design
Estimated Timeline
A minimal viable aggregator can be built in 2-4 weeks by a solo developer. Production-quality with all features: 2-3 months.
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