tribb is an RSS reader built for people who read a lot and want their tools to earn the screen. This walkthrough gets you from a fresh account to a full queue in about five minutes. You'll need a Google account and, optionally, an OPML file from a reader you're leaving.

The five-minute path

  1. Sign in with Google. tribb uses Google sign-in — one button, no password to manage. Go to the login page and choose Continue with Google; you land in the reader.
  2. Add your feeds. Two ways in, use either or both. To add one source, open the reader sidebar and paste a feed or site URL (https://…) — tribb finds the feed and subscribes you. To bring a whole collection, export an OPML file from your current reader and drop it on the Import page. Folders come across and duplicates are skipped. If you're moving from a specific reader, the switch guides walk the export screen — there are step-by-step guides for Feedly, Inoreader, and more, plus a general OPML import guide for everything else.
  3. Meet the reader. Your feeds fill in over the next poll cycle. Reading is triage: every item takes one clear action, and the same triage vocabulary carries across the app, the CLI, and the MCP tools (each surface exposes the subset that makes sense there — the CLI guide and MCP guide list theirs). Learn the verbs once (below) and the whole product reads the same.
  4. Optional — bring your own AI key. tribb is BYOK (bring your own key): add a model-provider key and you unlock per-item summaries and digests, billed by your provider, never by tribb. Reading and triage work fully without one. See Bring your own key.
  5. Optional — hand it to your agents. tribb speaks to scripts and agents through the trib CLI and an MCP server, both authenticated by a token you mint under Settings → Keys & tokens. See the CLI guide and the MCP guide.

The triage vocabulary

One item, one action. These five verbs are the whole reading loop:

  • save — keep an item for later; it moves to Saved.
  • dismiss — mark an item handled and clear it from the queue.
  • downrank — tell tribb to show less like this one (the reader labels it "less like this").
  • open — read the item in the reader surface.
  • archive — file a read item out of the active view.

Keyboard shortcuts and a right-click menu expose all of them; s saves, e archives, and the rest sit in the item's menu alongside mark read/unread, share, and copy link.

Optional: newsletters

tribb reads email newsletters as feeds. Under Settings → Newsletters, create a private, per-newsletter address, then subscribe to any newsletter with it. Incoming mail is sanitized at write time and lands in your queue as items you triage like any other feed. Each address is private to one newsletter, and disabling one rejects new mail without deleting what already arrived.

You're set

Feeds in, triage learned. From here, add your AI key when you want summaries and digests, or keep reading — tribb works as a reader with nothing else switched on.