Quickstart¶

Get Distill running in 5 minutes. All you need is Python and an Anthropic API key.

Prerequisites¶

Requirement	Version	Install
Python	3.11+	python.org
uv	latest	`curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh \\| sh`
Bun	latest	`curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install \\| bash` (for web dashboard)

Step 1: Clone and install¶

git clone https://github.com/nikspatel007/distill.git
cd distill
uv sync

This installs all Python dependencies including trafilatura (article extraction), feedparser (RSS), and the anthropic SDK.

Step 2: Set your API key¶

Environment variable.env file

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-api03-...

Create a .env file in the project root:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-api03-...

Distill uses the Anthropic Python SDK directly. The default model is claude-sonnet-4-6.

Step 3: Run your first digest¶

uv run python -m distill intake --output ./insights --use-defaults

This will:

Fetch articles from 90+ built-in RSS feeds (tech, AI, engineering)
Extract full text from each article using trafilatura
Auto-tag and classify content
Send everything to Claude for synthesis
Write a markdown digest to ./insights/intake/YYYY-MM-DD.md

First run takes 2-3 minutes

Most time is spent fetching RSS feeds and extracting article text. The LLM synthesis itself takes ~30 seconds.

Step 4: Read your digest¶

Open the generated file:

cat ./insights/intake/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md

Or start the web dashboard:

uv run python -m distill serve --output ./insights

Then open http://localhost:6107 in your browser.

Step 5: Add your own feeds¶

Create .distill.toml in the project root:

[user]
name = "Your Name"
role = "software engineer"

[intake]
use_defaults = true  # keep the built-in 90+ feeds
rss_feeds = [
    "https://your-favorite-blog.com/feed",
    "https://another-blog.com/rss.xml",
]

Run again:

uv run python -m distill intake --output ./insights

What's next¶

Automate it: Set up a daily cron so digests appear every morning
Web dashboard: Start the dashboard to browse digests
Share from phone: Set up iOS Shortcut to share articles
Customize: Full configuration reference

Full pipeline (optional)¶

If you also use Claude Code or Codex CLI, Distill can generate a dev journal from your coding sessions and synthesize blog posts:

# Everything: sessions + journal + intake + blog
uv run python -m distill run --output ./insights --use-defaults --global

The --global flag scans ~/.claude and ~/.codex for session data.