SecNews

A modern, native desktop security news aggregator built entirely in Python. Aggregates feeds from CISA, Krebs on Security, The Hacker News, BleepingComputer, NVD CVEs, and more — all in a single app with a clean dark UI.

Vibe coded end-to-end using Claude Code — from architecture and framework selection through to UI polish, dark mode theming, and build tooling. No HTML or JavaScript was written by hand.

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Screenshots

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Features

• 8 security news sources aggregated concurrently
  • CISA Advisories, Krebs on Security, Schneier on Security
  • The Hacker News, BleepingComputer, Dark Reading
  • Hacker News (security-tagged stories via Algolia API)
  • NVD CVEs (NIST National Vulnerability Database, REST API v2)
• CVE severity badges — CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW with CVSS scores
• Per-source focus mode — click the focus icon in the sidebar to solo a single feed
• Article preview — hover tooltip shows full feed description without opening the article
• In-app site preview — open any article in an embedded browser dialog
• Read / unread tracking — persisted across sessions
• Bookmarks
• Full-text search across all loaded articles
• Gruvbox dark mode (default) with light mode toggle
• Auto-refresh (configurable interval, default 1 hour)
• Native OS window — not a browser tab, not Electron

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
UI framework	NiceGUI — pure Python UI
Desktop window	PyWebView via native=True
HTTP client	httpx (async)
RSS/Atom parsing	feedparser
HTML stripping	BeautifulSoup4
Packaging	PyInstaller via nicegui-pack
Package manager	uv — fast Python package manager

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Installation

Requirements: Python 3.10+, uv

git clone https://github.com/your-username/security-news.git
cd secnews

uv sync --extra dev

# Linux only — required Qt system library
sudo apt install libxcb-cursor0

Running

uv run python main.py

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Configuration

All tuneable constants live in security_news/config.py:

Constant	Default	Description
DEFAULT_FETCH_INTERVAL	3600	Seconds between auto-refreshes
MAX_ARTICLES_PER_SOURCE	10	Max articles fetched per source
WINDOW_SIZE	(1280, 800)	Initial window dimensions

To add or remove sources, edit the SOURCES list in config.py.

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Building

Binaries must be built on the target platform (no cross-compilation).

Local build:

uv run python build.py            # → dist/SecNews/   (directory bundle)
uv run python build.py --onefile  # → dist/SecNews    (single executable)

CI/CD — all three platforms via GitHub Actions:

Push a version tag to trigger automated builds for Linux, Windows, and macOS. Binaries are attached to a GitHub Release automatically.

git tag v1.0.0
git push --tags

See .github/workflows/build.yml.

Platform notes

Platform	WebView engine	Notes
Linux	PyQt6-WebEngine (bundled)	Requires libxcb-cursor0 on the host
Windows	WebView2 / Edge	Pre-installed on Windows 10/11
macOS	WKWebView (built-in)	No extra dependencies

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Project Structure

secnews/
├── config.py           # Sources, constants, tuneables
├── models.py           # Article + SourceConfig dataclasses
├── store.py            # In-memory article store, persistence
├── app.py              # NiceGUI page, filter state, fetch orchestration
├── fetchers/
│   ├── rss.py          # RSS/Atom fetcher (async httpx + feedparser)
│   ├── hackernews.py   # Hacker News via Algolia API
│   ├── nvd.py          # NVD CVE REST API v2
│   └── fetch.py        # Concurrent fetch_all() via asyncio.gather
└── ui/
    ├── header.py       # App bar: search, refresh, dark mode toggle
    ├── sidebar.py      # Source list with focus toggle, filters
    ├── article_list.py # Refreshable article grid
    ├── article_card.py # Card with preview tooltip + inline actions
    ├── article_detail.py  # Full-article dialog
    └── status_bar.py   # Footer: last updated, article count

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How It Was Built

This project was vibe coded from scratch using Claude Code — Anthropic's agentic CLI tool for software engineering.

The entire development session was a conversation: describing what was wanted, reviewing what was built, and iterating. Claude Code handled:

• Framework research and selection (NiceGUI vs PyWebView vs Flet vs Eel)
• Project architecture and file structure
• All Python code — fetchers, data models, store, UI components
• Debugging runtime errors (datetime timezone issues, NiceGUI refreshable patterns, Qt platform plugin errors)
• Dark mode theming (Gruvbox palette via custom Quasar CSS overrides)
• UI polish — Inter font, card animations, custom scrollbars, hover states
• Build tooling — nicegui-pack wrapper and GitHub Actions workflow

No HTML, CSS, or JavaScript was written by hand. The frontend is entirely expressed in Python via NiceGUI's component API.

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License

MIT