writeups-fetcher

Fetch, score, and browse CTF writeups in a terminal UI.

Pulls writeups from CTFtime's RSS feed, enriches them with event quality data from the CTFtime API, computes a composite quality score, stores everything in a local SQLite database (deduplicated), and presents it all in a Textual TUI.

Install

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

Usage

# Fetch + launch TUI (default)
writeups-fetcher

# Fetch only (stores to SQLite, no TUI)
writeups-fetcher fetch
writeups-fetcher fetch --pages 5           # scrape 5 pages (~150 writeups)
writeups-fetcher fetch --pages 3 --days 60 # 3 pages, wider event window
writeups-fetcher fetch --min-score 50      # only keep high-quality

# TUI only (browse existing data)
writeups-fetcher tui

# Database stats
writeups-fetcher stats

Or run as a module:

python -m writeups_fetcher fetch
python -m writeups_fetcher tui

TUI Keybindings

Key	Action
f	Fetch new writeups from CTFtime
o	Open original writeup URL in browser
c	Open CTFtime page in browser
r	Refresh table
/	Focus search bar
q	Quit

Use the dropdowns to filter by tag or minimum quality score.

Quality Scoring

Each writeup gets a composite score (0-100) computed from:

Signal	Weight	Source
CTFtime writeup rating	40%	RSS feed (0-5 scale)
CTF event weight	35%	/api/v1/events/ (0-100)
Has original writeup link	10%	RSS <original_url>
Has tags/topics	10%	RSS description
Top-50 team authorship	5%	/api/v1/top/

Unrated writeups receive a neutral 2.5/5 for the rating component.

Data Sources

• CTFtime RSS (https://ctftime.org/writeups/rss/) -- primary writeup feed with ratings, tags, and original URLs
• CTFtime Events API (/api/v1/events/) -- event weights reflecting CTF quality (0-100 scale; 90+ = elite, 50-89 = advanced)
• CTFtime Top Teams API (/api/v1/top/) -- current year's top 50 teams for reputation scoring

Database

SQLite database stored at ~/.local/share/writeups_fetcher/writeups.db by default. Override with --db /path/to/db.

Re-running fetch upserts (inserts or updates) by CTFtime writeup ID -- no duplicates.

Project Structure

src/writeups_fetcher/
  __main__.py   # CLI entry point
  fetcher.py    # RSS + API fetching
  scorer.py     # quality scoring
  db.py         # SQLite operations
  tui.py        # Textual TUI
  models.py     # dataclasses