Order stories by feed publish time, not ingest time

internal/ingestion/parser.go

@@ -28,6 +28,7 @@ type FeedItem struct {
 	ArticleURL  string
 	Source      string
 	DirectRoute string
+	PublishedAt int64 // unix seconds from RSS pubDate / Atom published (or updated as fallback); 0 if absent or unparseable
 }
 
 var (
@@ -53,11 +54,12 @@ func FetchFeed(feedURL string) ([]FeedItem, error) {
 	items := make([]FeedItem, 0, len(feed.Items))
 	for _, item := range feed.Items {
 		fi := FeedItem{
-			GUID:       itemGUID(item),
-			Headline:   strings.TrimSpace(item.Title),
-			Lede:       extractLede(item.Description),
-			ImageURL:   NormalizeImageURL(extractImageURL(item)),
-			ArticleURL: strings.TrimSpace(item.Link),
+			GUID:        itemGUID(item),
+			Headline:    strings.TrimSpace(item.Title),
+			Lede:        extractLede(item.Description),
+			ImageURL:    NormalizeImageURL(extractImageURL(item)),
+			ArticleURL:  strings.TrimSpace(item.Link),
+			PublishedAt: itemPublished(item),
 		}
 		if fi.GUID == "" || fi.ArticleURL == "" {
 			continue
@@ -76,6 +78,19 @@ func itemGUID(item *gofeed.Item) string {
 	return item.Link
 }
 
+// itemPublished returns the item's publish time as unix seconds, falling back
+// to the updated time if pubDate was absent. Returns 0 when neither parses;
+// the poller clamps future timestamps to ingest time.
+func itemPublished(item *gofeed.Item) int64 {
+	if item.PublishedParsed != nil {
+		return item.PublishedParsed.Unix()
+	}
+	if item.UpdatedParsed != nil {
+		return item.UpdatedParsed.Unix()
+	}
+	return 0
+}
+
 // extractLede returns the feed description verbatim, with HTML stripped.
 func extractLede(desc string) string {
 	if desc == "" {

internal/ingestion/poller.go

@@ -188,7 +188,15 @@ func (p *Poller) pollOnceWithErr(ctx context.Context, src config.SourceConfig) e
 		items[i].Source = src.Name
 		items[i].DirectRoute = src.DirectRoute
 
-		// Store immediately (before routing) to prevent re-ingestion
+		// Store immediately (before routing) to prevent re-ingestion.
+		// Future-dated pubDates (publishers occasionally post-date drafts or
+		// have a misconfigured clock) get clamped to ingest time so they don't
+		// stick at the top of the queue indefinitely.
+		seenAt := time.Now().Unix()
+		publishedAt := items[i].PublishedAt
+		if publishedAt > seenAt {
+			publishedAt = seenAt
+		}
 		if err := storage.InsertStory(&storage.Story{
 			GUID:         items[i].GUID,
 			Headline:     items[i].Headline,
@@ -199,7 +207,8 @@ func (p *Poller) pollOnceWithErr(ctx context.Context, src config.SourceConfig) e
 			HeadlineNorm: headlineNorm,
 			Source:       items[i].Source,
 			Paywalled:    paywalled,
-			SeenAt:       time.Now().Unix(),
+			SeenAt:       seenAt,
+			PublishedAt:  publishedAt,
 		}); err != nil {
 			slog.Error("failed to insert story", "guid", items[i].GUID, "err", err)
 			continue