Episode Rules and Examples
Exact include/exclude logic, text matching, duration thresholds, patterns, and practical recipes for named follows.
Coming soon. Passage has not been released. This guide previews the current development version; controls and availability may change before launch.
The four searchable fields
Title examines the episode title. Description examines the episode summary supplied by the feed. Title or Description examines the title followed by a newline and the description as one text value. Duration uses the feed’s available episode duration.
Rules do not search the spoken audio, infer a topic, or search a transcript. A missing guest name in the publisher’s title and description cannot match merely because the guest speaks in the recording.
Text conditions
| Condition | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Contains | Finds the phrase anywhere in the selected text | Title contains interview |
| Starts With | Requires the text to begin with the phrase | Title starts with AM Update |
| Ends With | Requires the text to end with the phrase | Title ends with Part 2 |
| Exactly Matches | Compares the entire selected value | Title exactly matches Weekend Review |
| Matches Pattern | Searches using a regular expression | Title matches ^AM Update |
Text rules ignore case by default. Ordinary text comparisons also ignore diacritic differences in that mode. Turn on Case Sensitive when capitalization must matter. Regular expressions use their own pattern semantics: default case-insensitive matching does not imply accent-insensitive matching.
Passage trims leading and trailing whitespace from the rule value. It does not promise to normalize the publisher’s whole title. A title with an unexpected leading space can therefore fail Starts With. Exactly Matches against Title or Description compares the combined title/newline/description value, so use Title for most exact-title rules.
Include rules and exclusions
With Any Include Rule, at least one enabled, nonblank include rule must match. With All Include Rules, every active include rule must match. If there are no active include rules, episodes start included.
A matching exclusion always removes the episode, even if it passes every include rule. This makes exclude-only follows useful: start with the show’s catalog, then remove trailers, reruns, or other unwanted entries. Disabled and blank rules do not participate. Removing all rules includes all episodes.
Duration is measured in minutes
Choose Shorter Than or Longer Than and enter a numeric minute value. Decimal values work: 7.5 means seven minutes and thirty seconds. Comparisons are strict: an episode exactly 30 minutes long matches neither shorter than 30 nor longer than 30.
If the feed does not provide a usable duration, a duration rule does not match. That means an include rule based on duration can leave out such an episode; a duration exclusion will not remove it on that basis. A title or description rule can be more reliable on feeds with incomplete metadata.
Recipes to adapt
A daily briefing: Include Title Starts With AM Update. Exclude Title Contains Weekend. Give the follow a small recent-episode limit and automatic downloads.
Long interviews without reruns: Select All Include Rules. Include Title Contains Interview and Duration Longer Than 45. Exclude Title Contains Rerun. Both include conditions must hold, and the exclusion still wins.
Two recurring series in one follow: Select Any Include Rule. Include Title Starts With Science Weekly; add another include for Title Starts With Technology Weekly. Exclude Title Contains Trailer.
Everything except extras: Use no includes. Exclude Title or Description Contains bonus episode; add a separate exclusion for Title Contains trailer. Check publisher wording before choosing broad words such as “bonus,” which may appear in ordinary notes.
A range of episode lengths: Select All Include Rules. Include Duration Longer Than 10 and Duration Shorter Than 30. This includes durations strictly between those limits, subject to exclusions.
Patterns and troubleshooting
Matches Pattern performs a search; it does not require the entire field to match. Use ^ and $ when you need beginning/end anchors. An invalid pattern does not match. Use a simple Contains rule to confirm the field has the text you expect before debugging a pattern.
If results surprise you, disable rules one at a time, inspect the actual publisher text, and check Any versus All. A broad exclusion in the description may match boilerplate that appears in every episode. Rules select from episodes Passage knows about; they cannot recover episodes removed from the RSS catalog.