Daily News Digest — How-To Guide

Prerequisites: Setup complete (see SETUP.md). NewsAPI key configured.

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Table of Contents

1. How to Get Your Daily News Briefing
2. How to Customize Your News Categories
3. How to Get JSON Output for Scripts
4. How to Save Your Digest to a File
5. How to Change Your Country
6. Automating with Cron
7. Combining with Other Skills
8. Troubleshooting Common Issues
9. Tips & Best Practices

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1. How to Get Your Daily News Briefing

What this does: Fetches today's top headlines for your configured categories and prints a formatted digest.

When to use it: Every morning as part of your daily routine.

Steps

Step 1 — Navigate to the skill directory.

cd ~/smfworks-skills/skills/daily-news-digest

Step 2 — Run the digest.

python3 main.py

Output:

📰 Daily News Digest — Friday, March 15, 2024
══════════════════════════════════════════════

💻 Technology
─────────────
1. Apple Announces New M3 Ultra Chip for Mac Pro
   Source: TechCrunch | techcrunch.com/2024/03/15/apple-m3-ultra

2. OpenAI Releases GPT-5 with Improved Reasoning
   Source: The Verge | theverge.com/2024/3/15/gpt5-release

3. Google DeepMind Achieves New Protein Folding Benchmark
   Source: Wired | wired.com/story/google-deepmind-alphafold

💼 Business
────────────
1. Fed Signals Rate Hold Through Mid-2024
   Source: Reuters | reuters.com/...

2. Amazon Reports Record Q4 Cloud Earnings
   Source: Bloomberg | bloomberg.com/...

Configure: smf run daily-news-digest --configure

Step 3 — Click through to read articles you're interested in.

The skill shows headlines and URLs. Open the URLs in your browser for the full story.

Result: A clean, focused news briefing in under 30 seconds.

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2. How to Customize Your News Categories

What this does: Re-runs the configuration wizard to update which categories you follow.

When to use it: Your interests have changed, or you want to add/remove categories.

Steps

Step 1 — Run the configuration wizard.

python3 main.py --configure

Step 2 — At the categories prompt, enter your desired categories.

Available categories: business, technology, science, health, sports, entertainment, general

Enter categories (comma-separated) [technology,science]: technology,health,science

Step 3 — Confirm the rest of the settings (press Enter to keep defaults).

Step 4 — Run the digest to verify.

python3 main.py

You should now see sections for Technology, Health, and Science.

Result: Your digest now covers exactly the categories you care about.

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3. How to Get JSON Output for Scripts

What this does: Returns the digest as a JSON object instead of formatted text — useful for piping to other scripts or tools.

When to use it: You want to process the headlines programmatically or pipe them to another tool.

Steps

Step 1 — Run with --output json.

python3 main.py --output json

Output:

{
  "success": true,
  "timestamp": "2024-03-15T09:00:12.345678",
  "content": "📰 Daily News Digest...",
  "categories": [
    "technology",
    "business"
  ]
}

Step 2 — Extract just the content field.

python3 main.py --output json | python3 -c "import json,sys; print(json.load(sys.stdin)['content'])"

Result: JSON output ready for scripting, piping, or storage.

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4. How to Save Your Digest to a File

What this does: Saves the daily digest as a text file you can read later or archive.

When to use it: You want to keep a record of daily news, or read the digest on a device that doesn't have internet.

Steps

Step 1 — Save to a date-stamped file.

python3 main.py > ~/News/digest-$(date +%Y-%m-%d).txt

Step 2 — Read it later.

cat ~/News/digest-2024-03-15.txt

Step 3 — Archive a week of digests.

ls ~/News/

digest-2024-03-11.txt
digest-2024-03-12.txt
digest-2024-03-13.txt
digest-2024-03-14.txt
digest-2024-03-15.txt

Result: A complete daily archive of your news briefings.

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5. How to Change Your Country

What this does: Sets which country's news you want headlines from.

When to use it: You're in a different country, or you want news from a specific market.

Steps

Step 1 — Run the configure wizard.

python3 main.py --configure

Step 2 — At the country prompt, enter your country code.

Country	Code
United States	us
United Kingdom	gb
Canada	ca
Australia	au
India	in
Germany	de
France	fr
Japan	jp
Brazil	br

Country [us]: gb

Step 3 — Run the digest to verify.

Headlines will now be from UK sources.

Result: Country-appropriate headlines from your region.

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6. Automating with Cron

Schedule the digest to run every morning and save to a file — your news briefing is ready when you open your terminal.

Open the cron editor

crontab -e

Example: Run the digest every morning at 7 AM and save to a file

0 7 * * * cd /home/yourname/smfworks-skills/skills/daily-news-digest && python3 main.py > /home/yourname/News/digest-$(date +\%Y-\%m-\%d).txt 2>&1

Example: Append digest to a weekly summary file

0 7 * * * cd /home/yourname/smfworks-skills/skills/daily-news-digest && python3 main.py >> /home/yourname/News/weekly-$(date +\%Y-W\%V).txt 2>&1

Create the news directory first

mkdir -p ~/News

Check the output

cat ~/News/digest-$(date +%Y-%m-%d).txt

Cron Expression Reference

Expression	Meaning
0 7 * * *	Every day at 7 AM
0 6 * * 1-5	Weekdays at 6 AM
30 7 * * *	Every day at 7:30 AM

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7. Combining with Other Skills

Daily News Digest + Markdown Converter: Save digest as markdown and convert to HTML:

python3 ~/smfworks-skills/skills/daily-news-digest/main.py > ~/News/today.txt
# Add Markdown formatting manually or via script, then:
python3 ~/smfworks-skills/skills/markdown-converter/main.py to-html ~/News/today.md

Daily News Digest + File Organizer: Save digests and organize by date:

python3 ~/smfworks-skills/skills/daily-news-digest/main.py > ~/News/digest.txt
python3 ~/smfworks-skills/skills/file-organizer/main.py organize-date ~/News/

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8. Troubleshooting Common Issues

Error: No API key configured.

No API key is saved or in environment.
Fix: Run python3 main.py --configure and enter your key. Or: export NEWSAPI_KEY=yourkey

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HTTP Error 401: Unauthorized

Your API key is invalid or not yet active.
Fix: Verify your key at newsapi.org/account. New accounts take a minute to activate.

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HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests

Exceeded 100 daily requests on the free plan.
Fix: The limit resets at midnight UTC. Reduce your max_articles setting and avoid running more than twice per day on the free plan.

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No articles returned

Some categories have limited coverage for certain countries.
Fix: Try us as the country. Switch to technology, business, or general which have the most global coverage.

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Digest shows old news

NewsAPI updates top headlines periodically — results are cached for ~15 minutes.
Fix: This is normal. Run again in 15 minutes for fresh results.

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9. Tips & Best Practices

Limit to 2–3 categories on the free plan. Each category is a separate API request. With 100 requests/day, you have room for multiple daily runs with 2–3 categories each.

Run it in the morning, not at night. Top headlines are most relevant within 6–12 hours of publication. Running in the evening gives you yesterday's news wrapped in today's date.

Save your digest to a file. Use python3 main.py > ~/News/digest-$(date +%Y-%m-%d).txt so you can refer back to it even when you're offline later.

Use --api-key for testing without touching config. If you want to test a new key: python3 main.py --api-key your-new-key --output json — it won't overwrite your saved config.

general category gives the broadest coverage. If you want a quick overview of "what's happening," general is the best single category. It pulls from the widest range of sources.

Consider different countries for different perspectives. Try running once with us and once with gb to compare how the same stories are covered differently by US and UK press.