chris-mcnulty Weekday Morning Briefing
Chris McNulty's start-of-day briefing (CTO, Synozur). Assembles eight sections from live sources and sends them inline in the email body as clean, branded HTML. The bar: a scannable, factual, prioritized read Chris can act on in a couple of minutes.
Delivery
- To:
<Chris's primary email>and<briefing alias email> - Subject:
Morning Briefing — {today's date}(e.g.Morning Briefing — June 23, 2026) - All times in Pacific Time (PT).
Build a normal HTML document and send it from a file
Send a well-formed HTML email. The reliable path in this tenant is to write the
HTML to a file and send that file as the body — passing a large HTML string
inline gets HTML-escaped/treated as plain text by the mail tool, which is what
collapses everything into one run-on block. The fix is the file-based send, not
exotic markup: standard semantic HTML (<h2>, <p>, <ul>/<li>, <table>)
renders correctly in Outlook/M365 mail when the body comes from a file with
content_type="HTML".
- Build a complete, self-contained HTML document. Include
<!DOCTYPE html><html><head>…</head><body>…</body></html>. Inline all CSS (no external stylesheets/CDNs — many mail clients strip<link>and<style>in<head>, so put critical styling in inlinestyle="..."attributes on the elements themselves and keep any<style>block minimal). - Use ordinary semantic structure, no per-line table hacks:
- One
<h2>per section header (e.g.style="color:#810FFB;font-size:18px;margin:18px 0 6px;"). - Bullets as
<ul><li>…</li></ul>; short prose as<p>. - A title block at top: an
<h1>-style title and a subtitle line (date · "All times Pacific"). - Section 8 (calendar) is a real
<table>with a header row (Time PT / Subject / With / Where) and one<tr>per event, bordered<td>s. - Suggested body wrapper:
font-family:'Segoe UI',Arial,sans-serif; color:#1a1a1a; line-height:1.5; max-width:760px;
- One
- Save the document to
output/morning-briefing-{YYYY-MM-DD}.html. - Send the saved file as the body:
SendEmailWithAttachments(to=[<Chris's primary email>, <briefing alias email>], subject="Morning Briefing — {human-readable date}", body_file_path="output/morning-briefing-{YYYY-MM-DD}.html", content_type="HTML"). Pass the file path viabody_file_path— do not paste the HTML into an inlinebodyargument (that is the path that gets flattened/escaped).
Pre-send gate (block until it passes)
content_typeis HTML.- The body is sent via
body_file_pathpointing at the saved file (not an inline HTML string). - The HTML is a complete document (
<!DOCTYPE>/<html>/<body>) with inline CSS on styled elements. - 8 section headers (
<h2>) are present, in order. - The calendar is rendered as a real
<table>with a header row and one row per event. - The saved HTML artifact exists in
output/(confirm withGlob output/**/*).
Note: if a future run shows the body arriving mangled despite body_file_path,
verify content_type="HTML" was actually set and re-send — do not switch back to
inline body or invent a tables-only workaround.
Workflow
Create a task list so progress is visible. Run the independent lookups in parallel where possible (calendar, email, Teams, web searches), then assemble. Resolve "today" and the 24h/48h windows from the current local time (PT); on Monday, extend look-backs through the weekend.
Section order (all eight, in this sequence)
Top News — today's top 2-3 US or world headlines (
web_search). One factual sentence each. No editorializing, no opinion.Weather — first determine Chris's current location: scan recent
ListCalendarViewevents, travel blocks, and any available out-of-office entries. He's based in the Pacific Northwest (Bothell, WA) but travels frequently — use the location implied by today's events if he's on the road, otherwise default to Bothell. Thenweb_searchtoday's forecast for that location: current conditions, high/low, and any notable alerts.Sports — his four Boston teams: Red Sox, Patriots, Bruins, Celtics. For each team that is in season: show its last result if it played in the past 24h, and its next game (date, time PT, opponent) if one falls in the next 24h. Skip any team in its off-season. Use
web_search.Enterprise AI News — the top 5 enterprise/business AI news items from the past 24h relevant to a consulting-firm CTO (model releases, platform moves, M365/Copilot, governance, notable funding/M&A). One line each, with a why-it-matters angle. Use
web_search.Freshness gate — date-verify every item before including it. This section has previously been padded with stale/evergreen content; do not repeat that.
- Each item must carry an explicit publish/event date within the last 24h. If you cannot confirm the date, drop it — do not assume "recent."
- Reject evergreen and roundup pages whose value isn't time-stamped: "AI in 2026" profile/ranking pages, "2026 enterprise guide" marketing pages, and conference recaps for events that already happened (e.g. a Build 2026 recap is NOT today's news — check the event date, not the article's "updated" timestamp).
- Prefer dated daily-digest / dated news sources; quote the date you verified.
- If fewer than 5 genuinely-fresh items exist, list only the real ones and say so ("Quieter AI news day — 2 items in the last 24h") rather than topping up with background context. Honest short beats padded.
Open Threads Awaiting Reply — email + Teams from the prior day that are genuinely waiting on Chris personally. Use
ListMessages(last ~24h, or since Friday EOB on Monday) andListChats(unread) + direct mentions.Addressee test — delivery ≠ being asked. A message landing in Chris's mailbox does NOT mean it is addressed to him. Before listing a thread here, confirm Chris is an actual intended recipient of the ask:
- Treat it as awaiting Chris only if he is in To (not just bcc'd via a list), OR he is named directly, OR he is the clear owner of the request.
- Exclude distribution-list / community / group-alias traffic where the
request is directed at a team or someone else. In particular, mail sent to
MVP and community lists (e.g.
*@mstechdiscussions.com,MVP-NDA-*, other DLs/aliases) is usually a question to a Microsoft product team or the group, not to Chris — do not surface it as "chasing your feedback." - When the recipients aren't obvious from the list view, call
GetMessageand readtoRecipients/ the salutation before deciding. If the ask is aimed at "the team" / a product group and Chris is one of many list members, leave it out (or, at most, note it once under section 6 as community/ecosystem context — never as a personal to-do). - Exclude automated notifications, newsletters, and cold outreach.
Priority Client Updates — meaningful signals from client email and Teams over the last 24-48h: commitments, escalations, decisions, status changes. Prefer client domains and known engagements; skip routine chatter.
Top 5 Committed Tasks — the top 5 tasks/deliverables/to-dos across his task list, recent email, Teams, and active projects. Include owner/context and any due dates. Pull from his task list, flagged email, and explicit commitments surfaced in sections 5-6.
Today's Calendar — chronological, as a table: time (PT), subject, attendees, location. Use
ListCalendarView(today 00:00-23:59 local). Flag conflicts (overlapping accepted events) and back-to-back stretches. Count onlyacceptedevents for density. Respect privacy: forprivate/confidentialor personal events (Doctor, Personal, Interview), show only the time block as "Private appointment" — never echo the subject.
Grounding & Quality Rules
- Facts only. News, weather, and sports come from
web_searchresults — never from memory. If a search returns nothing in-window, say the section is quiet rather than filling the gap. - Respect the windows. Past-24h for news/sports/AI/threads; 24-48h for client updates; today for calendar. Discard out-of-window results.
- Surface, don't dump. Each section is a prioritized highlight reel. Cap lengths; drop noise (newsletters, automated mail, cold outreach).
- Distinguish "sent to a list Chris is on" from "addressed to Chris." Never recommend Chris act on, reply to, or own a request that was directed at a team, product group, or distribution list — even though it sits in his inbox. Verify the addressee (see section 5) before turning any message into a "reply" item or a task.
- Pagination: when an email/Teams lookup returns
next_linkand the window isn't covered, keep paging before summarizing. - Privacy first on the calendar (time-block sensitive events).
When NOT to Use
- End-of-day wrap-up or "what did I accomplish" retrospectives.
- Full inbox triage of every message.
- Scheduling / rescheduling / finding a time →
schedule-meeting. - Deep prep for one named meeting →
meeting-intel.
Failure Handling
- A lookup fails: retry once. If it still fails, include the section with a one-line note ("Couldn't reach sports results this morning") rather than dropping it silently — Chris should know a source was unavailable, not assume it was empty.
- No data in a window: state the section is quiet ("Inbox is calm — nothing awaiting reply"). Never fabricate to fill a section.
- Location ambiguous (no travel signal): default to Bothell, WA and note the assumption in the weather line.
- Off-season team: omit it from Sports entirely; don't show a placeholder.
- Send fails: do not report success. Tell Chris the briefing was assembled
but the email didn't go out, and surface the saved
output/copy.
Guardrails
- Verify before reporting done: confirm the saved HTML artifact exists in
output/and the send succeeded before telling Chris it went out. - Outward send: this skill sends an email to two fixed recipients — that is its intended action. Do not add other recipients without being asked.
- No fabrication of headlines, scores, forecasts, senders, tasks, or meeting details. Every claim traces to a tool result; if it isn't grounded, leave it out.