News From Discussions

News From Discussions

A morning briefing that reads who you are from your own files — past conversations, memory, project TODOs — and delivers a news digest tailored to what you've actually been thinking about, not topic tags you picked once and forgot.

Two phases:

1. Checklists — pending TODOs across your projects, printed immediately.
2. News digest — personalized "For You" + general categories, derived from your memory + project context.

Behavior

Phase 1 — Checklists (print immediately)

1. Read a global TODO file if one exists at ~/.claude/TODO.md or ~/TODO.md. Treat it as one project ("global").
2. Auto-discover project TODOs: scan ~/ for direct subdirectories containing a TODO.md (skip hidden dirs and common noise like node_modules, Library, Applications). Each becomes a project section.
3. Present each project as a checklist with pending items first, then completed. Right-align — #N numbers within each section so they line up.
4. End Phase 1 with: "What do you want to work on?"

The user can reference items by project + number, e.g. "global #2" or "myproject #1".

Phase 2 — News Digest (after Phase 1 is fully printed)

5. Gather context — read these (skip any that are missing):
   • Memory files at ~/.claude/projects/*/memory/*.md
   • ~/.claude/news-from-discussions/recent-headlines.md (used to avoid repeats across days)
6. Run ~6 WebSearch queries in parallel:
   • 2 personalized "For You" — derive queries from the user's interests, recent learnings, current domains, and project context inferred from memory + TODOs. Reflect who they are as a person, not literal TODO text.
   • 1 general news headlines
   • 1 AI & tech news
   • 1 niche of strongest interest — pick the topic that shows up most in their memory/projects (e.g. design, biotech, finance, gaming, cooking, parenting). One category, varies per user.
   • 1 community buzz — viral/trending discussions from Hacker News, Reddit, X. Surfaces things that haven't hit mainstream news yet.
7. Curate 3–5 items per category. Deduplicate across sections. Skip any headline already in recent-headlines.md.
8. Print the For You and News Digest sections (format below).
9. Update ~/.claude/news-from-discussions/recent-headlines.md — append today's headlines (date + one-line summary). Trim entries older than 7 days.
10. Suggested actions — Review today's digest. For each item, ask: does this map to a concrete, actionable next step for one of the user's existing projects? If yes, draft a TODO and assign it to the matching project. Print the Suggested TODOs section and wait for approval. The user can:
    • "approve all" — write all suggestions to their respective project TODO.md files
    • "approve [project] #N" — approve specific items
    • "skip" or "skip [project] #N" — discard
    • "edit #N to say X" — modify before writing
    • If no items map to actionable TODOs, skip this section entirely.
11. Optional: write to file. If invoked with --out <path> or the user has set the env var NEWS_FROM_DISCUSSIONS_OUT, also write the full briefing as markdown to that path. This enables downstream delivery (email, Slack, etc.) — see README.

Format

Phase 1

## News From Discussions

**global**
[ ] First pending item                            — #1
[ ] Second pending item                           — #2
[x] Completed item                                — #3

**myproject**
[ ] Pending item                                  — #1
[x] Completed item                                — #2

End with: "What do you want to work on?"

Phase 2

Print after Phase 1 is complete. Separate with a horizontal rule.

---

## For You
Picked based on your interests, recent thinking, and current projects.
1. Headline — [Source](url) · why it's relevant
2. Headline — [Source](url) · why it's relevant
3. Headline — [Source](url) · why it's relevant

## News Digest

**General**
4. Headline — [Source](url)
5. Headline — [Source](url)
6. Headline — [Source](url)

**AI & Tech**
7. Headline — [Source](url)
8. Headline — [Source](url)

**[Niche]** (e.g. Design, Biotech, Cooking — picked from user's signals)
9. Headline — [Source](url)
10. Headline — [Source](url)

**Trending in Tech & Communities**
11. Topic — [Source](url)
12. Topic — [Source](url)

## Suggested Actions
From today's digest — approve, edit, or skip.

**myproject**
- [ ] Concrete actionable item ([source](url))  — #1

Rules

Checklists

• [ ] for pending, [x] for completed — no bullet prefix, just the brackets
• Right-align — #N numbers using spaces so they line up within each project section
• Keep item text short — one line each, no descriptions
• Skip projects with no TODO.md

News Digest

• Phase 2 runs entirely after Phase 1 output — never delay the checklists
• "For You" queries should reflect the user as a person (interests, expertise, recent learnings) — not just search for TODO item text
• The niche category is whatever topic dominates the user's memory/projects. If signals are sparse, default to "Culture & Ideas" with broadly interesting items.
• Recency gate: Only include articles published within the last 2 weeks. Check the actual publication date in the article — listicles with a year in the title are not recent just because they mention the current year.
• Query freshness: Use time-specific phrasing covering the full 2-week recency window (e.g. "past two weeks" or an explicit date range), not just the current few days. Catches items that went viral 8–14 days ago.
• 3–5 items per category, one line each; headlines ≤ ~80 chars
• Link to original articles, not search result pages
• Deduplicate across For You and News Digest
• Check recent-headlines.md and skip anything already shown in the past week
• If WebSearch or context files error, skip that section silently — don't break the briefing
• Cap total WebSearch calls at 6 to keep latency reasonable

Suggested Actions

• Only suggest actions when a news item maps to a concrete next step for an existing project — not vague "look into this" items
• Each suggestion includes a source link and frames why the item is actionable
• Make suggestions specific: name the niche/tool/data point, connect to the right project
• Group by project, number items within each project for easy reference
• If no items are actionable, skip the section entirely — don't force it
• Approved items get appended to the target project's TODO.md

Source Attribution

• NEVER attribute a story to a source unless you verified the story actually appears at that URL
• If a search result mentions a topic but the URL is a general roundup, find the actual source or label it honestly

How personalization works

The "For You" picks come from reading the user's own files — memory entries, project TODOs, anything you can find at ~/.claude/projects/*/memory/. The skill doesn't ask the user to list their interests because the interests are already in those files: who they are, what they're building, what they've learned recently, what's confused them. Treat memory as the answer to "what would matter to this person today?"

This is the differentiator: news from your discussions, not from your subscriptions.