Daily Briefing

Daily Morning Briefing

An automated daily briefing that compiles weather, calendar, news, AI/tech updates, and OpenClaw insights into a concise morning message delivered via iMessage.

What It Does

Every morning at 7am, the briefing delivers:

1. Weather – Current conditions and forecast for Leyton, London
2. Calendar – Today's events and context
3. Top 5 News – Headlines from trusted sources
4. AI/Tech Pulse – 3-4 interesting developments in AI and technology
5. OpenClaw Deep Dive – News, new skills, community highlights, suggestions
6. Two Things to Try – Actionable improvements for your workflow

Quick Start

Run manually

cd /Users/nudge/openclaw/skills/daily-briefing
./scripts/generate-briefing.sh

Send via iMessage

cd /Users/nudge/openclaw/skills/daily-briefing
./scripts/send-briefing.sh paulkingham@mac.com

Configuration

Edit /Users/nudge/openclaw/skills/daily-briefing/config/config.yaml:

location:
  city: "Leyton"
  region: "London"
  country: "UK"
  latitude: 51.5667
  longitude: -0.0167

delivery:
  recipient: "paulkingham@mac.com"
  channel: "imessage"
  time: "07:00"
  timezone: "Europe/London"

content:
  news_sources:
    - "bbc"
    - "guardian"
    - "techcrunch"
  ai_sources:
    - "openai"
    - "anthropic"
    - "hacker-news"
  max_news_items: 5
  max_ai_items: 4

preferences:
  temperature_unit: "celsius"
  include_weather_icon: true
  include_calendar_details: true

Cron Setup

The briefing runs automatically via OpenClaw's cron system:

# Check current cron jobs
openclaw cron list

# The briefing is pre-configured. To update schedule:
openclaw cron update daily-briefing --schedule="0 7 * * *"

Manual cron entry (if needed)

Add to your system crontab (runs in OpenClaw context):

0 7 * * * cd /Users/nudge/openclaw/skills/daily-briefing && ./scripts/generate-and-send.sh

Scripts

Customization

Change location

Edit config/config.yaml and update the location section.

Add news sources

Modify lib/news.py to add RSS feeds or APIs. Default sources:

• BBC News
• The Guardian
• TechCrunch
• Hacker News

Change delivery time

Update the cron schedule:

openclaw cron update daily-briefing --schedule="0 8 * * *"  # 8am instead

Customize content sections

Edit scripts/generate-briefing.sh and comment out sections you don't want:

# Sections (comment out to disable)
SECTIONS=(
  weather
  calendar
  news
  ai_pulse
  openclaw_dive
  suggestions
)

Output Format

The briefing produces a well-formatted message like:

📰 Good morning! Here's your briefing for Monday, February 16

🌤️ Weather in Leyton
   Partly cloudy, 8°C / 46°F
   High: 12°C · Low: 5°C
   💧 10% rain · 💨 12km/h wind

📅 Today
   09:00 - Team standup
   14:00 - Client call (Zoom)

📰 Top Stories
   • Headline one...
   • Headline two...
   • Headline three...
   • Headline four...
   • Headline five...

🤖 AI/Tech Pulse
   • OpenAI releases new feature...
   • Anthropic updates Claude...
   • Hacker News trending: ...

🦾 OpenClaw Deep Dive
   New this week: skill-name (description)
   Community highlight: ...
   Try this: ...

💡 Two Things to Try
   1. First suggestion...
   2. Second suggestion...

Troubleshooting

Weather not loading

• Check internet connection
• Verify wttr.in is accessible: curl wttr.in/London?format=3
• Try fallback to Open-Meteo API

Calendar empty

• Ensure calendar access permissions for terminal
• Check that Calendar.app has events today
• Verify icalBuddy is installed (optional, for richer calendar data)

iMessage not sending

• Confirm Messages.app is signed in
• Check recipient address is correct
• Verify Automation permission in System Settings
• Test manually: imsg send --to "recipient" --text "test"

News not appearing

• News sources may require API keys for production use
• Default implementation uses web search for headlines
• For production, add API keys to config/secrets.yaml

Dependencies

Required:

• curl – for web requests
• python3 – for data processing

Optional (enhanced features):

• imsg – for iMessage delivery (via Homebrew: brew install steipete/tap/imsg)
• icalBuddy – for rich calendar data
• jq – for JSON processing

Architecture

┌─────────────────┐
│  Cron (7am)     │
└────────┬────────┘
         │
┌────────▼────────┐
│ generate-and-   │
│ send.sh         │
└────────┬────────┘
         │
    ┌────┴────┬────────┬────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
    ▼         ▼        ▼        ▼          ▼          ▼
┌───────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌─────────┐
│weather│ │calendar│ │news │ │ai_pulse│ │openclaw  │ │suggestions│
│  .py  │ │  .py   │ │ .py │ │  .py   │ │_dive.py  │ │  .py    │
└────┬──┘ └───┬────┘ └──┬───┘ └────┬───┘ └────┬─────┘ └────┬────┘
     └─────────┴─────────┴──────────┴──────────┴────────────┘
                             │
                    ┌────────▼────────┐
                    │  format-output  │
                    └────────┬────────┘
                             │
                    ┌────────▼────────┐
                    │  imsg send      │
                    └─────────────────┘

Updates & Maintenance

The skill self-documents its last run. Check status:

cat /Users/nudge/openclaw/skills/daily-briefing/.last-run
cat /Users/nudge/openclaw/skills/daily-briefing/.last-status

To update the skill itself:

cd /Users/nudge/openclaw/skills/daily-briefing
git pull  # If tracked in git

Ideas to Extend

• Weekend edition – Different content for Saturdays/Sundays
• Pre-meeting briefings – 15-min before calendar events
• Travel mode – Weather for destination city
• Stock/crypto prices – Add financial tickers
• Podcast recommendations – Based on listening history
• Fitness summary – Previous day's activity stats
• Smart home status – Brief overview of connected devices