News Digest

Daily News Digest Automation

Create a cron automation that turns a list of feeds into something worth reading: a few hundred words a day on what happened in the topics you care about, with a link under each item.

It connects to nothing. There is no token to issue, no account to link, no OAuth screen. That makes it the automation to run first - it exercises the schedule, the conversation, the model and the run log end to end while nothing of yours is at stake, and it is useful in its own right afterwards.

The script is deterministic: the schedule, the once-a-day claim, fetching, parsing, the freshness window, and remembering what has already been covered are all Python. The LLM is invoked only for the part that is judgement - reading the shortlist and writing something that is not just the headlines pasted back. When nothing new matches, no conversation is started at all, so a quiet day costs no tokens.

Prerequisites

None. That is the point.

The runtime needs outbound HTTPS to the feed hosts, which it already has if it can reach the model. Nothing is read from Settings -> Secrets, and nothing needs to be added there.

Setup Workflow

Follow these steps in order.

Step 1 - Collect the feeds

Ask: "Which feeds should the digest read? (One RSS or Atom URL per line. Press Enter for a general technology set.)"

Default:

https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index
https://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml

Check each one before accepting it, because a URL that returns a web page rather than a feed is the most common setup mistake:

curl -sSL --max-time 20 -A "OpenHands-News-Digest/1.0" "{feed_url}" \
  | python3 -c "
import sys
from xml.etree import ElementTree
try:
    root = ElementTree.fromstring(sys.stdin.buffer.read())
except ElementTree.ParseError as exc:
    print('ERROR: not valid XML:', exc); raise SystemExit
name = root.tag.rsplit('}', 1)[-1]
items = [e for e in root.iter() if e.tag.rsplit('}', 1)[-1] in ('item', 'entry')]
print(f'OK: <{name}> with {len(items)} entries' if name.lower() in ('rss', 'feed', 'rdf')
      else f'ERROR: root element is <{name}>, which is not a feed')
"

Record every accepted URL into FEEDS = ["...", ...]. A feed that fails at runtime is reported and skipped, so one bad URL does not cost you the digest - but it is better to find out now.

Step 2 - Collect the topics

Ask: "What should the digest be about? (One topic per line, or comma separated. Press Enter for artificial intelligence, open source, developer tools. Leave it blank to summarise everything the feeds carry.)"

Record as TOPICS. Two things are worth telling the user:

• The agent decides which stories are about them, reading each headline and excerpt. So write topics the way you would explain your interests to a colleague - artificial intelligence works even though almost every headline says AI, and a story about a company releasing its model weights counts as open source without using the phrase.
• An empty list means "cover whatever is most significant". That is right for a handful of narrow feeds and vaguer for a firehose.

Step 3 - Collect the schedule

Ask: "When should the digest be written? (Press Enter for the default: every day at 08:00 UTC, 0 8 * * *.)"

Default: 0 8 * * *. Record as CRON_SCHEDULE, and the timezone as CRON_TIMEZONE (default UTC).

A schedule more frequent than daily is allowed and is not wasteful: work is keyed by UTC date, so extra runs stop at a state read once the day is done, and before that they cost one HTTP request per feed and no tokens. It is a reasonable way to say "write the digest as soon as there is anything to write".

Step 4 - Confirm the secret scope

Do not ask which secrets to forward. AGENT_SECRET_NAMES is empty and should stay empty: the conversation summarises text fetched from the open web, which is written by strangers, and a credential handed to it would make every feed on the list an instruction channel into the deployment's secret store.

If the user asks for a digest posted to Slack, Notion or a repository, that is a different automation - it needs that integration connected, and it should be built from the skill for it rather than by widening this one.

Step 5 - Generate the automation script

Read scripts/main.py from this skill's directory. Apply exactly two constant substitutions near the top of the file:

The script also reads a config.json shipped beside it, if there is one, over these constants. That is how the catalog entry (automations/catalog/news-digest/) configures an unmodified copy, since a declarative host cannot rewrite Python. This setup path substitutes the constants and ships no config.json, so the two never collide.

LOOKBACK_HOURS (48) and MAX_ITEMS (50) are left alone unless the user asks. The lookback is deliberately wider than the schedule so a failed or missed run is recovered by the next one; the seen-list is what stops the overlap from repeating anything.

Use a safe string writer such as json.dumps(value) when inserting user-provided URLs or topics into Python string literals.

Write the customized script to a temporary build directory and validate it:

mkdir -p /tmp/news-digest-build
# write the customized main.py to /tmp/news-digest-build/main.py
python3 -m py_compile /tmp/news-digest-build/main.py && echo "Syntax OK"

Step 6 - Package and upload

Set OPENHANDS_HOST and AUTH_HEADER for the commands below:

• OpenHands Cloud or Enterprise - a <HOST> value is in your system prompt: use it as OPENHANDS_HOST, with AUTH_HEADER="Authorization: Bearer $OPENHANDS_API_KEY"
• Local Agent Canvas - an Automation backend is listed in the <RUNTIME_SERVICES> block of your system context: use its url_from_agent as OPENHANDS_HOST, with AUTH_HEADER="X-Session-API-Key: $OPENHANDS_AUTOMATION_API_KEY"

On OpenHands Cloud or Enterprise each run starts in a fresh sandbox, so the automation keeps its state in the KV store: check that kvStore is listed under features in GET ${OPENHANDS_HOST}/api/automation/v1/capabilities before deploying.

tar -czf /tmp/news-digest.tar.gz -C /tmp/news-digest-build .

TARBALL_PATH=$(curl -s -X POST \
  "${OPENHANDS_HOST}/api/automation/v1/uploads?name=news-digest" \
  -H "$AUTH_HEADER" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/gzip" \
  --data-binary @/tmp/news-digest.tar.gz \
  | python3 -c "import json,sys; print(json.load(sys.stdin)['tarball_path'])")

echo "Uploaded: $TARBALL_PATH"

Step 7 - Register the automation

curl -s -X POST "${OPENHANDS_HOST}/api/automation/v1" \
  -H "$AUTH_HEADER" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{
    \"name\": \"Daily news digest\",
    \"trigger\": {\"type\": \"cron\", \"schedule\": \"{cron_schedule}\", \"timezone\": \"{cron_timezone}\"},
    \"tarball_path\": \"$TARBALL_PATH\",
    \"entrypoint\": \"python3 main.py\",
    \"timeout\": 900
  }" | python3 -m json.tool

Record the returned id.

Step 8 - Confirm

Tell the user:

✅ Daily news digest is running!

• Automation ID: {id}
• Feeds: {url}, ... (one line each)
• Topics: {topics} (or: no filter - everything the feeds carry)
• Schedule: {cron_schedule} ({cron_timezone})
• Credentials used: none
• State file: ~/.openhands/workspaces/automation-state/news_digest_{id}.json

Each day it reads the feeds and writes the digest into the run's conversation and the run log. A day with nothing new produces nothing and costs nothing - the day stays open, so a later run picks up news published after this one.

Then offer to dispatch it once so they can read today's digest immediately:

curl -s -X POST "${OPENHANDS_HOST}/api/automation/v1/{id}/dispatch" \
  -H "$AUTH_HEADER"