Project Story: Daily News Briefing

Inspiration

The idea for Daily News Briefing was born out of a desire to stay informed amid the overwhelming flood of daily news. We wanted a tool that would automatically curate and summarize the latest news on topics we care about, and seamlessly integrate those updates into our daily workflow. As avid users of Obsidian for note-taking and knowledge management, it made perfect sense to deliver these AI-powered news briefings directly into our vaults, making staying up-to-date effortless and organized.

What it does

Daily News Briefing is an Obsidian plugin that fetches the latest news articles based on user-selected topics, summarizes them using AI, and delivers concise and relevant summaries straight into your Obsidian vault. Users set their topics of interest, and the plugin automatically collects, summarizes, and formats the news, ensuring that your daily notes include the most important and up-to-date information tailored to you.

How we built it

We developed Daily News Briefing using TypeScript for the main logic and Obsidian plugin integration. The plugin leverages news APIs to fetch recent articles, then utilizes AI-powered summarization to condense lengthy articles into digestible, actionable insights. CSS was used for custom styling of the summaries, while JavaScript handled some of the interactive elements. We focused on a clean architecture to ensure the plugin is both maintainable and extensible.

Challenges we ran into

• API Limitations: Dealing with news APIs' rate limits and coverage inconsistencies required creative batching and fallback mechanisms.
• Summarization Quality: Ensuring the AI summaries were accurate, relevant, and concise was an ongoing challenge, especially with varied article structures and topics.
• Obsidian Integration: Navigating Obsidian's plugin ecosystem and ensuring smooth user experience without disrupting existing workflows took careful design and testing.
• Time Zones & Scheduling: Automating daily briefings to fit users' local times across the globe introduced additional scheduling complexity.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Successfully automated the entire process from news collection to AI summarization and vault delivery.
• Created a user-friendly interface for topic selection and summary customization within Obsidian.
• Achieved a high level of summarization quality and reliability.
• Built a robust plugin that fits naturally into daily note-taking and knowledge management habits.

What we learned

• The importance of user-centric design, especially when integrating with established workflows like Obsidian.
• How to efficiently combine multiple APIs and AI services to deliver a seamless product.
• The value of clear, concise communication—both in code and in the summaries delivered to users.
• Navigating open-source plugin development and community feedback cycles.

What's next for Daily News Briefing

• More Personalization: Adding finer-grained topic controls and summary preferences.
• Advanced Scheduling: Supporting multiple briefings per day and integration with Obsidian’s daily/weekly notes.
• Multi-language Support: Expanding summarization and news sourcing for non-English users.
• Rich Media Integration: Including images, charts, or audio summaries.
• Community Contributions: Opening up for user-contributed news sources and summary plugins.

Daily News Briefing will continue to evolve, making it easier for everyone to stay informed and organized in their personal knowledge systems.

Built With

• obsidian
• perplexity
• typescript