🧠 AI news digest

“Every morning, email me a 5-minute digest of the most useful new AI news.”

Download everything (.zip)n8n workflow Python script README

Free, no sign-up. MIT licence. Python standard library only, so there's nothing to pip install.

What it does

Reads AI news feeds (Hacker News AI stories, Hugging Face, Simon Willison, OpenAI), keeps the last 24 hours, optionally summarises them with an AI model, and emails you the digest.

What you need

Python 3.9+ (no extra packages) or n8n
An email account that can send over SMTP (Gmail with an app password works)
Optional: an OpenAI-compatible API key for AI-written summaries (OpenAI, Groq, OpenRouter, a local Ollama server)

5-minute setup

Python

Install Python 3.9+ and unzip the download.
Try it with no accounts: python3 ai_news_digest.py --dry-run
Copy .env.example to .env and fill it in.
Run: set -a; . ./.env; set +a; python3 ai_news_digest.py (Windows steps in the README).

n8n (no code)

Workflows, then Import from file, then ai-news-digest.n8n.json.
Follow the yellow “Read me” note (credentials or webhook).
Test workflow, then switch it to Active.

Run it on a schedule

Every day at 07:00 with cron:

0 7 * * * cd /path/to/ai-news-digest && set -a && . ./.env && set +a && python3 ai_news_digest.py >> run.log 2>&1

On Windows use Task Scheduler. With n8n, the Schedule node does it for you.

Settings

Variable	What it does
`FEEDS`	Comma-separated RSS/Atom URLs (good AI defaults built in)
`HOURS`	How far back to look, default 24
`MAX_ITEMS`	Max stories, default 12
`SMTP_HOST / SMTP_PORT / SMTP_USER / SMTP_PASSWORD`	Your mail server, e.g. smtp.gmail.com / 587
`EMAIL_TO / EMAIL_FROM`	Where to send it
`OPENAI_API_KEY / OPENAI_BASE_URL / OPENAI_MODEL`	Optional AI summary (default gpt-4o-mini)

What we tested

Ran against the four live default feeds: 12 fresh stories collected and deduplicated.
AI-summary path tested against a mock OpenAI-compatible server.
Email sending tested with a mocked SMTP server (message built and handed over correctly).
n8n workflow imported and run end to end in a real n8n install (feeds live, email step mocked).

Honest limits

We didn't send through a real mailbox: SMTP was mocked.
The AI summary is only as good as the model you plug in, and it costs a few cents a month on paid APIs.
Some sites change or drop their feeds; the script skips a broken feed with a warning.
The n8n version sends a plain list (no AI step) to keep setup to 5 minutes.

Want one built for your task?

Describe it in one sentence. We build it, test it and hand it over, usually within 24h.

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