News Summary is a daily briefing skill that fetches and summarizes international news from trusted RSS feeds including BBC, Reuters, NPR, and Al Jazeera. It delivers concise text summaries organized by topic and region, with an optional voice narration feature powered by OpenAI text-to-speech.
Perfect for staying informed without doom-scrolling, this skill prioritizes balanced coverage from both Western and Global South perspectives.
Key Features
- Multi-source aggregation from BBC (world, business, tech), Reuters, NPR, and Al Jazeera RSS feeds
- Balanced international perspective combining Western and Global South news sources for well-rounded coverage
- Topic-organized summaries grouping 5-8 top stories by category (World, Business, Tech) with emoji headers for quick scanning
- Voice narration option generating MP3 audio summaries via OpenAI text-to-speech at 0.95x speed for clarity
- Breaking news prioritization that surfaces the most urgent stories first
Use Cases
- Get a morning news briefing covering global events without visiting multiple news sites
- Generate audio news summaries for listening during commutes or workouts
- Access balanced international news perspectives that include underrepresented regions
- Integrate daily news digests into AI agent workflows for context-aware assistance
How It Works
The skill uses curl to fetch RSS XML feeds from trusted international sources, then parses headlines and descriptions using text processing tools. It condenses the top stories into a structured summary, prioritizing breaking news. For voice output, it sends the summary to the OpenAI TTS API to generate an MP3 file.
Getting Started
Install the skill — no dependencies or API keys are needed for text summaries. For voice narration, set the OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable. Ask for news updates, daily briefings, or what is happening in the world to trigger the skill.
