Build a Source-Linked Morning News Brief
Collect relevant stories into a morning brief with links back to the source material. Allow about an hour for initial setup as a planning estimate, plus testing and recurring checks before relying on scheduled delivery.
Download workflow config (JSON)Who this is for
Budgets and times below are editorial planning estimates, not vendor quotes or measured time savings.
- Goal
- Receive a focused news brief without manually assembling every issue, while keeping sources available for review.
- Best suited to
- operator
- Skill level
- Beginner
- Monthly budget (planning estimate)
~$50/month for one operator
Budget assumptions: Provisional $50/month allocation, not a confirmed bundle price. Zapier Professional is listed at $19.99/month; confirm billing, Filter/Digest access and task limits. Model API calls cost extra and are not covered by a ChatGPT chat subscription. Set a usage cap before scheduling delivery; this assumes an existing inbox or Slack destination.
- Time per week (planning estimate)
- Setup week: allow about 1 hour initially, plus testing; later weeks need source and delivery checks rather than the original zero-minute assumption.
How the data moves
This is a handoff plan, not an automatic integration. Review outputs before the next step. Unlabeled arrows show order, not a verified data format. Use the capability links to explore tool substitutions.
Step 1
Choose Your Sources
Identify 5–10 RSS feeds or newsletters in your industry. Add them to Zapier's RSS trigger or a free RSS aggregator like Feedly as your data source.
Reviewed feed list and incoming story links or excerptsStep 2
Filter for Relevance
Use Zapier's Filter step to pass only articles containing your key topics (e.g. 'AI,' 'automation,' your industry keywords) into the next step.
Filtered story candidates for a relevance spot-checkStep 3
Summarize with AI
Pass the article text or a clearly identified excerpt to the summarization step; do not assume the model can read a submitted URL. Ask for a short summary with its source link, then check the initial outputs before enabling scheduled delivery.
Draft summaries and source links for factual reviewStep 4
Compile and Deliver
Use Zapier's Digest feature to collect all the daily summaries and send a single email or Slack message each morning at a scheduled time.
Expected output
A dated briefing of reviewed story summaries with source links, collected into an email or Slack message for the intended reader.
Why these tools
- Zapier
Zapier coordinates the source, filter, summary and delivery steps without code, but its task-based pricing and awkwardness with complex logic matter as the feed volume grows.
- ChatGPT
ChatGPT drafts the short summaries from supplied article text, but its general-purpose writing role does not establish that a submitted URL was read or that the summary is factually correct.
- Perplexity
Perplexity gives the operator a sourced research option for checking questionable stories, but it is not assigned a step in this pipeline and its citations still need inspection.
Maintenance reality
- Distinct tools referenced
- 3
- Fragile step
- Summarize with AI: a URL-only or truncated feed item may not provide the article text, leaving the model to summarize incomplete material unless the operator checks the input.
- Monthly check
- Trace a sample feed item through the topic filter, supplied article text, summary and delivered digest; check source links, duplicate stories, the delivery schedule and task/API usage against the chosen caps.
- Tool choices and upkeep notes
- Zapier and ChatGPT form the specified automated path; Perplexity is an optional human research check, not another required chained service. Route the initial digest to the operator for review before widening its audience.
Alternative stacks
Shared capability tags describe possible substitutions, not automatic integrations or drop-in compatibility. Review each tool's role and the handoffs before switching.
Free intake with a manually finished brief
- Monthly budget (planning estimate)
- $0/month for one operator
- Budget assumptions
- Make Free allows 1,000 credits/month for supported intake tasks. Finish summaries in the ongoing ChatGPT and Perplexity free web plans, then review and send manually from an existing inbox. Stay within free-plan limits; no paid API or hosting is assumed. A premium intake connector would break the $0 assumption.
- Tools in this stack
- Substitutions and exact shared capability tags
- Tradeoff
- Make can express collection and filtering logic, but the flow must be rebuilt rather than imported from Zapier; manual summarization handoffs and sending deliberately give up scheduled end-to-end delivery.
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