A free AI news briefing agent that runs on GitHub Actions, no server

A free AI news briefing agent that runs entirely on GitHub Actions has been released, requiring no server and using two free API keys from Groq and Tavily. The tool, available at github.com/tballochi/daily-briefing, autonomously researches user-selected topics, writes summaries from real search results, and emails a daily digest, with a dry-run mode that sends nothing and stores nothing.

Wake up to an AI-written news briefing in your inbox every morning, on the topics you choose, written from real freshly-searched articles.100% free, no server, runs entirely on GitHub Actions. A real briefing. Every headline, summary and link in it was chosen and written by the agent. It's 8am. Your coffee is still too hot to drink, so you open your inbox, and the only thing worth reading is already there. Three stories that actually matter to you, four sentences each, every source linked and dated. Nothing you were sent yesterday. No feed, no notifications, no twenty tabs you'll never get back to. While you were asleep, an agent searched the web on your topics, threw out the filler, read what was left and wrote it up. By the time your coffee is drinkable, you're caught up, and you close the tab and get on with your day. You need two free API keys . No Gmail, no deploy, no account anywhere else. git clone https://github.com/tballochi/daily-briefing.git cd daily-briefing pip install -r requirements.txt python main.py --setup asks for your keys and checks each one works python main.py --dry-run builds a real briefing, sends nothing Both keys are free: Groq https://console.groq.com/keys and Tavily https://app.tavily.com . Prefer not to use the wizard? Put them in a .env file yourself as GROQ API KEY= and TAVILY API KEY= . --dry-run researches the news, writes the briefing, prints it to your terminal and saves the rendered email to data/preview.html . It sends nothing and stores nothing , so you can see exactly what you'd be getting before setting up delivery. Then edit config.yaml to your own topics and run it again. Every morning, an autonomous agent: Researches. Runs live web searches across your topics, judges the results, and skips anything it already sent you on a previous day. Writes. Summarises the chosen stories from their real source text. No hallucinated facts, no fabricated links: every URL comes from a real search result. Delivers. Emails you a newspaper-style digest, at the time you choose. It's a tool-using agent, not a fixed script: it decides what to search, judges what's worth keeping, and searches again if the results are thin. In the email: your N top stories, each with a factual summary, source and publication date · a word of the day · a quote of the day. Optionally, one slot is reserved for a focus theme you never want to miss. One readable file, no code, no secrets: title: Daily Briefing shown in the email subject + header num articles: 3 how many stories per morning topics: what the agent researches free text - AI & LLMs GPT, Claude, agents, MCP - automation & no-code n8n, Zapier, Make - dev tools & open source focus: OPTIONAL: a story that's ALWAYS included label: shipping / maritime / logistics priority query: CMA CGM searched first; preferred when there's fresh news keywords: cma cgm, shipping, maritime, container, freight model: openai/gpt-oss-120b the Groq model the agent thinks with model fallbacks: tried in order if the one above is retired - openai/gpt-oss-20b - qwen/qwen3.8-27b Topics are free text, so point it at finance, climate, football, your industry, whatever you want to wake up informed about. Don't want a guaranteed story? Delete the focus: block. No config.yaml at all? Sensible defaults keep it running. Nothing stays on. No server, no container, no cron on your laptop. 1. Click Use this template to get your own copy or fork it . Then clone it and run: python main.py --setup The wizard asks for each key, verifies it against the real API before saving , so a wrong Gmail App Password fails here instead of silently at 8am tomorrow. It clears the inherited de-duplication history, offers to upload your secrets with the gh CLI, and prints your pinger URL with your repo already filled in. 2. Add 5 Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions secrets the wizard can do this for you if you have the gh CLI : | Secret | Where to get it | |---|---| GROQ API KEY | | TAVILY API KEY app.tavily.com https://app.tavily.com , free, 1000 searches/month GMAIL ADDRESS GMAIL APP PASSWORD 16-char App Password https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords needs 2FA . Not your Gmail password RECIPIENT EMAIL 3. Test it now: Actions → Daily Briefing → Run workflow , tick force . 4. Make it punctual by adding a free external pinger 5 minutes, one time : Why, and how to set up the free cron pinger GitHub's own schedule: cron is unreliable on low-activity repos: it drops most triggers and can fire hours late, so "before 10am" isn't guaranteed by it alone. The fix, still 100% free, is a tiny external cron that calls GitHub at a fixed time. GitHub's own cron stays on as a best-effort backup. a Create a GitHub token at new fine-grained token https://github.com/settings/personal-access-tokens/new - Repository access: Only select repositories → this repo - Permissions → Actions: Read and write - Copy the github pat ... value b Create a free job on cron-job.org , daily at ~08:00 in your timezone: Method : POST URL : https://api.github.com/repos/<you /daily-briefing/actions/workflows/daily-briefing.yml/dispatches Body : {"ref":"main"} Headers : Accept: application/vnd.github+json Authorization: Bearer <your github pat ... X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2022-11-28 A successful call returns HTTP 204 . The pinger fires without forcing, so it still passes the morning-window and once-a-day guards, so it can never double-send. Renamed the repo later? Update the URL by hand; GitHub redirects GETs but not reliably POSTs. The things this does differently, and what they cost: No paid step, anywhere | It runs inside the Groq, Tavily and GitHub Actions free tiers. A daily run uses ~180 of Tavily's 1000 monthly searches. Worth being clear: those are three companies' free tiers, not a guarantee I can make. If one changes, this changes. | No infrastructure | No server, no Docker, no database, no always-on process. The trade-off is that you're running on GitHub's schedule and inside their limits. | An agent, not an RSS pipeline | It picks its own search queries, judges result quality, and searches again when results are thin, which also means it's slower and less predictable than a feed reader. | Never repeats a story | Sent articles are matched by normalised URL and headline, kept in data/history.json and committed back to the repo. No database to run; the trade-off is a daily commit in your history. | Never double-sends | A morning-window guard plus a once-a-day guard, so several triggers still produce one email. | Survives model deprecations | The model is configurable with a fallback chain. This exists because a hardcoded model was retired by the provider and took the agent down for a day. | Grounded summaries | Written only from real source text, and any URL the model didn't actually find in a search result is dropped before it can reach the email. | Keys stay yours | They live in your own repo's secrets or your local .env . The agent talks to Groq, Tavily and Gmail's SMTP server, and nothing else. | What does it cost? Nothing. A run uses a handful of Groq calls and up to 6 Tavily searches, well inside both free tiers Tavily gives 1000 searches/month; the briefing uses ~180 . GitHub Actions is free for public repos. cron-job.org is free. There is no paid tier to graduate into. Where do my API keys live? Is anything sent to you? Your keys live in your GitHub repo's Actions secrets or your local .env , which is gitignored . The agent talks only to Groq, Tavily and Gmail's SMTP server. Nothing is sent anywhere else, and the author never sees your keys, topics or briefings. How do I change the model? Edit model: in config.yaml to any model your Groq key can reach, and list backups under model fallbacks: . You can also override it without editing the file by setting the GROQ MODEL environment variable or a GROQ MODEL GitHub Actions variable . Providers retire models regularly, so check Groq's deprecations page https://console.groq.com/docs/deprecations for what's live. Can I use something other than Gmail? Yes, with a small edit. email sender.py uses plain smtplib over SSL, so pointing SMTP HOST / SMTP PORT at another provider Fastmail, Zoho, a company relay and using that account's credentials works. Gmail is the default only because its App Passwords are free and easy. Can I change the delivery time? Yes. The time is set by your cron-job.org job; the workflow only enforces a 06:00–11:00 Europe/Paris safety window so a stray trigger can't email you at night. To move outside that window, edit the hour list in the gate step of .github/workflows/daily-briefing.yml and TIMEZONE in scheduler.py for local runs . What if it fails one morning? It retries once after two minutes. If that also fails you get a short "couldn't send today" email explaining why, the full traceback goes to the Actions log, and the run is marked failed, so a broken morning is red in the Actions tab rather than a green check. The next morning's run is unaffected. Can I get more than 3 stories, or several briefings a day? Set num articles: to whatever you like. One briefing per day is enforced by design, because the de-duplication history keys on the date, so a second daily send would need that guard changed. python main.py --setup guided setup or copy .env.example by hand python main.py --dry-run preview only, sends nothing python main.py --now build & send one briefing now python main.py run the scheduler daily at 09:00 Europe/Paris pip install -r requirements-dev.txt pytest -q Mocked network, no API keys needed, runs in under a second. Covers the model fallback chain, config defaults, de-duplication and both send guards. CI runs it on every push. | Tool | Role | |---|---| | Python 3.11+ | Core language. 5 dependencies, no framework | Groq openai/gpt-oss-120b | The agent's brain. Configurable, with fallbacks | | Tavily | Real-time news search | | GitHub Actions | Runtime for the daily job | | cron-job.org | External pinger, so it fires on time | daily-briefing/ ├── config.yaml your preferences: title, topics, focus, model ├── config.py loads/validates config.yaml, checks required secrets ├── main.py entry point --setup / --dry-run / --now ├── setup wizard.py guided setup, verifies every key ├── agent.py the agent: research loop, writing, HTML rendering ├── email sender.py Gmail delivery ├── scheduler.py the briefing jobs + local daily scheduler ├── history.py remembers sent articles no repeats ├── data/history.json the de-duplication memory ├── docs/ screenshot + sample briefing ├── tests/ pytest suite no network └── .github/workflows/ daily-briefing.yml the morning run + ci.yml Issues and PRs welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md /tballochi/daily-briefing/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md . MIT. See LICENSE /tballochi/daily-briefing/blob/main/LICENSE . Built by Timoté Ballochi https://github.com/tballochi .