daily-brief - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: daily-brief description: Prepare a source-grounded daily information brief for recurring AI/technology or user-selected topics. Use as the default daily entrypoint when the user asks for today's news, this week's signals, a morning brief, "what should I know", or a personalized synthesis; orchestrates topic-radar JSON output with stable preferences and does not implement its own source fetchers.

Daily Brief

Contract

Prereqs:

The topic-radar script is available for source acquisition, ranking, cache, and JSON output: $AGENT_HOME/skills/tools/market-research/topic-radar/scripts/topic-radar.sh.
Network access is available for live source lookups unless the user explicitly accepts offline/sample output.
Home-scope external-lookup policy has been satisfied when live sources are queried.
Personal memory, when available, is used only for stable topic/source preferences and never as evidence for news claims.

Inputs:

Natural-language brief request, such as "AI news this week", "what should I watch today", "morning brief", or a focused topic.
Optional topic list, timeframe, source preference, freshness requirement, audience, and depth.
Optional monthly trend-backfill request for a fixed historical month or year-to-date set of months.
Optional instruction to force latest/live results, which maps to topic-radar --refresh.
Stable preferences from memory, such as recurring AI/Tech interests or preferred report style.
Optional request to keep local history, plus an explicit record folder when the user wants durable tracking.

Outputs:

Concise brief in the user's language with source links for material claims.
Topline items, topic sections, and optional follow-up angles for deeper reading.
Freshness and source-health note covering generatedAt, windowDays, cache state, refresh mode, and source errors from topic-radar JSON.
Explicit separation between observed source signals and agent inference.
Optional history records under the user-selected record folder.
Optional monthly trend records with fixed-window metadata when the user asks for durable archive backfill.

Exit codes:

N/A (instruction-first workflow; no standalone entrypoint)

Failure modes:

topic-radar is unavailable, fails, or returns malformed JSON; report the command failure and do not invent a brief.
Live sources are unavailable or rate-limited; include source gaps from topic-radar and synthesize only from returned items.
Returned items are too thin for the requested topic/window; say so and offer a narrower or broader follow-up query.
Memory is unavailable or irrelevant; continue from the user's request without treating that as a blocker.
Durable history was requested but no record folder is known; ask the user to choose a folder before writing records.
Record folder writes fail; report the path and failure, but still provide the brief if source synthesis succeeded.

Entrypoint

None. This is an instruction-first workflow skill. Execute it by invoking topic-radar and synthesizing its JSON output.

Skill Roles

daily-brief is the user-facing daily entrypoint. It owns intent resolution, preference steering, source-health explanation, and concise synthesis in the user's language.
topic-radar is the lower-level radar engine. It owns source fetching, source fallback behavior, cache, ranking, clustered JSON/Markdown output, and source-specific errors.
polymarket-readonly is the market-only helper behind topic-radar's Polymarket source. Use it directly only when the user specifically asks for Polymarket markets, odds, order books, or wallet/public market details.

Do not split source fetchers, ranking, cache, RSS/API parsing, or Polymarket fallback logic into daily-brief. If those behaviors need to change, update topic-radar.

Workflow

Resolve the brief intent.
- Default underspecified daily information requests to AI/Tech unless the user names another topic.
- Use the user's explicit timeframe when given. For "today", "this week", or "these days", state the absolute date/window in the reply.
- Ask only if the topic or audience is ambiguous enough that a reasonable default would produce the wrong brief.
Apply stable preference steering.
- Use memory only for recurring interests, source preferences, and output style.
- Do not cite memory as news evidence.
- Do not write or update memory unless the user explicitly asks for that.

Choose the topic-radar query.

Default daily AI/Tech brief:

$AGENT_HOME/skills/tools/market-research/topic-radar/scripts/topic-radar.sh --preset ai-news --format json

Exact latest/current request:

$AGENT_HOME/skills/tools/market-research/topic-radar/scripts/topic-radar.sh --preset ai-news --format json --refresh

Focused topic:

$AGENT_HOME/skills/tools/market-research/topic-radar/scripts/topic-radar.sh --preset ai-news --format json --topic "<topic>"

Broad scan across research, open source, markets, and model ecosystem:

$AGENT_HOME/skills/tools/market-research/topic-radar/scripts/topic-radar.sh --preset radar --format json

Monthly trend archive:

$AGENT_HOME/skills/tools/market-research/topic-radar/scripts/topic-radar.sh --preset radar --report monthly --month 2026-01 --format json

Partial current-month trend archive:

$AGENT_HOME/skills/tools/market-research/topic-radar/scripts/topic-radar.sh --preset radar --from 2026-05-01 --to 2026-05-15 --format json

Parse the JSON output.
- Prefer brief.clusters for the first synthesis pass when present.
- Use signalTier and signalMetrics to keep early-watchlist items out of Topline claims and preserve visible evidence such as HN points/comments or GitHub stars/forks.
- Topline uses high/medium signal items.
- Put low-star or low-HN-engagement items in Early Watchlist; they are topic samples, not popularity or adoption evidence.
- Use items and sections to add source links and avoid unsupported claims.
- Carry through errors and cache metadata instead of hiding source failures.
Write the daily brief.
- Lead with 3-5 high-signal bullets.
- Use compact sections such as Models/Products, Agents/Developer Tools, Enterprise Adoption, Safety/Governance, and Research/Open Source, adapted to the brief language.
- Keep each material claim source-linked.
- Mark inference explicitly when connecting multiple source signals.
- Include a short freshness/source-status note with the absolute date/window, cache/refresh state, and source gaps.
Write monthly trend records when requested.
- Use topic-radar fixed-window JSON, not rolling --days, for historical month records.
- For year-to-date backfill, create one record per month. Treat the current month as partial through the current absolute date unless the user gives a different end date.
- Lead each monthly record with 3-6 source-grounded trends, then sections for product/model releases, agents/developer tools, infrastructure, research/open source, market/community signals, and source gaps as applicable.
- Mark inference explicitly when describing trend movement across several source items.
- Do not cite older local records as evidence for the month; cite the source links returned for that fixed window.
- Use trends/YYYY/YYYY-MM-<topic-slug>.md for rendered monthly trend records and raw/monthly/YYYY/YYYY-MM-<topic-slug>.json for the source JSON when the selected record folder supports this layout.
- Append index.jsonl entries with recordType: "monthly-trend", periodStart, periodEnd, completePeriod, briefPath, rawPath, sourceCount, sources, tags, and source errors when available.
Write history records only when requested.
- Do not hardcode a record location. Use the user's provided folder, an existing project record folder the user points to, or ask the user to choose one before writing durable records.
- Do not initialize git, create remotes, or push the record folder unless the user explicitly asks for repository setup.
- Use date-first storage with topic/query metadata:
```
<record-folder>/
├── README.md
├── index.jsonl
├── briefs/YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md
├── raw/YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.json
└── topics/<topic-slug>.md
```
- Create README.md when absent to document the local schema and source-citation expectations.
- Write the rendered brief to briefs/YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md.
- Append one JSON object to index.jsonl with relative paths plus generatedAt, date, topic, query, window, language, sourceCount, sources, tags, and errors when available.
- Store the topic-radar JSON under raw/ when available and useful for future trend tracking; skip it if the user wants markdown-only records.
- Update topics/<topic-slug>.md only for explicit tracking requests or when the user asks for a topic timeline. Keep these notes concise and source-linked.

Output Style

Match the user's language. Preserve precise English names for models, companies, APIs, repositories, and standards.
Keep the brief skimmable. Prefer source-grounded bullets over long narrative.
Do not present heuristic ranking as objective importance.
Do not make trading, investment, product, or legal recommendations from the brief alone.

Direct Usage Timing

Use daily-brief when the user wants a readable daily information entrypoint, personalized synthesis, or "what matters now" answer.
Use topic-radar directly when the user wants raw source sections, JSON/Markdown radar output, source tuning, or a machine-consumable digest.
Use polymarket-readonly directly when the question is specifically about Polymarket markets, prices, public odds, or read-only wallet/activity research.