Weekly Tech News Summarizer
Automatically scan tech news sources, generate AI summaries of the most important tech news, and send a compiled message to your Slack channel.
Last updated
November 12, 2025
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Key Takeaways
- Automated weekly tech news digest - Scans your configured news sources every Monday and delivers an AI-curated summary to Slack
- Google Sheets as your source list - Manage which tech news sites to scan by simply editing a spreadsheet
- AI-powered web scraping and summarization - GPT-4.1 browses each source, extracts key points, and compiles a single Slack-ready message
- Focused on AI and LLM news - The compilation step filters for the most relevant AI, AI Agents, and LLM-related stories
What This Workflow Does
This Needle workflow runs every Monday at 9am, reads a list of tech news source URLs from a Google Sheet, uses AI with web browsing tools to scrape and summarize each source, then compiles everything into a single Slack message focused on the most relevant AI and LLM news. The final digest is posted to your Slack channel so your team stays informed without reading multiple sources manually.
Use cases:
- Keeping your team updated on AI and tech developments with a weekly digest
- Curating content from multiple news sources into one Slack message
- Saving time on manual news reading by automating the scan-and-summarize process
How It Works
| Step | What Happens |
|---|---|
| 1. Scheduled trigger | Fires every Monday at 9am (Europe/Berlin timezone) |
| 2. Google Sheets fetch | Reads your spreadsheet containing news source names and URLs |
| 3. Code parsing | A JavaScript node parses the sheet rows into structured objects |
| 4. AI scraping (per source) | GPT-4.1 uses browse_web and search_web tools to visit each news source and extract the most important tech news points |
| 5. Merge | Combines all individual source summaries along with the current date |
| 6. AI compilation | GPT-4.1 filters for the most relevant AI and LLM news and compiles everything into a single Slack-formatted message with links |
| 7. Slack delivery | Posts the compiled digest to your Slack channel |
Workflow Nodes
| Node | Role |
|---|---|
| Scheduled Trigger | Runs every Monday at 9am Europe/Berlin |
| Google Sheets Get Values | Reads news source names and URLs from your spreadsheet |
| Code (JavaScript) | Parses sheet rows into structured objects (up to 16 sources) |
| Transform | Captures today's date for context |
| AI Node - Scraper (GPT-4.1) | Browses each news source using web tools and extracts key points |
| Merge | Combines all scraped summaries with the date |
| AI Node - Compiler (GPT-4.1) | Filters for AI/LLM-relevant news and compiles into one Slack message |
| Slack Send Large Message | Posts the final digest to your Slack channel |
Setup Instructions
- Add the workflow template to Needle
- Create a Google Sheet with columns for newsletter names and URLs, and add your preferred tech news sources
- Connect your Google Sheets account via the Pipedream connector
- Connect your Slack account and configure the target channel
- Run the workflow or wait for the next Monday at 9am
Customization
| What You Can Change | How |
|---|---|
| News sources | Add or remove rows in your Google Sheet to change which sites get scraped |
| Schedule | Change the cron expression in the trigger node (default: Mondays at 9am) |
| Topic focus | Edit the compiler AI system prompt to focus on different topics instead of AI/LLM news |
| Slack channel | Update the Slack node configuration to post to a different channel |
| Number of sources | The code node processes up to 16 sources by default. Adjust the slice limit in the code to change this |
| Output format | Modify the compiler AI prompt to change the message structure or add categories |
FAQ
Q: What format should the Google Sheet use? A: The sheet should have a header row with column names, followed by rows containing the newsletter name and its URL. The code node uses the first row as headers and maps subsequent rows into objects.
Q: Can I run this daily instead of weekly?
A: Yes. Change the cron schedule in the trigger node from 0 9 * * 1 (Mondays at 9am) to 0 9 * * * (every day at 9am) or any other schedule you prefer.
Q: What happens if a news source cannot be scraped? A: The AI scraper node is instructed to state when it cannot scrape a source, so those will be noted in the output rather than silently failing.
Q: How many news sources can I include? A: The code node slices up to 16 rows from the sheet by default. You can increase this limit by editing the JavaScript code node.
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