Need to stay on top of tech news without spending hours reading every source? This workflow shows how to automate a weekly tech news summarizer in Needle that scans news sources and sends AI-generated summaries to your Slack channel.

Overview

The workflow runs weekly on Mondays at 9am, fetches tech news source URLs from a Google Sheet, scrapes and summarizes the most relevant AI and tech news from each source, then sends a compiled message to your Slack channel—turning hours of news reading into a single automated digest.

Key Actions

1. Scheduled Weekly Trigger – Runs every Monday at 9am
2. Google Sheets Input – Reads list of tech news sources from spreadsheet
3. AI Web Scraping – Browses each news source and extracts key points
4. AI Compilation – Creates a single Slack-ready message with the most relevant news
5. Slack Output – Sends formatted message to your Slack channel

What You'll Need

• Google Sheet with columns for newsletter names and URLs Tip: Include popular tech news sources like TechCrunch, The Verge, Hacker News
• Google Sheets Connector connected in Needle
• Slack Connector connected in Needle
• Target Slack Channel for news summaries (e.g., #tech-news, #random)

How It Works

Every Monday at 9am:

1. The workflow reads your Google Sheet containing tech news sources

2. For each news source:

   • AI browses the webpage using browse_web and search_web tools
   • Extracts the most important tech news points from the past week
   • Focuses specifically on AI, AI Agents, and LLM-related news
   • Creates bullet-point summaries with key takeaways

3. All individual summaries are merged and compiled into a single Slack message:

   • Filters for the most relevant AI and LLM news
   • Includes links to original sources
   • Formats for readability in Slack

4. Final message is posted to your Slack channel

Use Cases:

• Team Updates – Keep your team informed about industry developments
• Competitive Intelligence – Track competitor product launches and news
• Research Monitoring – Stay current on AI/ML research breakthroughs
• Content Inspiration – Find topics for blog posts or social media
• Newsletter Curation – Source content for internal or external newsletters

Example Output

🤖 Weekly AI & Tech News Digest

🔥 Top Stories:

• OpenAI announces GPT-4.1 with extended context window
  https://openai.com/blog/gpt-4-1-release

• Anthropic releases Claude 3 with constitutional AI improvements
  https://anthropic.com/news/claude-3

• Google's Gemini Ultra achieves state-of-the-art benchmarks
  https://blog.google/technology/ai/gemini-ultra

📰 Other News:

• Microsoft integrates Copilot across Office 365 suite
• Meta open-sources Llama 3 70B model
• Hugging Face launches inference API for custom models

Customization Options

Change Schedule: Adjust the trigger to run daily, weekdays only, or at different times

Filter Topics: Modify the AI prompt to focus on specific industries (fintech, healthcare, e-commerce)

Add Sources: Expand your Google Sheet with more tech news sources, company blogs, or research institutions

Output Format: Customize the Slack message format with categories, priorities, or summaries

Add Channels: Send different curated versions to multiple Slack channels based on team interests

Wrap-up

This Needle workflow automatically scans tech news sources, generates AI-powered summaries, and delivers a curated digest to your Slack channel every week. Perfect for teams that want to stay informed about AI and tech developments without spending hours reading multiple sources.