Daily news digest from your sheet

Every morning at eight this workflow reads the news stories that another workflow has been logging into a Google Sheet - an RSS reader that appends one row per story is the usual source - and turns the day's crop into one short email: the ten stories most worth your time, each with a summary and its link, chosen by Claude against the interests you give it. Once the email has gone, the tab is cleared, so tomorrow's digest starts from tomorrow's stories.

Choosing and writing are separate steps, and the second only ever sees the rows the first picked. Claude ranks by story number and the workflow looks each number up in the sheet itself, so every headline and link in your inbox is one that was logged, not one that was composed. The writing step is told to use only the logged fields, to keep to plain text, and to add nothing.

If the tab is empty you still get an email saying so - an empty news sheet usually means the reader that fills it has stopped, and the person who needs to know is the one waiting for the digest. If the sheet cannot be read, the ranking cannot be understood, or the email cannot be sent, the run stops with the reason and the sheet is left untouched, so nothing is lost and tomorrow's digest simply has more to choose from. The sheet is cleared only after the email has been sent, and its header row is put back so the reader can carry on appending.

Any columns will do - each row is passed to Claude as it is - though a title, a link and a summary make for a better digest. On a very busy day only the newest 250 stories are ranked, and the email says so. To set it up, paste the spreadsheet URL, the name of the tab, the address to send to, and a sentence about what you want to read about.