🦞 AI News Aggregator

Collects news on any topic, writes an English editorial digest using your choice of AI provider, and posts it to Discord.

Default (AI topic): TechCrunch · The Verge · NYT Tech (RSS) + curated AI YouTube channels

Custom topics: Tavily news search + YouTube topic search (no Shorts, sorted by views)

AI providers: OpenAI (default) · DeepSeek · Anthropic Claude — switchable per request

Network Endpoints

Exactly one AI endpoint is contacted per run, determined by the active provider. The default provider is OpenAI (OPENAI_API_KEY required). Switch providers with --provider deepseek or --provider claude.

Usage Examples

• "Get today's AI news"
• "Collect news about crypto"
• "Last week's news about climate change"
• "What's trending in AI today?"
• "Get crypto news from the last 3 days using OpenAI"
• "Show me recent Bitcoin YouTube videos"
• "Summarise WWIII news with Claude"
• "AI news using GPT-4o"
• "AI news dry run" (preview without posting to Discord)
• "Test my Discord webhook"

API Keys

AI Providers & Models

Override per request using the --provider flag. Set a permanent non-default with openclaw config set env.AI_PROVIDER '"deepseek"'. Override the model with --model (e.g. --model gpt-4o or --model claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022).

Implementation

IMPORTANT: Always run news_aggregator.py using the steps below. Do NOT search the web manually or improvise a response — the script handles all fetching, summarisation, and Discord posting.

Step 1 — Locate the script

The script is bundled with this skill. Find it:

SKILL_DIR=$(ls -d ~/.openclaw/skills/ai-news-aggregator-sl 2>/dev/null || ls -d ~/.openclaw/skills/news-aggregator 2>/dev/null)
SCRIPT="$SKILL_DIR/news_aggregator.py"
echo "Script: $SCRIPT"
ls "$SCRIPT"

Step 2 — Check uv is available

which uv && uv --version || echo "uv not found"

If uv is not found, ask the user to install it from their system package manager or from https://docs.astral.sh/uv/getting-started/installation/. Do not run a curl-pipe-sh command on the user's behalf.

Step 3 — API keys

Env vars are passed automatically by OpenClaw from its config. No .env file is needed.

Verify the required keys are set (without revealing values):

[[ -n "$OPENAI_API_KEY" ]]      && echo "OPENAI_API_KEY: set"      || echo "OPENAI_API_KEY: MISSING (required for default provider)"
[[ -n "$DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL" ]] && echo "DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL: set" || echo "DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL: MISSING"

If any are missing, ask the user to register them:

openclaw config set env.OPENAI_API_KEY '<key>'
openclaw config set env.DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL '<url>'
# Optional alternatives:
openclaw config set env.DEEPSEEK_API_KEY '<key>'
openclaw config set env.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY '<key>'

Step 4 — Parse the request

Extract topic, days, and provider from what the user said:

For AI provider:

Extract topic and days from what the user said:

For report type:

Step 5 — Run with uv

uv run automatically installs all dependencies from the script's inline metadata — no venv setup needed.

uv run "$SCRIPT" [--topic "TOPIC"] [--days N] [--report TYPE] [--provider PROVIDER] [--model MODEL] [--dry-run]

Examples:

# AI news today — OpenAI (default)
uv run "$SCRIPT"

# Crypto news using OpenAI
uv run "$SCRIPT" --topic "crypto" --provider openai

# Last week's climate news using Claude
uv run "$SCRIPT" --topic "climate change" --days 7 --provider claude

# Use a specific model
uv run "$SCRIPT" --topic "Bitcoin" --provider openai --model gpt-4o

# Trending AI on Twitter and YouTube
uv run "$SCRIPT" --report trending

# Preview without posting to Discord
uv run "$SCRIPT" --topic "Bitcoin" --dry-run

# Test webhook connection
uv run "$SCRIPT" --test-discord

Step 6 — Report back

Tell the user what was posted to Discord, how many items were found per source, and note any skipped sources (e.g. "YouTube skipped — YOUTUBE_API_KEY not set").