Daily Brief — Implementation Notes

Architecture: context-from Chaining

┌──────────────────────────────┐
│  cron: 0 15 * * *            │
│  script: collector.sh        │  ← no-agent, free public APIs
├──────────────────────────────┤
│  Script stdout → agent       │  ← injected as prompt context
│  context                     │
├──────────────────────────────┤
│  Agent: curates → formats    │  ← lightweight LLM pass only
│  → delivers to Telegram      │
└──────────────────────────────┘

Cost Breakdown

Stage	Token Cost	Frequency
Script fetch (shell)	$0	1x per tick
Agent curation	Full model	1x per tick

vs. old approach that relied on web_search + x_search (both failing silently).

Sources (Free, No API Key)

Source	Endpoint	Reliability
Weather	`wttr.in/Placerville,CA`	99.9%
Hacker News	Firebase API (v0)	99.9%
GitHub Trending	`api.github.com/search/repositories`	99% (unauthed rate limit: 60/hr)

Previous State (Before June 20)

Old prompt instructed the agent to use web_search and x_search tools. Both were failing — Firecrawl unconfigured, xAI credits exhausted. Brief returned [SILENT] for weeks.

Key Insight

The script + context_from pattern turned a dead cron job into a working one in <5 minutes with zero ongoing API costs.

Cron Job (Production)

hermes cron update e94447937052 \
  --script daily-brief-collector.sh \
  --prompt "Curate from the injected context. Output max 8 bullets. Silent if no data."

Job ID: e94447937052
Schedule: 0 15 * * * (3pm UTC = 8am PDT)
Delivery: Telegram (here)
Model: grok-4.3 via xai-oauth

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