Daily Briefing

A self-hosted morning dashboard and personal push agent. A Python cron script fetches data from a dozen sources, writes data/briefing.json, and optionally pushes smart notifications via Pushover. A PHP page renders the JSON as a clean, read-only daily briefing.

Runs on macOS or Raspberry Pi. Frontend is compatible with a 2011 webOS TouchPad (WebKit 534, ES5 only, no CSS Grid).

What it shows

• Verse of the Day
• Server status (green/amber banner)
• Weather — current + 5-day forecast
• Today's calendar events
• Todo list (from checkmate)
• GitHub notifications (unread, with type + reason)
• Top news stories (cross-source clustered)
• More news (collapsible)
• Geek News — HackerNews + Slashdot combined
• Family calendar — full week, grouped by day
• Tomorrow preview (afternoon run only)
• XKCD (when a new comic is out)
• Health metrics — weight, alcohol, exercise with 30-day sparklines and target-aware trend badges
• Chat box — talk to the same MCP-tool surface from any device that can render basic HTML (incl. legacy browsers like the 2011 webOS TouchPad)

Setup

cp config/config.json.example config/config.json
# edit config/config.json with your credentials and settings

cp config/feeds.json.example config/feeds.json
# edit feeds.json if you want different news sources

cp config/agent_rules.json.example config/agent_rules.json
# edit agent_rules.json if you want different notification rules

cp mcp.json .mcp.json
# edit .mcp.json with the path to this project


./run.sh                        # first run — creates .venv and builds briefing.json
php -S 0.0.0.0:8181 -t web/    # dev server

Add to crontab for automatic updates:

30 6  * * * /path/to/daily-briefing/run.sh
30 11 * * * /path/to/daily-briefing/run.sh
30 16 * * * /path/to/daily-briefing/run.sh

Push agent (Pushover notifications)

After each briefing build, run_agent.py evaluates configured rules against the fresh data and sends Pushover notifications for anything new and matched.

cp config/agent_rules.json.example config/agent_rules.json
# edit agent_rules.json to configure rules

Add to config/config.json:

"agent": {
  "enabled": true,
  "anthropic_api_key": "sk-ant-...",
  "model": "claude-haiku-4-5-20251001",
  "pushover_app_token": "YOUR_APP_TOKEN",
  "pushover_user_key": "YOUR_USER_KEY",
  "pushover_device": ""
}

Rule types

Type	Triggers when
calendar	A calendar event title matches keywords and starts within window_minutes
family_calendar	Any family calendar event falls on today
server_status	One or more monitored servers is down
security	Unifi Protect detected overnight events
github	Unread GitHub notifications match the reasons list
news_keyword	A news story title contains one of the keywords
todos	Open todos match keywords (e.g. "!") at the configured hour
weather	Today's condition contains one of the conditions strings

Each rule has dedupe_hours — the same match won't re-notify within that window. For github, dedup is also keyed on updated_at, so a notification only re-fires when there's new activity on the thread.

Claude Code / MCP server

src/mcp_server.py exposes the briefing as an MCP resource so any Claude Code session has your full daily context automatically.

Install Claude Code, then add to ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "daily-briefing": {
      "command": "/path/to/DailyBriefing/.venv/bin/python3",
      "args": ["/path/to/DailyBriefing/src/mcp_server.py"]
    }
  }
}

Available resources and tools:

Name	Type	Description
briefing://current	resource	Full briefing.json — calendar, todos, news, weather, GitHub
briefing://memory	resource	Agent push history and rule stats
add_todo	tool	Add a todo via checkmate add
send_notification	tool	Send a Pushover notification (priority -1/0/1)
refresh_briefing	tool	Rebuild briefing.json on demand
add_calendar_event	tool	Create a CalDAV event on any writable calendar
send_message	tool	Send an iMessage/SMS via the message bridge, optionally delayed
log_weight / log_alcohol / log_exercise	tool	Append health logs; chat agent converts natural language to standard units
get_health_summary	tool	Live read of data/health/*.jsonl (fresher than briefing.json)
get_time / get_public_ip	tool	System clock + outbound IP for diagnostics
dialectic_save / _append / _list / _get / _summary / _close / _resume	tool	Persist and resume exploratory conversations (_summary returns a compact recap)

Adding calendar events

Mark any calendar in config.json as writable with "writable": true. For ownCloud-hosted calendars the write URL is derived automatically from the existing export URL. For external CalDAV providers (e.g. Zoho) add the CalDAV-specific credentials:

{
  "name": "Personal",
  "url": "https://calendar.zoho.com/ical/your-read-token",
  "writable": true,
  "default": true,
  "caldav_write_url": "https://calendar.zoho.com/caldav/your_account_id/events/your_calendar_uid/",
  "caldav_username": "you@zoho.com",
  "caldav_password": "your-app-password"
}

Set "default": true on the calendar Claude should use when none is specified. Then ask naturally:

"Add a dentist appointment next Thursday at 2pm"
"Add a team lunch to my Work calendar on Friday from noon to 1pm at the pizza place"

Calendars can live in either the mine or family section — the tool searches both, so no need to move a calendar just to make it writable.

Sending messages

Requires the message-bridge running locally. Configure its URL under imessage.url in config.json. Recipients can be matched by name against recent chats or given as a phone number/email. Use delay_minutes to schedule a send:

"Send a message to Nicole in 15 minutes saying I'm on my way"
"Text Ben at 555-1234 to say happy birthday"

Delayed sends are held as asyncio tasks in the running MCP server — if the Claude Code session ends before the delay expires the send will not fire.

Updating after code changes

After a git pull on the host machine, restart just the MCP server from within your Claude Code session (use /mcp to find the reconnect option) — no need to quit the session.

For remote access (phone, another machine), run claude --tunnel on the host — it gives you a URL that connects to your local Claude Code session with MCP context attached.

Web chat

A chat box at the bottom of the briefing page lets you reach the same MCP tool surface from a browser — handy when the Claude desktop/mobile app isn't an option (legacy device, kiosk, etc.). Enable in config/config.json:

"chat_agent": {
  "enabled": true,
  "model": "claude-sonnet-4-6",
  "shared_secret": "",
  "allowed_tools": ["dialectic_save", "log_weight", "refresh_briefing", "..."]
}

allowed_tools is a subset of the MCP server's full surface — set it to whatever you're comfortable exposing through a webpage. The chat box only renders when enabled: true. Leave shared_secret blank to skip auth (page reachability == chat reachability) or set a passphrase the browser stores in localStorage.

Per-device sessions are persisted under data/chat_sessions/<id>.json; on page load the last few turns are pre-rendered so the chat doesn't feel "empty."

If you serve behind nginx, raise its upstream timeout — chat.php sets PHP's own limit to 300s, but nginx defaults to 60s and will return 504 Gateway Time-out on long tool loops (refreshing the briefing, summarizing a large dialectic, etc.):

# in the server block, or scoped to location = /chat.php
fastcgi_read_timeout 300;
fastcgi_send_timeout 300;

(Use proxy_read_timeout / proxy_send_timeout if your nginx proxies via proxy_pass rather than fastcgi_pass.) The same applies to other reverse proxies.

Health tracking

Add a health block to config/config.json to enable weight / alcohol / exercise tracking with sparklines on the briefing page:

"health": {
  "weight":   { "unit": "lbs", "goal_direction": "down" },
  "alcohol":  { "weekly_target_drinks": 15 },
  "exercise": { "weekly_target_minutes": 150 },
  "missed_notify_hour": 7,
  "chart_days": 30
}

Then log in plain English via the chat — "shared a bottle of wine with Nicole" or "ran 4 miles this morning" — and the agent converts to US standard drinks / minutes+intensity before appending to data/health/*.jsonl. Add a health_missing entry to agent_rules.json to get a Pushover reminder when a metric hasn't been logged today.

News feeds (config/feeds.json)

Each entry is an RSS feed. Optional flags control how stories are elevated to Top Stories:

Flag	Effect
"always_important": true	Every story from this feed is elevated to Top Stories
"verge_wired_pair": true	Elevated if 2+ feeds sharing this flag cover the same story
"geek_only": true	Appears only in Geek News, not Top Stories or More News

Cross-source matching is controlled in config.json:

• similarity_threshold — how closely two headlines must match (default 0.65)
• importance_threshold — how many sources must cover a story to elevate it (default 2)

Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• PHP 7.4+
• Dependencies installed automatically by run.sh into .venv/

See CLAUDE.md for full architecture documentation.