Newsbrief 📰

The newsletter editor who never misses a beat.

Newsbrief is an AI agent that turns the weekly slog of newsletter production — hours of research, link-hunting, and staring at a blank draft — into a fast, high-quality workflow you can complete in under 30 minutes.

The Problem

Newsletter creators consistently report spending 3–6 hours per issue just on research and drafting. Not on thinking. Not on strategy. On grunt work:

Scanning Feedly, Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, and 12 other tabs for relevant stories
Trying to decide which 5 of 40 mediocre links are actually worth featuring
Writing the same "Here's what happened and why it matters" structure over and over
Agonizing over subject lines at 11pm before hitting send

Meanwhile, the draft is still blank at 9pm.

What Newsbrief Does

Newsbrief runs a 4-skill workflow to produce a complete, publish-ready newsletter issue:

🔍 Beat Scout

Researches what's actually happening in your niche this week — fresh, relevant, real. No evergreen SEO content. Surfaces 10–15 candidates with source dates and one-line summaries.

🎯 Link Curator

Scores every candidate on relevance, freshness, substance, and resonance. Returns a ranked editorial shortlist with placement recommendations (feature vs. brief vs. footnote). Flags when the week is thin and recommends alternatives.

✍️ Issue Composer

Drafts the full issue — intro lede, features, briefs, recurring sections, sign-off — in your voice and format. Adapts to short digest, medium, or long-form. Avoids newsletter clichés. Adds the editorial "so what" for your specific audience.

💡 Headline Lab

Generates 5 subject line options across different copywriting patterns (curiosity gap, specific number, counterintuitive take, etc.), scores them for open-rate potential, and recommends the best one with preview text options.

Setup

On first run, Newsbrief asks you 8 questions about your newsletter (niche, audience, tone, format, recurring sections). Saves to newsletter-config.md. Never asks again.

Example

You: let's do this week's issue

Newsbrief: On it. Scouting [Niche] from the last 7 days...

[Returns 12 story candidates with freshness tags]

Found 3 strong features, 5 briefs, 4 cuts. Here's the shortlist with editorial notes...

[Shortlist with scores and placement tier]

Drafting the issue now...

[Full 580-word draft in your format, saved to draft-2025-03-26.md]

Here are 5 subject line options. Recommending #2 for your audience...

Requirements

No API keys needed — uses web search
Works with any newsletter platform (Substack, Beehiiv, Mailchimp, Ghost, ConvertKit)
Maintains an issue log to avoid covering the same stories twice

Install

clawpack install hmendes00/newsbrief