Personal
Using AI to generate a daily SMS digest of the day's most relevant headlines
An overnight workflow that turns the day's relevant news into one morning text, so I stay informed without the feed.
I wanted a way to stay informed without opening a dozen apps, scrolling feeds, or starting my day reactive.
So I built a simple system that sends me a single SMS every morning: a short, readable summary of the day's most important headlines, generated overnight and delivered before I wake up.
The problem I was solving
Like most people, I don't struggle with access to information. I struggle with too much of it.
News apps, notifications, social feeds, newsletters. Each one asks for attention, context switching, and judgment. Even when the content is good, the cost of consuming it adds up.
I wanted something different:
- One message
- No scrolling
- No choices to make
- Enough context to feel informed, not overwhelmed
SMS felt right. It's quiet, direct, and finite.
The idea
Every night, while I'm asleep:
- Collect the day's most relevant news
- Use AI to condense it into a short, readable summary
- Send it to me as a single SMS in the morning
The constraint was intentional: if it doesn't fit in one message, it's probably not important enough.
How it works
The system is intentionally simple.
- Make.com orchestrates the workflow
- A scheduled trigger runs overnight
- News content is pulled in from Google's news RSS feed
- Then summarized using AI
- The final message is sent via Twilio SMS
There's no dashboard, no UI, no feed to manage. Just a message that shows up once a day. That's the product.
Why Make.com and Twilio
I didn't want to build infrastructure for something this small.
Make.com made it easy to chain together APIs, schedule background jobs, and handle errors without babysitting.
Twilio did exactly one thing well: deliver a reliable SMS, every time.
The combination let me move quickly without over-engineering.
Design decisions
The hardest part wasn't the tech. It was deciding what not to include.
A few constraints I set early:
- No breaking news alerts
- No personalization beyond relevance
- No links
- No more than one message per day
The goal wasn't to know everything. It was to know enough, and then move on.
What I learned
A few things became clear after using this daily.
AI is useful when it reduces decisions, not when it creates more options.
Background automation is an extremely powerful tool. It led me to my other AI integration into Course Vaults.
Designing for yourself is a fast way to uncover what actually matters, and how things work.
2026