topics-briefing

name	topics-briefing
description	Generate a weekly SWE+AI topic briefing (HN + Lobsters + RSS newsletters + Exa fresh news, merged and bucketed by recency) for LinkedIn post ideation. Use whenever the user asks "what should I post about", "LinkedIn topic candidates", "weekly briefing", "topic ideas this week", or wants a single markdown brief to paste into their LinkedIn Claude project. Combines all four sources in one run.

topics-briefing

The headliner skill of this folder. Pulls HN, Lobsters, the RSS newsletter list, and Exa fresh-news, and emits a single markdown briefing grouped by source and bucketed by recency (Today / Last 3 days / Earlier this week). Designed to be pasted directly into a LinkedIn-post Claude project as context for the week's ideation.

The Bun CLI cannot call MCP tools, so this skill orchestrates a two-step flow: the CLI handles HN + Lobsters + RSS, then the skill appends an Exa section via the mcp__exa__web_search_exa tool.

Workflow

1. Run the CLI to fetch HN, Lobsters, and RSS into the briefing file:

   bun src/cli/briefing.ts --limit 20 --out "briefings/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md"
   

   The CLI:

   • Filters RSS to items from the last 7 days (drops everything older).
   • Buckets each section into Today (≤24h), Last 3 days (24–72h), Earlier this week (72h–7d).
   • Omits empty buckets.

2. Call Exa for fresh tech news:

   • Tool: mcp__exa__web_search_exa
   • Query: "latest software engineering and AI news this week"
   • numResults: 15
   • Drop any result older than 7 days. Bucket the rest with the same 24h/72h/7d windows.

3. Append the Exa section to the briefing file under ## Exa — fresh news (N), with ### Today (N) / ### Last 3 days (N) / ### Earlier this week (N) subheaders that mirror the CLI sections. Each item:

   - [Title](url) — exa · 2026-05-19
   

   Use the Edit tool to append; do not rewrite the rest of the file.

Output (markdown)

# Topics briefing — 2026-05-19

## Hacker News (23)
### Today (8)
- [Title](url) — ★142 · 87 comments · alice · 2026-05-19
### Last 3 days (10)
- ...
### Earlier this week (5)
- ...

## Lobsters (...)
### Today (...)
- ...

## Newsletters & blogs (...)
### Today (...)
- ...

## Exa — fresh news (...)
### Today (...)
- [Title](url) — exa · 2026-05-19

CLI flags

• --limit N — items per source for HN/Lobsters (default 20). RSS uses a small fixed per-feed cap after the time filter.
• --out path — write to file (otherwise stdout).
• --json — emit merged JSON instead of formatted markdown (skips bucketing; Exa step is not run in JSON mode).

Cadence

• Run the briefing weekly via /loop weekly /briefing so each run lands at briefings/YYYY-MM-DD.md.
• The post-ideator skill reads the newest file in briefings/ automatically.
• Older files stay in the repo as a record of what was trending when.

When to use

Trigger phrases:

• "give me topic candidates for this week"
• "weekly briefing" / "topics briefing"
• "what should I post about on LinkedIn"
• "fetch all sources"

Per-source errors are logged to stderr but don't abort the run — you'll get whatever sources came back successfully. If Exa fails, append a single line under the section noting the failure and continue.