Daily industry news digest to Slack with Google Sheets archive

Build me a deterministic daily industry-news digest workflow. No AI summarization or judgement: it is a fixed pipeline with three known steps, and the value is the consistent daily snapshot plus a growing searchable archive.

Trigger: cron, every weekday (Monday through Friday) at 8:00 AM in my local timezone. Expose the cron expression and topic/country/channel/spreadsheet as configurable inputs so I can tweak them after the workflow is created.

Step 1 — fetch headlines. Call Real-Time News Data's Topic Headlines operation with a configured topic (default TECHNOLOGY, but allow any of the standard enums: WORLD, NATIONAL, BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS, SCIENCE, HEALTH), a configured country code (default us), language en, and limit 10. Keep the top 10 stories as the working list.

Step 2 — post to Slack. Use the Slack Bot integration's Send a Message operation to post one message to a configured channel. The message should be a single chunk of mrkdwn that starts with a date header (for example, *Daily TECHNOLOGY Headlines — Wed, Jun 24 2026*), then a bulleted list of the 10 stories formatted as `• <link|Headline> — Publisher`. Use Slack's `<url|text>` link syntax, not standard Markdown. If a publisher name is missing, fall back to the source domain.

Step 3 — append to Google Sheets. Use the Append Values operation to append one row per headline to a configured spreadsheet and sheet tab (default tab name: Headlines). Columns, in order: run_date (ISO date in my timezone), topic, rank (1 through 10), headline, publisher, url, published_at (ISO timestamp from the article). Use valueInputOption USER_ENTERED so dates and links render nicely. Append all 10 rows in a single call.

Error handling: if the news call returns fewer than 10 stories, post and log whatever we got and add a small note at the bottom of the Slack message saying how many were returned. If the Slack post fails, still try the Sheets append so the archive is never silently skipped. If the Sheets append fails, post a short follow-up Slack message saying the archive write failed so I notice. Do not retry the news call within a single run.

Integrations to use: real-time-news-data (Topic Headlines), slackbot (Send a Message), google-sheets (Append Values). Workflow type: code (discrete nodes, deterministic flow, no agent reasoning between steps).

Additional information

What does this prompt do?

Posts a clean, dated list of the top 10 industry headlines to your chosen Slack channel every weekday morning.
Logs every single headline to a Google Sheet, one row per story, with date, topic, rank, publisher, link, and publish time.
Builds a permanent searchable archive of your industry's news over weeks and months for trend lookups and recall.
Runs on a fixed schedule with the same steps every day, so the digest looks the same on Monday as it does six months later.

What do I need to use this?

A Slack workspace where the General Input bot can post to your chosen news channel.
A Google account with edit access to the spreadsheet that will hold your headline archive.
A Real-Time News Data account (free Basic plan is fine) to fetch the headlines.
A topic to follow (Technology, Business, World, Sports, Science, Health, or another preset) and a country code.

How can I customize it?

Change the time, days, or timezone the digest runs (for example, 7am ET Monday through Friday, or every day at 9am UK time).
Swap the topic, country, or number of headlines (top 5 instead of top 10) to match what your team actually cares about.
Pick a different Slack channel, post to multiple channels, or send it as a DM to yourself instead.
Add extra spreadsheet columns (your own notes, a read or unread flag, a category tag) without breaking the daily append.

Frequently asked questions

Does this use AI to summarize the news?

No. This is a deterministic digest. It pulls the top headlines, posts them, and logs them. The same input always produces the same output, which makes the archive trustworthy for trend lookups.

What topics can I follow?

You can pick from the standard categories like Technology, Business, World, Entertainment, Sports, Science, and Health, or use a specific Google News topic or publication. The default is whatever you set during setup, and you can change it any time.

How do I change which Slack channel it posts to?

Open the workflow, change the channel in the Slack step, and save. You can also post to multiple channels or send the digest as a direct message instead.

What happens to the spreadsheet over time?

It just grows. One row per headline, every weekday. After a few weeks you have a searchable archive you can filter, sort, and pivot to spot trends, repeat coverage, or hot publishers in your space.

Can I run it on weekends or change the time?

Yes. The schedule is fully editable. Pick any days of the week, any time, and any timezone.