Daily Slack news briefing for today's external meetings

Every weekday at 7am in my local time, prep me for the day's external meetings using Google Calendar, GDELT, and Slack. The trigger is a cron schedule.

Step 1. Use Google Calendar's List Events on my primary calendar for today's window (from now through end of day in my time zone, singleEvents=true so recurring instances expand). Keep only events that have at least one attendee whose email domain is not my own internal domain and not a common free-mail domain (gmail.com, yahoo.com, outlook.com, hotmail.com, icloud.com, aol.com, proton.me, protonmail.com). Drop internal-only meetings and obvious recurring 1:1s (titles like "1:1" with only one other attendee from my company).

Step 2. For each remaining meeting, infer the prospect or customer company from the non-internal, non-free-mail attendee domain. If multiple external domains are present, pick the one that appears most often, breaking ties by the domain of the organizer or the longest-tenured attendee. Use the bare second-level domain as the company hint (e.g. acme.com -> Acme).

Step 3. For each company, call GDELT Search News Articles (DOC 2.0) over the last 14 days with sourcelang:english, mode=artlist, sorted by relevance, with the company name in quotes plus a few high-signal operators. Prioritize material signals: funding rounds, M&A, leadership changes, layoffs, product launches, lawsuits, earnings, regulatory actions, executive quotes. De-duplicate by title and root domain, and filter out low-signal syndicated noise (press release wires repeating the same headline, SEO content farms, stock-ticker boilerplate).

Step 4. Use your judgment to decide whether each meeting has meaningful news. "Meaningful" means at least one concrete material event in the last 14 days, not just a passing mention in a roundup.

Step 5. Send a single grouped briefing via Slack Send a Message to my chosen channel or DM. Format it as one message with: a short header for today's date and the count of meetings briefed; then one section per meeting that has news, with the meeting title and time, the company name, three to five bullet points of what happened with article links (use Slack mrkdwn link syntax), and a one-line "talk track" suggestion for breaking the ice. For meetings with no notable news, list them briefly under a "No fresh news" footer at the bottom so I still see the full external agenda.

Setup inputs to ask me for: my internal email domain (or domains), the Slack channel or DM to post to, the run time (default 7am weekdays in my local time zone), and the news lookback window (default 14 days). Skip the run entirely if I have zero qualifying external meetings today.

Additional information

What does this prompt do?

Reads your Google Calendar each morning and finds every meeting today that has at least one external attendee.
Pulls recent news on each prospect or customer company, focusing on material signals like funding, leadership changes, layoffs, product launches, lawsuits, and earnings.
Sends you one grouped Slack message with three to five bullets per meeting, article links, and a suggested talk track to open with.
Skips internal-only meetings and quietly lists any external meetings with no fresh news so you still see the full agenda.

What do I need to use this?

A Google Calendar account connected to General Input.
A Slack workspace where the briefing should land (a channel or your own DMs).
A short list of email domains that count as internal so personal teammates do not get treated as prospects.

How can I customize it?

Change the run time or weekday schedule to fit your morning routine.
Send to a different Slack channel or to your own DM instead of a shared channel.
Tune the news lookback window or the kinds of signals you care about, like adding regulatory filings or removing product launches.

Frequently asked questions

Does this read every meeting on my calendar?

No. It only briefs meetings today that have at least one external attendee. Internal-only meetings and recurring 1:1s are skipped so you do not get noise about your own teammates.

Where does the news come from?

From GDELT, a free public news index that covers worldwide articles in 65+ languages. The brief prioritizes material signals like funding, mergers, leadership changes, layoffs, product launches, lawsuits, and earnings, and filters out low-signal syndicated noise.

What if a meeting has no recent news?

It still shows up in a short no-fresh-news footer at the end of the message so you can see your full agenda. The bulk of the briefing focuses on the meetings where there is something worth saying.

Can I get this in a private channel or a DM instead of a public channel?

Yes. You pick the destination when you set it up. A self-DM is a common choice so the brief is just for you.

How does it figure out which company each meeting is about?

It looks at the email domains of external attendees and skips your own company plus common free-mail providers like gmail.com. The remaining domain is treated as the prospect or customer for that meeting.