Weekly earthquake briefing in Notion: USGS recap every Monday

Every Monday at 09:00 local time, generate a weekly seismic activity briefing and publish it as a new page in Notion so my team has a narrative record of the week's notable earthquakes.

Trigger: a cron schedule that fires once a week, Monday at 09:00 in my local time zone. Make the weekday, time, and time zone easy to change.

Data gathering from the USGS Earthquake service:

1. Call Query Earthquakes for the past 7 days with minmagnitude = 4.5 to get the headline events. Use format = geojson and an explicit starttime and endtime so the window is exact.

2. Call Query Earthquakes a second time for the same 7-day window filtered to alertlevel = orange and alertlevel = red (regardless of magnitude) so PAGER-tagged impact events are always captured, even if they were below 4.5.

3. Call Count Earthquakes twice at minmagnitude = 2.5: once for the past 7 days and once for the prior 7 days. Use these counts for the week-over-week comparison. The common docs explicitly recommend Count Earthquakes over re-running the full catalog query for totals.

Synthesis: write an analyst-style briefing, not a raw event dump. Prioritize, group, and explain. The brief should have these sections:

- Top 5 events of the week. Rank by a blend of magnitude and PAGER alert level. For each event include magnitude (with magnitude type), place, depth in km, PAGER alert color, tsunami flag, and the USGS event detail URL.

- Regions with elevated activity. Group the 4.5+ events by FE region or country and call out clusters or aftershock sequences in plain language.

- PAGER orange and red events. For any event with alert = orange or red, summarize the population exposure and impact context (PAGER ordering is green, yellow, orange, red ascending).

- Week-over-week comparison. Compare the M2.5+ count for the past 7 days to the prior 7 days as both a raw number and a percent change, and add a one-line interpretation.

Publish to Notion:

1. Call Create a Page under a configured parent (page or database) with the title formatted as "Seismic Weekly: {Mon DD} to {Mon DD}" using the window's start and end dates.

2. Call Append Block Children to populate the page with: an H2 for each section above, bulleted lists for the event details, and a callout block at the top with the quick stats (total M4.5+ count, total M2.5+ count, orange/red event count, week-over-week delta).

Notes on quality:

- Treat USGS timestamps as Unix milliseconds and render them in my local time zone in the brief.

- If a week is quiet (no M4.5+ events), still publish the page. State that explicitly, include the M2.5+ context count, and surface any orange/red PAGER events anyway.

- The Notion connection only sees pages that have been explicitly shared with it, so the destination page or database must be shared with the General Input connection.

- Keep the tone analyst-like: prioritize, interpret, and provide context. Do not paste raw JSON.

Additional information

What does this prompt do?

Pulls the past week's significant earthquakes (magnitude 4.5 and above) plus any orange or red PAGER alert events from the USGS global catalog.
Writes a narrative briefing with featured events, regions seeing elevated activity, population impact context, and a week-over-week count comparison.
Publishes the brief as a new Notion page titled with the date range, formatted with section headers, bulleted event lists, and a quick stats callout.
Reads like an analyst memo, not a raw data dump, so the team gets a real record of the seismic week.

What do I need to use this?

A Notion workspace, with a parent page or database shared with General Input where the weekly brief should be created.
A preferred local time and weekday for the briefing to run (defaults to Monday at 9am).

How can I customize it?

Change the day and time the brief is generated (for example, Friday afternoon instead of Monday morning).
Raise or lower the magnitude threshold for featured events, or narrow the search to a specific region or country.
Adjust the Notion destination, the page title format, or the sections included in the brief.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a paid USGS account to run this?

No. The USGS earthquake catalog is a free public data source, so no account or API key is required on the seismic side.

Where does the brief get published in Notion?

Wherever you point it. You pick a parent page or database in your workspace, share that page with the General Input connection, and the new weekly brief is created underneath it.

Can I change the time it runs?

Yes. The schedule, the day of the week, and the time zone are all configurable when you set the workflow up.

What if there are no notable earthquakes that week?

The brief still publishes. It notes the quiet week, includes the magnitude 2.5 and above count for context, and highlights any PAGER orange or red events even if they were below the usual threshold.

Can I focus the brief on one country or region?

Yes. You can scope the search to a bounding box or a radius around a specific place, and the regional groupings will reflect that focus.