news-monitor

News Monitor

Find distinct recent events, read a source for every published event, and deliver a chronological briefing.

Tools

Before using tools, read source-access.md completely.

Use an available news-search tool, preferring a callable name ending in duckduckgo_news_search. Use regular search ending in duckduckgo_search only to fill coverage gaps. Read pages with a fetch tool ending in web_fetch. Client-added prefixes vary, so inspect the tools in the session.

Without session tools, run the packaged CLI in an isolated environment:

uvx --python '>=3.10,<3.14' web-forager news "your query" --max-results 10 --output-format json
uvx --python '>=3.10,<3.14' web-forager fetch "https://example.com" --format markdown

If uvx cannot run packaged news search, use ddgs without touching the current project environment:

uv run --no-project --python '>=3.10,<3.14' --with 'ddgs>=9.5.2' python - <<'PY'
from ddgs import DDGS
results = DDGS().news(query="your query", max_results=10)
for r in results:
    print(r["date"], r["title"], r["url"], r["source"])
PY

If packaged fetch fails, use Jina Reader:

curl -s "https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com"

The workflow requires both search and fetch; state what is missing if either is unavailable.

Workflow

1. Set the window

Identify the topic, time frame, and angle. Use the user's window when supplied; otherwise cover the last 2–4 weeks. Ask only when an unresolved ambiguity would materially change the search.

Complete when: the inclusion window and topic boundaries are explicit.

2. Search for events

Start with 1–2 news searches with distinct angles and [current year] where useful. Combine the results before selecting stories. Check their distribution across the requested period, relevant subtopics, and independent outlets. If results cluster on one date, outlet, or subtopic, expand with narrower subperiods, focused queries, and primary announcements. Use regular search to recover coverage gaps, including a failed news provider. Keep failed searches separate from successful searches with no matches. Event counts are presentation targets, not evidence that discovery is complete.