In this post, I'm going to show you how easy it is to make an automated newsletter or report generator for your inbox using NoteTech in under a minute.
If you haven't already, download NoteTech now by joining the beta.
Cut to the chase
To prove my point, before diving into details in this blog, I'm just going to share exactly what you need to do.
Instructions
In the app home screen, create a new Auto note.
Copy the following note:
Tesla AV Newsletter Generator
Trigger
This auto runs every Thursday at 9am pst.
Actions
1. Search for news about Tesla autonomous vehicles from the past week.
2. Include results that discuss new updates.
3. Use results to generate a newsletter about Tesla's AV efforts for shareholders
Output
Send results to my account email.
3. Modify the note as-needed for your use case by changing:
The trigger time or days
The news search query (or queries)
What articles to include
The specifics on the kind of newsletter or content you want to create.
4. Click Deploy.
Your automation is now live!
Here's a short clip showing what this looks like:
Told you it was easy! Ok, let's dig in a bit more...
What are we making
NoteTech is the world's first "note-code" platform that allows you to build data-driven automations, tools, and applets by simply writing notes.
NoteTech has a number of different integrations, including news and AI. Today, we're going to show you how to use these integrations to build a newsletter generator that sends content straight to your inbox.
Why are we making it
Aggregating data from different sources and using it to generate insights or other content is a common task that's both repetitive and boring. The example we're making today shows how NoteTech can simplify this kind of task.
In our case, the data we're aggregating is news articles, and we're using AI to generate content from that data. However, the note follows a general pattern that you can adapt to data from other sources supported by NoteTech.
What are the other use cases
Here are a just few other use cases you can meet using this type of note:
Create structured reports from targeted news queries, such as for monitoring portfolio companies, competing products, financial and foreign markets, etc.
Generate topical digests that aggregate data across multiple sources, like AI trends from news articles, AI subreddits, and arXiv abstracts.
Create local newsletters to stay up to date on local news.
What's in a note
NoteTech works by using generative AI to synchronize your note with a custom automation under-the-hood.
The automation described by our example has the following components:
A Trigger that runs the automation on a certain day and time.
A series of Actions that run a news search, filters articles by content, and generates a newsletter using AI.
An Output that sends the result to the account email.
In a sense, the automation is just an AI-enhanced data query, filter, and aggregation that runs on a schedule.
Let's dig into each section.
Trigger
Trigger
This auto runs every Thursday at 9am pst.
This automation uses a day and time trigger. Since it's intended to be a weekly newsletter, it's set to run once a week.
You can configure a day and time trigger as follows:
Days: you can specify what days of the week you want the auto to run.
Time: you can specify either a specific time, or a cadence (every hour, 30 mins., or 15 mins.)
Actions
Actions
1. Search for news about Tesla autonomous vehicles from the past week.
2. Include results that discuss new updates.
3. Use results to generate a newsletter about Tesla's AV efforts for shareholders
Once triggered, automations execute a set of actions in sequence. In this example, it does the following:
Runs a news search for the query "Tesla autonomous vehicles", limiting to articles from the past week.
Filters the results to only include articles that discuss new updates. This step uses AI and the article's content to see if it matches the filter.
Uses the filter results to generate a newsletter using AI.
Let's dive deeper on each one.
News search
1. Search for news about Tesla autonomous vehicles from the past week.
This first action retrieves news articles using an API. In this example, we are doing so via a search query ("Tesla autonomous vehicles").
Generally speaking, you can retrieve news in different ways:
Retrieve top news - this gets the latest trending news.
Retrieve news by search query - this gets news from a search queries.
Retrieve news by location.
Retrieve top news by topic, like business or science.
Note that you can run multiple queries in one automation, and you can also specify how far back you want to go (defaults to a week).
Filter
2. Include results that discuss new updates.
The second action is a content filter.
NoteTech supports two kinds of filters: keyword filters and content filters.
Keywords filters are as they sound - you can include or exclude content based on the presence of certain keywords.
Content filters, by contrast, use AI to "read" the content of the data (an article, in our case) and determine if it matches what you're looking for. This allows you to "filter" for topics, themes, and concepts that aren't easily expressed using keywords.
In our example, we're using the content filter to only include articles about new updates, but you could filter for something else like "Include results that contain roadmap or timeline updates for AV features."
Generate content
3. Use results to generate a newsletter about Tesla's AV efforts for shareholders.
Finally, we use the filtered results to generate a newsletter.
This last action uses an LLM, along with the data, to generate the output described. Whatever we include in this action will be inserted into the model's prompt, so you can really be as detailed, specific, or creative as you'd like.
Since this uses an LLM, the output format may be inconsistent - we recommend specifying exactly what you want in as much detail to get a consistent result.
For example, in this instance we could say:
3. Use results to generate a newsletter about Tesla's AV efforts for shareholders. Structure the newsletter as a concise, engaging update. Include sections like 'Highlights', 'Recent Developments', and 'Looking Ahead'. Start with key points from Tesla's AV initiatives, detail recent advancements and partnerships, and conclude with expected future projects and goals. Ensure the tone is informative and professional, suitable for shareholders.
You can really use this particular action to create whatever you need, as you would any LLM.
Output
Output
Send results to my account email.
Last but not least, the output of the automation. This section describes where the results are sent.
In this example, they're sent to the email alias attached to the user's account. This is the only email that can be used.
Next steps
And there you have it - now you know how to make an automated newsletter or report generator for your inbox using NoteTech!
To learn more about all the features available on NoteTech, and how to write notes using these features, please go to the Features page.
Join the beta now and start writing!