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Daily

Get a daily Telegram news digest on your own topics

Each morning a short summary of the news on the topics in your sheet arrives in Telegram, and every digest is logged.

Runs
Daily
Apps
Google Sheets, Telegram
AI
Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access
Sheets read+write; Telegram bot token

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every day at 8am, fetch news for each topic in my Topics sheet, summarise the top stories and send me the digest on Telegram. Log what was sent in the sheet.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A founder of a small logistics software company needs to keep up with freight rates, a couple of competitors' markets and new regulation. Checking several news sites each morning eats half an hour, and on busy days it does not happen at all, so important stories are found a week late.

A digest built from a list of topics in a sheet gives one short read in Telegram before the day starts. Founders, analysts, consultants and account managers who follow a client's industry use it to stay informed without opening a dozen tabs.

What you get out of it

  • One short read instead of many sites

    The top stories for each topic are pulled together and summarised in a few lines. You get the gist in a couple of minutes and open the full article only when it matters.

  • Topics you control from a sheet

    Adding a client, a product or a regulation to follow means adding a row. Removing a topic that no longer matters is just as quick, so the digest stays relevant.

  • Arrives where you already look

    Telegram is on your phone, so the digest is read over breakfast or on the commute. It does not sit unopened in a crowded inbox.

  • A record of what you were told

    Each digest is logged in the sheet with its date and topics. When you need to find a story from last month, you can search the log instead of trying to remember where you saw it.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every day at 8am, ClickRuntime reads your list of topics from the Topics sheet.

  2. It collects the latest headlines and links for each topic from public news feeds.

  3. AI writes a short digest of the most important stories, grouped by topic.

  4. The digest is sent to you on Telegram, and a row with the date and topics is added to the Log tab.

Before it runs live

  • Connect your Google Sheets account and pick the spreadsheets it may use
  • Connect Telegram

What you get

RunsDaily
Get a daily Telegram news digest on your own topicstoday, 9:00Succeeded
Telegram · News botFreight rates: Contoso Shipping raises Asia–Europe container rates for the third week running. Regulation: EU confirms new e-invoicing deadline for 2027.

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

  • Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
  • Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
  • Combine it with other Google Sheets and Telegram steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
daily_news_digest_on_telegram_from_topics_in_a_sheet.pyexample
from datetime import date
from urllib.parse import quote
import feedparser
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, ai, log

SHEET_ID, CHAT_ID = "your-spreadsheet-id", "your-chat-id"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    values = build("sheets", "v4", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")),
                   cache_discovery=False).spreadsheets().values()
    topics = [r[0] for r in values.get(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Topics!A2:A").execute().get("values", []) if r]
    lines = []
    for t in topics:
        feed = feedparser.parse(http.get(f"https://news.google.com/rss/search?q={quote(t)}").content)
        lines += [f"[{t}] {e.title} {e.link}" for e in feed.entries[:4]]
    try:
        digest = ai.generate("Write a short news digest grouped by topic, one line per story, keep links:\n" + "\n".join(lines),
                             max_output_tokens=900).text
    except ai.AIError as e:
        log.warning("AI unavailable, sending headlines", {"code": e.code})
        digest = "\n".join(lines)
    http.post(f"https://api.telegram.org/bot{credentials.secret('TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN')}/sendMessage",
              json={"chat_id": CHAT_ID, "text": digest[:4000]})
    values.append(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Log!A:C", valueInputOption="RAW",
                  body={"values": [[date.today().isoformat(), ", ".join(topics), len(lines)]]}).execute()
    return {"topics": len(topics), "stories": len(lines)}

FAQ

Common questions

Where does the news come from?
Each topic is looked up in public news feeds, which cover major outlets and many trade publications. You can also put a specific feed address in the sheet next to a topic to follow a particular site.
How many stories are included per topic?
The digest keeps the few most recent stories for each topic so it stays short. If a topic is very busy, narrowing its wording in the sheet gives more focused results.
Does it link to the original articles?
Yes. Each summarised story keeps its link, so you can open the full article from Telegram when a headline needs a closer read.
What permissions does it need?
Sheets read+write; Telegram bot token. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
Yes. It uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI, so you don't need an OpenAI or Anthropic key. Every plan includes a monthly AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it runs (daily). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up “Get a daily Telegram news digest on your own topics” from your assistant

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