As developers, we spend a lot of time juggling different tools, websites, and dashboards just to get daily updates: weather forecasts, news headlines, or currency exchange rates. It can be tedious, repetitive, and prone to oversight. That’s why I decided to build a small personal automation tool — the Daily Recap Bot — to do it all for me.
In this article, I’ll walk through what the bot does, the tools and APIs it uses, and how you can implement a similar solution for your workflow.
Why Automate Daily Information?
The goal isn’t to build an enterprise-level system, but to save myself a few minutes each morning and reduce cognitive load. By automating the collection of information I care about, I can focus on the things that matter most.
Here’s what I wanted to achieve:
- Automatically fetch daily weather forecasts for my city.
- Retrieve top news headlines from a trusted news API.
- Get the current currency conversion rates for quick reference.
- Merge all of this information into a single, easily readable summary.
Tools and APIs I Used
- Weather Data: Open-Meteo — provides free weather forecasts via a simple API.
- News Headlines: GNews — fetches top news articles with optional filters for language, category, and country.
- Currency Rates: ExchangeRate.host — free API to convert between currencies.
- Python: For fetching data, processing JSON, and merging everything into a single summary.
- JSON: To store and combine all API responses for easy readability.
How the Bot Works
The core idea is simple:
- Fetch data from each API.
- Save each API response to a separate JSON file.
- Merge all JSON files into a single file.
- Generate a readable summary of the merged information.
This approach keeps everything organized and allows me to easily extend the bot in the future.
Benefits of This Automation
Using the Daily Recap Bot has made my mornings smoother and more efficient. Instead of opening multiple websites and apps, all the information I need is consolidated in one place. It saves time, reduces mental clutter, and ensures I don’t miss anything important.
Additionally, the system is highly customizable — I can easily add new APIs or data sources, making it flexible for different needs.
Next Steps
Even though this is a personal project, I plan to enhance it further. Some ideas include:
- Scheduling the bot to run automatically every morning.
- Sending the daily summary via email or chat for quick access.
- Adding additional APIs, like calendar events, GitHub notifications, or stock prices.
Conclusion
Automation doesn’t have to be complicated or enterprise-level. Sometimes a few APIs, some Python code, and a bit of JSON processing are all you need to make your daily workflow smoother.
If you want to see the project or experiment with it yourself, check out the GitHub repo.
Even small, personal automation projects can have a big impact on your productivity — and they’re a great way to practice your programming skills!
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