What I Built

I'm currently volunteering on the Communications team at a sustainability nonprofit, GreenHomeNYC. One reason I volunteered was to keeps up with initiatives that drive a more sustainable lifestyle. Volunteers and board members communicate through Slack but on particular channel inthenews could use more life. I created a bot that will post a digest of articles on a set schedule.

Code

kelsey-d / sustainability-reporter

Slack bot posting the latest in sustainability news

Sustainability News Digest

A Slack bot that posts a daily digest of sustainability news, summarized by Google AI.

What It Does

Fetches the latest sustainability news from a free News API
Uses Google AI (Gemini) to generate a concise, insightful summary
Posts the digest to a Slack channel via webhook
Runs automatically on a schedule using GitHub Actions

Tech Stack

Language: TypeScript
Runtime: Node.js
AI: Google Gemini
News Source: GNews API
Slack: Incoming Webhooks
Automation: GitHub Actions (scheduled cron)

Setup Instructions

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/sustainability-news-digest.git
cd sustainability-news-digest

2. Set up environment variables

Create a .env file in the root of the project:

NEWS_API_KEY=your_news_api_key
GOOGLE_AI_API_KEY=your_google_ai_key
SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL=your_slack_webhook_url

Run on a Schedule (GitHub Actions)

This repository includes a GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/scheduled-digest.yml) that runs the bot daily. To enable it:

Fork this repository
Add your secrets (NEWS_API_KEY, GOOGLE_AI_API_KEY, SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL) in the repo Settings &gt…

View on GitHub

How I Built It

I started this challenge at 6pm EDT on Sunday so I was pretty pressed for time. I already had the idea to create a Slack bot but I didn't know how ridiculously easy it would be. I had DeepSeek come up with a project timeline for me. ## Build Timeline

Time (EDT)	Duration	Task
6:00 PM	30 min	Setup & Key Procurement – Sign up for News API, create Slack App, get webhook URL
6:30 PM	1 hr	Project Scaffolding & News Fetch – Initialize project, write script to fetch news
7:30 PM	15 min	Break
7:45 PM	1.5 hrs	Google AI Integration – Format news and generate AI summary
9:15 PM	15 min	Break
9:30 PM	1 hr	Slack Integration – Format and post digest to Slack
10:30 PM	15 min	Break
10:45 PM	1.5 hrs	Deploy & Automate – Push to GitHub, set up GitHub Action
12:15 AM	15 min	Break
12:30 AM	1.5 hrs	Polish & Documentation – Write README, clean up code
2:00 AM	59 min	Final Submission Prep – Screenshot, write Dev.to post, submit
2:59 AM		DEADLINE – Submit your project!

Did I follow the timeline to a T? No, but I did go in this exact order. I gathered up all the variable I needed (keys and urls) GNews, Gemini and Slack.

DEV Community

Sustainability Reporter Slack Bot