Why I built a free daily digest that sends exactly 4 AI signals

*Tags: ai, productivity

It started with a tired feeling: every morning I had 12 AI newsletters, 30 browser tabs and one existential question — what actually mattered yesterday?

So I built the opposite of a firehose.

The rule: four items. One per source.

Signals 4 sends a daily email with exactly four signals — one each from:

• GitHub (what repo is taking off)
• Hugging Face (what model is trending)
• YouTube (which deep-dive or tutorial is worth 20 minutes)
• Silicon Valley (the story behind the news)

Each item is: a title, a one-line takeaway, and the original link. No editorial layer between you and the source. Two minutes, done.

Why exactly four?

Because "curation" fails when it becomes another firehose. A 50-item newsletter trains you to skim; four items train you to read. Four also forces us to make a call: if GitHub's #1 repo isn't worth your morning, we say so.

Why "back to source" matters

Most AI news is retold and click-baited before it reaches you. Every signal in Signals 4 links straight to the original URL with its publish time — so you can judge freshness, credibility, and dig deeper yourself. For researchers that means citable sources; for investors, defensible decisions; for creators, safe references.

Where it fits

• Free daily digest: signals 4 (see below)
• Paid tiers add the full board system (18–34 boards, per-board Top N), API access and history — for people who want to go deeper or build on the data.

Try it (free, no card)

👉 https://data.jiangzhang.ca/signals4/go?to=landing&src=devto
👉 or subscribe to the free digest directly: https://data.jiangzhang.ca/signals4/go?to=subscribe&src=devto

Feedback very welcome — what would you add or cut?