News Curator

Fetch RSS feeds via curl, curate, and deliver news briefings to Telegram. MiniMax M3, isolated cron sessions, curl-not-fetch.

Three daily briefings: morning (7:30am), afternoon (3pm), evening (10pm). Each uses a direct isolated cron session — no sub-agents, no sessions_yield, no spawn.

Architecture — Critical

DO NOT use sessions_spawn + sessions_yield. The yield causes the parent session file to change during the wait, triggering EmbeddedAttemptSessionTakeoverError. Instead:

• Cron fires sessionTarget: "isolated" with kind: "agentTurn"
• Agent does ALL work in one shot: curl feeds → parse XML → curate → output briefing
• Final response auto-delivers to Telegram via delivery.mode: "announce"
• No sessions_spawn, no sessions_yield, no send_message
• Explicitly tell the agent: "Use exec tool with curl. Do NOT use fetch tool." MiniMax defaults to fetch which returns HTML blocks on some RSS endpoints.

Prompt Essentials

Every news cron prompt MUST include:

1. "Use exec tool with curl. Do NOT use fetch tool." — MiniMax M3 prefers its built-in fetch tool which gets blocked by many RSS endpoints. curl -sL works. Without this line, the model will use fetch and fail.

2. "Final response = the briefing. Nothing else. No meta, no talk about what you did." — Without this, MiniMax often outputs a description of its process ("Gus fetched the feeds and curated 5 stories...") instead of the actual briefing.

3. Do NOT use "send_message" — The final reply auto-delivers. Using message tool causes duplicate delivery or errors.

4. "Real URLs from feeds only. No fake links." — The model may fabricate headlines.

5. List each curl command on its own line. The model will run them sequentially via exec tool.

Sources (verified working with curl -sL --max-time 25)

Type	Source	URL
AI	AI News	https://artificialintelligence-news.com/feed/
AI	TechCrunch AI	https://techcrunch.com/category/artificial-intelligence/feed/
AI	Wired	https://www.wired.com/feed/rss
AI	Ars Technica	https://arstechnica.com/feed/
AI	MIT Tech Review	https://www.technologyreview.com/topic/artificial-intelligence/feed/
Finance	Benzinga Markets	https://www.benzinga.com/markets/feed
Finance	Bloomberg Markets	https://feeds.bloomberg.com/markets/news.rss
Finance	Financial Times	https://www.ft.com/markets?format=rss
Finance	MarketWatch/Dow Jones	https://feeds.content.dowjones.io/public/rss/mw_topstories
Finance	Investing.com	https://www.investing.com/rss/news.rss
Finance	Seeking Alpha	https://seekingalpha.com/market_currents.xml

DO NOT use The Verge RSS (https://www.theverge.com/rss/ai-artificial-intelligence/index.xml) — returns HTML captcha, always blocked.

DO NOT use Google News RSS — 400 error.

DO NOT use Nasdaq RSS — returns empty/000.

Reuters, CNBC, Yahoo Finance RSS feeds also unreliable (block flakily). Stick to the verified list above.

Filtering rules

Skip: crypto, forex, personal finance ("I have $X saved what do I do"), NFT, price predictions, spam, earnings transcript full text, obituaries, press releases.

Prefer: major AI lab/product/policy news, big market swings, Fed/rates signals, tech positioning, AI capex reality checks, Nasdaq-moving events. Hobo likes knowing when to buy the dip.

Target 5-7 stories per briefing, split roughly half AI and half markets. 1500-3000 chars total.

Delivery format

Each cron's prompt has its own formatted template. General structure:

{{emoji}} *Patch {{time}} briefing* [time SGT]

*AI & TECH*
1. [Headline](full url) — one punchy sentence

*MARKETS & MONEY*
1. [Headline](full url) — what moved, signal for tech

*NOTES*
Feeds that failed, if any.

~ Patch

Emojis: morning 🌅, afternoon 🌤️, evening 🌙.

Cron schedule & collision avoidance

CRITICAL: With maxConcurrentRuns: 2, any two crons firing at the same minute will collide and trigger EmbeddedAttemptSessionTakeoverError. Every cron's minute must be unique.

Time	Cron	Notes
07:30	Morning news	✅ unique
09:00	Transport check-in	✅
09:03, 09:37	Pi Dashboard	odd minutes avoid :00
09:34	Expense Sync to Sheet	was 09:30, moved to avoid collision
10:00	Expense Check-in 10am	✅
~:05	Token Usage Tracker	0 * * * * + staggerMs 300000
:07	Regenerate Memory Dashboard	7 * * * * fixed minute
13:30	Expense Check-in 1:30pm	✅
15:00	Afternoon news	✅ unique
21:50	Expense Check-in 10pm	✅
22:00	Evening news	✅ unique
23:50	Daily Memory Log	✅ unique
00:00	Backup workspace	✅ unique (every 2 days)
Sat 10:00	Investment Check-in	shares minute with Expense Check-in 10am — watch for collision
Sat 11:00	Investment Sync	✅ unique
Sun 05:00	Weekly Security Audit	✅ unique

Rule: Never put two crons on the same minute. If unavoidable, shift one by 3-5 minutes.

Model config

Parameter	Value
Model	minimax/MiniMax-M3
Fallbacks	deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash, openrouter/auto
Timeout	300s (ample — typical run ~70s)
Thinking	Not explicitly set (cron session inherits default)

MiniMax M3 is the primary. DeepSeek V4 Flash falls back cleanly if MiniMax times out. The EmbeddedAttemptSessionTakeoverError only happens when two crons share a minute, not from model issues.

Session setup

• sessionTarget: "isolated" — fresh session per run, no memory of previous chats
• sessionKey — unique per cron (e.g. session:cron:patch-news-morning-briefing)
• delivery.mode: "announce" — agent's final response auto-sent to Telegram
• delivery.to: "37134287" — Hobo's chat ID

What NOT to do (lessons from failures)

1. No spawn + yield — sessions_spawn + sessions_yield triggers session file fence check failure
2. No sub-agents for this — the isolated session already is a fresh session. Adding a sub-agent wrapper adds the yield problem and extra cost for no benefit
3. No sending to the main Telegram session — give each cron its own sessionKey. Main session key collisions cause lock contention
4. Don't use the fetch tool — MiniMax's built-in fetch blocks on many RSS endpoints. Force exec + curl
5. Don't skip "no meta" instructions — MiniMax defaults to verbose meta-commentary about what it did instead of outputting the briefing
6. Don't put two crons on the same minute — maxConcurrentRuns: 2 still causes session file races when both fire simultaneously. Offset by at least 3 minutes

Legacy

• fetch-news.py — old script for parallel RSS fetching (no longer used)
• news-pending/ — directory for old 2-step flow (no longer used)
• send-news.sh, deliver-news.sh — legacy shell wrappers (deprecated)
• All replaced by direct isolated cron agentTurn with inline curl