Daily News

Use when users need daily news summaries, current events, or want to stay informed about world news in Chinese.

Daily News Skill

This skill helps AI agents fetch and present daily curated news from the 60s API, which provides 15 selected news items plus a daily quote.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when users:

• Ask for today's news or current events
• Want a quick daily briefing
• Request news summaries in Chinese
• Need historical news from a specific date
• Want news in different formats (text, markdown, image)

How to Use

Execute the associated scripts/news.sh script to fetch the news.

./scripts/news.sh [options] [date]

Options

• --encoding, -e <format>: Optional. Specifies the output response format. Valid options are text, json, markdown, image, and image-proxy. The API defaults to json if not specified.
• --date, -d <YYYY-MM-DD>: Optional. Fetch historical news for a specific date. If omitted, fetches today's news. Note: If this is the only argument provided, you can omit the --date flag entirely.

Return Values

The script securely calls the 60s API and outputs the response to stdout. Depending on the encoding parameter, the response could be a JSON string, plain text, markdown, or image URLs.

Usage Examples

# Get today's news using default API encoding (json)
./scripts/news.sh

# Get today's news in plain text format
./scripts/news.sh --encoding text

# Get news for a specific date using flags
./scripts/news.sh --date 2024-03-01

# Get news for a specific date (simplified usage without flags)
./scripts/news.sh 2024-03-01

# Get news for a specific date in markdown format
./scripts/news.sh -e markdown -d 2024-03-01

Response Format

To balance information depth with token consumption when text-based output is needed, you MUST use the following rules for the encoding parameter. Note: If image output is requested, you should still use image or image-proxy.

1. Default Strategy (--encoding markdown)

   • When to use: By default for standard daily news inquiries.
   • Why: Provides well-structured, easy-to-read information with moderate token usage.

2. Brief Information (--encoding text)

   • When to use: When the user explicitly requests brief or summarized news.
   • Why: Returns only essential details in plain text, saving maximum tokens.

3. Complete Information (--encoding json)

   • When to use: Only when the user explicitly asks for raw data, detailed fields, or comprehensive data.
   • Why: Returns the complete API payload, which is highly token-heavy.

Troubleshooting

Issue: No data returned

• Solution: Try requesting previous dates (yesterday or the day before)
• The service tries latest 3 days automatically

Issue: Image not loading

• Solution: Use encoding=image-proxy instead of encoding=image
• The proxy endpoint directly returns image binary data

Issue: Old date requested

• Solution: Data is only available for recent dates
• Check the response status code