Daily Briefing

What this is

A single HTML file, rebuilt every morning, that summarizes your world. Not a dashboard you have to check — a briefing that comes to you. It reads your calendar, your email, your messages, your goals, and tells you what changed overnight, what's urgent today, and what you accomplished yesterday.

This is The Shape of a Day turned into an executable guide. The briefing is a file, not an app. It lives in a folder. An agent generates it. You read it with your coffee. If a section is useless, you tell the agent. The briefing improves itself.

The most important design decision: wins first. The briefing opens with what you accomplished yesterday, not what's overdue. Momentum, not anxiety. Urgency comes second, clearly marked, impossible to miss — but not the first thing you see.

What goes in it

1. Wins

What you accomplished yesterday. Pulled from git commits, sent messages, completed tasks, calendar events that happened. The agent reads your activity and distills it. "Shipped the flywheel guide. Had the pod logistics call. Hit the gym." Three to five wins. Start the day knowing you made progress.

2. Action required

What needs attention today. Deadlines, expiring items, unanswered threads that are aging. Color-coded: red for urgent (today or overdue), amber for soon (this week), teal for tracking (no deadline, just open). Each item has context — not just "follow up with Alex" but why and what's at stake.

3. Calendar

Today's events plus the next few days. Pulled from Google Calendar API or .ics export. Time, title, location, and any prep notes. The agent flags conflicts and unusually busy days. If you have nothing scheduled, it says so — that's information too.

4. Email highlights

Not your whole inbox — the emails that matter. The agent reads subject lines and senders, flags anything from known contacts, anything with urgency signals, anything that's a reply to something you sent. Two to five highlights, each with a one-line summary. The rest can wait.

5. Messages

Recent text conversations, rendered as chat bubbles with timestamps. The agent summarizes each thread: who said what, what's pending, what needs a reply. This is where you see the human texture of your day — not just tasks, but relationships.

6. Goals snapshot

Your active goals with status badges. Pulled from a goals file you maintain (a markdown file, a few lines each). The agent checks each goal against recent activity and updates the status: on track, stalled, urgent, waiting, done. Goals that haven't moved in a week get flagged.

7. Reminders

Bills, renewals, appointments coming up, things you told the agent to remind you about. A simple list at the bottom. Deadlines within 7 days are highlighted.

Data sources

You don't need all of these. Start with calendar and a goals file. Add sources as they become useful. Each source has a collection method — some are API calls, some are file reads, some are exports you run manually.

The output

The briefing is a self-contained HTML file. Inline CSS, no dependencies, opens in any browser. The agent regenerates it each morning. Previous briefings are archived by date so you can look back.

Design principles

• Wins first. Momentum before anxiety. You start the day knowing you're making progress.
• Urgency is visual. Red, amber, teal. You don't have to read every word to know what's on fire.
• Interpretation, not just data. The agent doesn't dump raw calendar events — it tells you why they matter. "You have three meetings today — that's unusually heavy."
• Conversations as chat bubbles. Text messages render as actual conversations, not summaries. The human texture matters.
• The briefing improves itself. If you never read a section, the agent notices (via the flywheel). Sections that don't earn attention get dropped. Sections you ask about get added.
• Sensitivity-aware. Personal, medical, financial content is tagged. The briefing you generate for yourself can include everything. A version you share can filter.
• A file, not an app. No server, no login, no subscription. It's HTML in a folder. Open it in a browser. That's it.

The handoff