Daily News GitHub Action

A small GitHub Action that posts a daily news summary into your repository's Discussions or wiki. It pulls live headlines from the newsdata.io news API (https://newsdata.io) — grab a free API key to run it — and renders them as Markdown with source, date, keyword tags, and, when your plan provides them, per-article sentiment and an AI summary line.

It's written as a composite action that runs a small Node script (Node 18+, no bundled dependencies), so there's nothing to build or vendor.

What it does

• Fetches the latest articles for an optional keyword/country/category filter.
• Builds a Markdown digest: a sentiment overview plus one block per headline.
• Posts the digest as a new repository Discussion, or writes it to a wiki page.
• Can also print the digest to the log (dry-run) so you can preview it.
• Degrades cleanly on the free plan: paid-only response fields (sentiment, AI tags, AI summary) are simply omitted or shown as a clearly-labeled sample, and paid-only query parameters are dropped automatically if the API rejects them.

Setup

1. Get a free API key from newsdata.io (https://newsdata.io) and add it to your repository as a secret named NEWSDATA_API_KEY (Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions).
2. For the default discussion target, enable Discussions for the repository (Settings → General → Features) and make sure the category you want to post in exists (the default is Announcements).
3. Add a workflow like the one below.

# .github/workflows/daily-news.yml
name: Daily news

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 13 * * *'   # every day at 13:00 UTC
  workflow_dispatch:

permissions:
  discussions: write
  contents: read

jobs:
  news:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: your-name/news-github-action@v1
        with:
          api-key: ${{ secrets.NEWSDATA_API_KEY }}
          target: discussion
          discussion-category: Announcements
          country: us
          category: technology
          language: en

To write to the wiki instead, create the wiki first (open the Wiki tab and add any page), then:

    permissions:
      contents: write
    steps:
      - uses: your-name/news-github-action@v1
        with:
          api-key: ${{ secrets.NEWSDATA_API_KEY }}
          target: wiki
          wiki-page: Daily-News

Inputs

Input	Default	Description
api-key	—	newsdata.io API key (required). Pass a secret.
github-token	${{ github.token }}	Token used to post. Needs discussions: write for Discussions, or contents: write for the wiki.
target	discussion	discussion, wiki, or stdout.
discussion-category	Announcements	Existing Discussion category name.
wiki-page	Daily-News	Wiki page name when target: wiki.
query	—	Keyword filter (maps to q).
country	—	Comma-separated country codes, e.g. us,gb.
language	en	Comma-separated language codes.
category	—	Comma-separated newsdata.io categories, e.g. technology,business.
max-articles	10	Number of articles to include (the free plan returns up to 10 per request).
title-prefix	Daily news	Prefix for the post title.
enable-paid	false	Send paid-only query params (see below).
timeframe	—	Paid only: limit to the last N hours (used when enable-paid: true).
dry-run	false	Print the summary to the log instead of posting.

Outputs

Output	Description
url	URL of the created discussion (when target: discussion).

Optional paid configuration

The digest reads richer fields straight from each article when they are present: sentiment, ai_tag, and ai_summary. These require a paid newsdata.io plan. On a free key they are absent, so the sentiment overview is shown as a labeled sample and the per-article badges/summary are simply skipped — keyword tags (free) are always shown.

Set enable-paid: true to also send paid-only query parameters such as timeframe. If the API rejects them (which it does on the free plan), the request is retried once without them so you still get results.

Run it locally

No install step is needed. With a key in your environment:

NEWSDATA_API_KEY=your_key DRY_RUN=true LANGUAGE=en CATEGORY=technology node src/index.js

Sample output:

===== Daily news — 2026-06-11 =====

_Headlines via the [newsdata.io](https://newsdata.io) news API. Generated 2026-06-11._

## Sentiment

> sample — live sentiment requires a paid newsdata.io plan

- positive `████░░░░░░░░` 4
- neutral  `██████░░░░░░` 5
- negative `█░░░░░░░░░░░` 1

## Headlines

### [Chipmaker reports record quarter](https://example.com/a)
_reuters · 2026-06-11 09:12_

The company beat estimates on strong data-centre demand...

`semiconductors` `earnings` `data-center`

With a paid plan, each headline also shows a sentiment badge (🟢/⚪/🔴) and the AI summary line, and the sentiment overview reflects the real article counts.

Notes

• The free plan returns up to 10 articles per request; max-articles above 10 uses the nextPage cursor to page through results, which consumes additional credits.
• The wiki target overwrites the named page on each run. Create the wiki (one page) before first use, or the push has nowhere to go.
• Errors from the API are surfaced as workflow annotations: an invalid key (401) and rate limiting (429) produce a clear message and a failed step.

License

MIT