Create a no-code AI agent that curates a daily newsletter

Curated newsletters have a unique role for niche media – they can add frequency, help segment audiences, increase newsletter revenues, and develop brand leadership.

Still, curated newsletters require resources, so the recent release of no-code AI tools to curate newsletters – and still keep the editor in charge –  is a game-changer.

We spent several weeks testing how to create a semi-autonomous AI agent using Lutra.AI and are sharing the customizable workflow.

This workflow uses just two prompts to create two playbooks that can be saved and scheduled.   The first prompt asks Lutra.ai to extract articles and deliver them into a destination spreadsheet, where an editor can select articles to use.

The second prompt asks Lutra.ai to create a newsletter from the destination spreadsheet. An extra automation delivers the newsletter into a WordPress post where it can be edited.  There are a variety of integrations under “Tools” in the left navigation,  but the most common are Google’s cloud apps, Microsoft’s cloud apps, Hubspot, and ActiveCampaign.

WordPress can be integrated by asking Lutra.ai how to connect the RestAPI.

Here’s how to get started:

Introduction to the process

The Workbook:  Lutra.ai for Members Workbook  gives a step-by-step “how to” guide.

A quick video overview is below:

 Integrate a Google account with Lutra.ai

To create an AI agent that uses your Google accounts gmail, docs or sheets, the first step is to give Lutra.ai permission to access one sheet, by typing the sheet’s URL into the chat box.

Note that each time you create a Google sheet you expect Lutra to access, so  be sure to click  on “share” and  allow anyone with the link to edit.

Here’s a quick video on how to integrate.

Create Playbook 1 to Extract Articles from a list of websites

To set up your playbook to extract articles from a list of website sources, you’ll need both a News Sources sheet with the list of  websites you want the agent to look at, and a Destination sheet, where you want the agent to put the information, and have removed restrictions (click share) so any viewer with a link is an editor.

Plug the URLs for those two sheets  into the prompt below,  then cut and paste the prompt into the chat bot.

Prompt for Lutra.ai chat: 

Extract the first five news articles on the home page of the website sources  in Google sheet [ news sources spreadsheet Url ]. and place them into  destination spreadsheet  with [ destination spreadsheet URL] in the following columns headers: 

Source

Title

Summary- (please use two sentences, starting with a declarative sentence less than 22 words to summarise the article)

Url

Inclusion – Default set to no

Run date 

Exact date of publication – look in bylines, timestamps, ‘Published on’ text, or article metadata – format as YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS or YYYY-MM-DD)

Do not duplicate articles

Optional: Create a new tab  in the destination output spreadsheet for each new run date, name it by the run date. Exclude data from previous runs so each new run date has new information

This prompt will create the Destination spreadsheet. Note that the prompt includes an “inclusion column” set on default to  “no” after each article. An editor will need to turn “no” to “yes” for articles that will be included in the newsletter.

When all looks good, save as the Extraction Playbook, and schedule it to run.

Also, a part of the prompt tells Lutra to create a new tab that includes only new articles every time  teh playbook runs. Otherwise, all the new articles will be added to the bottom of the spreadsheet and will be difficult to identify when the newsletter is created.

This video shows what to do,  the end result, and walking  through what each part of the prompt is for, so that when you want to edit it later you will understand what each piece does.

Create Playbook 2 to create a Newsletter

To  create a newsletter after an editor has turned “no” to yes” in the inclusion column, paste the  Destination URL into the prompt, below.

and then cut and paste the prompt below into the Lutra.ai chat bot. The video shows how to do this, plus what each part of the prompt is designed to do.

Newsletter creation prompt

Please create a newsletter in Google Docs with the following attributes: 

• Use information the last tab in destination sheet [destination sheet URL] to create a newsletter
• The name of the letter is [newswire]
• Starts with “Dear [reader},  and a letter from the editor that includes three paragraphs one sentence long and 15 words or less each, summarizing the articles, followed by a signature line, “Best regards, “ John Smith, Editor.
• Includes articles marked “Yes 
• Each article summary is two sentences. 
• The  title is in bold font and hyper-linked to the source url 
• The title is followed by a two  sentence summary. 
• At the end of the summary,  put the source in italic inside, parentheses hyper-linked to the source. 
• Please run a test in a word document plain text and html and send me the links to both. 

When you are happy with the result, save as a playbook.

This video explains what to do, and goes over some of the decisions included for formatting a newsletter. Note that prompt asks for an html version along with a Google Docs version in in plain text. This makes it easier to cut (or integrate) with a CMS or ESP when the newsletter is edited and sent.

You can easily change the format of the newsletter by editing the prompt  and creating a new playbook, or by giving more instructions in the Chat and saving the results to the Playbook.

Here is a video showing what to do, the end results,  and walking through reasons for choices made in the prompt:

Both of  playbooks can be saved and scheduled to run automatically, hourly, daily weekly, or weekday. Click on the left navigation, select Playbooks, and select the playbook you want to run, edit or schedule.

Editing and Constructing new playbooks

Anyone who grasps the wide variety of uses  for Lutra’s AI tool will inevitably start to experiment. The newsletter could be any format, or even a news article. Business data on spreadsheet can be shown as graphs or interactive maps. The editor can create AI generated images, incorporate a style guide, track data based on what competitors are publishing, and so on.

So save time, a best practice is to test and refine small playbooks at first. The tests should also be small, for constructing the first playbook, you can also instruct Lutra to “run a test with one result” or ask “how to speed up the run time” for larger projects.

The video below shows some pro tips learned along the way, using the tool.

Feel free to email alisa@nichepublisher.biz with questions.