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