newsletter-generator

Automated weekly newsletter generator for GitHub Copilot CLI/SDK or VS Code Insiders updates.

Note: This tool was built for generating internal team newsletters, but all source data comes from public release feeds and blog posts. You're welcome to fork and adapt it for your own newsletter needs.

What it does

This tool generates a curated weekly newsletter by:

1. Fetching release notes, changelog entries, and blog posts from GitHub
2. Filtering out low-value content (dependency bumps, CI changes, attributions, etc.)
3. Summarizing using GitHub Copilot SDK to create concise, factual summaries
4. Caching generated content to avoid regenerating unchanged sections

At startup, you'll choose:

• Newsletter type - GitHub Copilot CLI/SDK or VS Code Insiders
• Copilot model - The model used for newsletter generation prompts
• Cache behavior - Use cache, clear cache, or force refresh for the run

The console UI now includes:

• Progress tasks for feed fetch and generation stages
• Run Review confirmation before generation
• Run Dashboard summary with source counts, cache stats, and stage durations

The output is a markdown newsletter with these main sections:

• Welcome - Brief opening paragraph summarizing the week's highlights
• News and Announcements - Curated changelog/blog items (for the Copilot CLI/SDK newsletter)
• Project Updates - Product-specific release highlights

Date logic

At startup, the tool asks how many days back to include (default: 7).

• End date is always today
• Start date is today minus the selected number of days

You can pass daysBack as a command argument to skip the prompt.

Usage

Basic usage

cd src/NewsletterGenerator
dotnet run

This generates a newsletter using the automatic date logic described above.

Commands

dotnet run -- generate
dotnet run -- list-models
dotnet run -- doctor
dotnet run -- clear-cache

generate is the default command, so dotnet run -- ...options... works without explicitly typing generate.

Generate options

Clear cache and regenerate everything:

dotnet run -- --clear-cache
dotnet run -- -c

Force refresh (ignore cache reads this run):

dotnet run -- --force-refresh
dotnet run -- -f

Custom date range (N days back from today):

dotnet run -- 7              # Last 7 days ending today
dotnet run -- 14             # Last 14 days ending today

Combine flags:

dotnet run -- --clear-cache 7

Choose newsletter type via CLI:

dotnet run -- --newsletter copilot
dotnet run -- --newsletter vscode

Choose model via CLI:

dotnet run -- --model gpt-5.3-codex
dotnet run -- --model gpt-4.1

Skip the pre-run confirmation prompt:

dotnet run -- --yes

Show full exception details:

dotnet run -- --debug

Non-interactive mode

Use non-interactive mode for redirected output, scripts, or CI.

Required in --non-interactive mode:

• --newsletter
• --model
• daysBack

Example:

dotnet run -- --non-interactive --newsletter copilot --model gpt-5.3-codex --force-refresh 7

Output

Generated newsletters are saved to:

output/newsletter-copilot-cli-sdk-YYYY-MM-DD.md
output/newsletter-vscode-insiders-YYYY-MM-DD.md

The filename uses the end date of the coverage period and includes the newsletter slug.

After each interactive generation run, the app prompts whether to start again from the beginning.

Caching

The tool caches:

• Feed data (atom/RSS feeds)
• Generated summaries for each section

Cache files are stored in a .cache/ directory under the process working directory and use SHA256 hashing to detect changes in source data. When you follow the run instructions (cd src/NewsletterGenerator && dotnet run), this resolves to src/NewsletterGenerator/.cache/. If you run the app from another directory (for example from the repo root), the cache will be created in that directory instead (for example ./.cache/). When source data changes, that section is regenerated. Use clear-cache command or --clear-cache with generate to force regeneration of all content.

Configuration

The tool fetches from these sources:

• CLI Releases: https://github.com/github/copilot-cli/releases.atom
• SDK Releases: https://github.com/github/copilot-sdk/releases.atom
• Changelog: https://github.blog/changelog/label/copilot/feed/
• Blog: https://github.blog/feed/
• VS Code Insiders: https://aka.ms/vscode/updates/insiders (resolved to the current release notes markdown)
• VS Code Blog: https://code.visualstudio.com/feed.xml (for VS Code newsletter mode)
• GitHub Changelog + Blog VS Code mentions: Copilot changelog entries and blog posts that mention VS Code (for VS Code newsletter mode)

Filtering rules and summarization prompts can be modified in:

• Services/AtomFeedService.cs - Regex filters for release notes
• Services/NewsletterService.cs - AI prompts and generation logic

GitHub Copilot SDK features used

This project uses the GitHub.Copilot.SDK NuGet package and exercises these SDK features:

Feature	Where	Why
Streaming	All AI sessions (Streaming = true)	Enables incremental response delivery; delta events are logged for diagnostics
ReasoningEffort	All AI sessions (ReasoningEffort = "low")	Summarization prompts don't need deep chain-of-thought; reduces latency
Session hooks	OnErrorOccurred, OnSessionStart, OnSessionEnd	SDK-level error retry and session lifecycle logging without manual plumbing
PingAsync	doctor command + startup status	Lightweight connectivity check without creating a full session
ListModelsAsync	Model selection, list-models command	Enumerate available models for interactive selection
System messages	SystemMessageMode.Replace on all sessions	Full control over system prompt for editorial tone and output formatting
Event-driven responses	AssistantMessageEvent, AssistantMessageDeltaEvent, SessionIdleEvent, SessionErrorEvent	Collect final responses and streaming deltas via pattern matching
GetAuthStatusAsync	Startup status table	Display authentication state before generation