caps-brief

Status: archived, unmaintained, not published to npm.

caps-brief requires Capacities Pro — API access is a Pro-only feature (~SGD 12.99/mo), which isn't obvious from the Capacities pricing page until you look closely. I don't have Pro, so the OAuth sign-in and the Claude summarisation path have never run against a live account. They're implemented and unit-tested, but unproven end-to-end. Against a Basic account, caps-brief auth fails with a bare notAuthenticated.

I'm not going to maintain a tool I can't run, so this is archived rather than deleted. It may still be useful as a reference for building on the Capacities API 2.0 — src/auth.ts has a working RFC 7591 dynamic client registration and OAuth 2.1 + PKCE flow (registration is confirmed working: /oauth/reg returns 201 for a public client with a localhost redirect URI). The old Beta API shuts down 2026-09-01; this is built entirely on 2.0.

MIT — fork it, finish it, no need to ask.

A Node.js CLI that auto-populates your Capacities Daily Note with an AI morning briefing — Hacker News front page, your RSS feeds, and the weather — summarised by Claude and written via the Capacities API 2.0 (launched July 2026, developers.capacities.io).

Every morning your Daily Note starts with:

## ☀️ Morning Briefing

### Top Stories
A 2–4 sentence synthesis of the HN front page, plus the three most notable links…

### RSS Highlights
What's new across your subscribed feeds…

### Weather
Singapore: 🌤️ +31°C

BYOK (bring your own keys): you use your own Capacities account and your own Anthropic API key. Nothing goes through anyone else's server.

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 22
• Capacities Pro — API access is a Pro-only feature (~SGD 12.99/mo; there's a free trial in the app). Basic accounts can't use this tool: both the OAuth sign-in and personal tokens are gated behind Pro.
• An Anthropic API key from platform.claude.com — optional if you run with --no-llm

Install

Not on npm — build from source:

git clone https://github.com/Booyaka101/caps-brief.git
cd caps-brief && npm install && npm run build && npm link

1. Authenticate with Capacities

Option A — browser sign-in (OAuth 2.1 + PKCE):

caps-brief auth

Your browser opens the Capacities consent screen; approve, and tokens land in ~/.caps-brief/tokens.json. The CLI registers itself as a public OAuth client automatically via the API's dynamic client registration endpoint — no manual app registration needed. Access tokens auto-refresh (rotating refresh tokens), so this is fire-and-forget for cron use. If you are building your own published integration instead, register a permanent OAuth client with the Capacities team via developers.capacities.io.

Option B — personal API token (simplest):

In the Capacities desktop app go to Settings → Capacities API → Generate new token (scopes: api:read + api:write), then:

caps-brief auth --token cap-api-xxxxxxxx

Either way, auth verifies the credential against GET /space and tells you which space it's connected to. Note: a token/OAuth grant is bound to one space — the briefing lands in that space's Daily Note.

2. Configure sources

caps-brief config --add-rss https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index
caps-brief config --add-rss https://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml
caps-brief config --weather "Singapore"     # any wttr.in location; omit for IP-based
caps-brief config --list

RSS 2.0 and Atom are both supported. Hacker News (top 10 front-page stories) and weather are on by default.

3. Set your Anthropic key and run

# macOS/Linux
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
# Windows (PowerShell)
$env:ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = "sk-ant-..."

caps-brief run --dry-run   # preview without writing
caps-brief run             # write to today's Daily Note

Summarisation uses claude-haiku-4-5 (~$0.002/day at typical volumes). No key? caps-brief run --no-llm writes a clean, unsummarised digest instead.

Check everything at a glance any time:

caps-brief status    # auth ✔/✖, connected space, key, sources, last run

Built for unattended mornings:

• Runs are once per day — if your scheduler fires twice, the second run is a clean no-op (--force overrides).
• If Claude is transiently unreachable (rate limit, network, 5xx), the run falls back to the plain digest with a warning instead of leaving your note empty. Bad/missing API keys still fail loudly — config problems are never papered over.
• Each source fails independently; the run only aborts if everything is unreachable (it never writes an empty briefing).

Other flags: --date 2026-07-17 (target another day's note, bypasses the once-per-day guard), --no-timestamp (omit the timestamp heading Capacities adds to appended blocks).

4. Schedule it

Linux/macOS (cron):

30 6 * * * ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-... /usr/local/bin/caps-brief run >> ~/.caps-brief/run.log 2>&1

Windows (Task Scheduler): — use the full path; scheduled tasks don't reliably inherit your PATH:

$action = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute "$env:APPDATA\npm\caps-brief.cmd" -Argument "run"
$trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -Daily -At 6:30am
Register-ScheduledTask -TaskName "caps-brief" -Action $action -Trigger $trigger

(Set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY as a user environment variable first: [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("ANTHROPIC_API_KEY","sk-ant-...","User").)

Missed a morning (laptop asleep)? Just run caps-brief run when you're back — the once-per-day guard means double-scheduling is always safe.

How it talks to Capacities

• Auth: OAuth 2.1 authorization-code + PKCE (S256) against https://api.capacities.io/oauth/authorize / /oauth/token, discovered via RFC 8414; or a cap-api-… bearer token.
• Write: POST /blocks/daily-note/append with a markdown body — creates today's Daily Note if needed and appends the briefing (rate limit: 30 req/min; we make 1/day).
• The old Capacities Beta API is not used anywhere — it shuts down September 1, 2026. This tool is built entirely on API 2.0.

Troubleshooting

Start with caps-brief status — it diagnoses most of these in one shot.

| Symptom | Fix | |---|---| | Not authenticated. Run: caps-brief auth | Token missing/revoked — re-run caps-brief auth | | forbidden … api:write scope | Regenerate your personal token with the write scope enabled | | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is not set | Export the key, or add --no-llm | | Already briefed today | Working as intended — add --force to send another | | Note shows the plain digest, not the AI summary | Claude was briefly unreachable that morning; check the run log for the ⚠ line | | Wrong space gets the briefing | Tokens are per-space — re-auth and pick the right space | | All sources failed | Network/proxy issue; nothing is written on total failure |

Files live in ~/.caps-brief/: tokens.json (credentials, 0600), config.json (feeds/weather), client.json (OAuth client registration), state.json (last-run marker).

Forking

This repo is archived, so issues and pull requests are closed — but it's MIT, so fork away.

npm install
npm run build
npm test        # unit suite (feed parsing, formatting) on Node's built-in test runner

If you pick this up with a Pro account, the two unverified paths are caps-brief auth (the OAuth browser flow — dynamic client registration works, the consent step is unproven) and src/llm.ts (Claude summarisation; --no-llm skips it and is exercised by the tests).

Adding a source (a new feed type, a calendar, anything else) means a fetcher in src/sources.ts that fails independently of the others — the run should degrade to whatever else succeeded rather than abort.

License

MIT © Booyaka101