How to Automate a News Digest with Hermes & AI Cron Jobs (No-Code and Full Walkthrough)
In this video, I walk through the full process of creating an automated news digest using AI cron jobs.
What you'll learn:
What a cron job is and how the scheduler works under the hood
How to write a prompt that produces consistent, formatted output every time
The fields: schedule, model, delivery target, toolsets, and repeat behavior
How to set up Telegram delivery so news lands in a group chat automatically
How to manually fire a job to test it before the scheduled time
Tools used:
Hermes Agent CLI
DeepSeek V4 Flash (the model that runs the cron job)
Web search toolset (only loads the tools the job needs)
YouTube Chapters:
0:00 — What we're building: AI news cron jobs in Hermes
0:40 — My current cron job setup and cheap model choices
3:49 — Telegram delivery and why I split automations into groups
5:18 — Creating Telegram groups, bots, and chat IDs
6:46 — Segmented news bots and live examples
10:17 — How a Hermes cron job works behind the scenes
13:26 — LLM-driven jobs vs script-only jobs
14:07 — Pricing: running 16 jobs for less than 50 cents/month
15:24 — Example daily AI news digest output
16:35 — Prompt structure, freshness rules, and output formatting
18:09 — Creating cron jobs with natural language
18:33 — Building the Drake news cron job example
21:06 — Manual fire test: spawning a fresh agent session
22:21 — Telegram result: Drake digest delivered to the group
23:08 — Other cron job ideas and real-life use cases
25:41 — Wrap-up and where to find more
How-To Walkthrough
Section 1: What's a Cron Job?
A cron job is an automated task that runs on a schedule. Think of it as a robot assistant that shows up at the same time every day (or every 2 days, or every Monday) and does a specific task.
In our case, the task is: search the web for the latest Drake news, pick 3 stories, format them cleanly, and post them to a Telegram group.
The key components:
Schedule — when it fires (cron expression or human-readable like "every 2h")
Prompt — the instruction the AI follows each time it runs
Model — which AI model powers the job (DeepSeek V4 Flash for cheap/reliable)
Delivery — where the output goes (Telegram, local file, etc.)
Toolsets — what the AI is allowed to use (just web_search in this case)
Section 2: The Prompt (Most Important Part)
The prompt is the whole brain of the job. Since the AI runs in a fresh, empty session each time — zero context — the prompt must be self-contained.
Here's the structure we used:
Search for today's top Drake news headlines.
STRICT FRESHNESS RULES:
Only stories from the LAST 48 HOURS
Check publication dates
Find EXACTLY 3 stories.
OUTPUT FORMAT:
🎤 Drake News Digest — {current date}
Headline — summary...
🔗 link
🕒 Published: {date}
Headline — summary...
🔗 link
🕒 Published: {date}
Headline — summary...
🔗 link
🕒 Published: {date}
Give the exact output template — the model fills in the blanks, keeps format consistent
Set hard rules — "EXACTLY 3 stories", "ONLY past 48 hours"
Include a fallback — "If nothing found, say X" prevents hallucination
Name the search — literally write the web_search call as a step
Section 3: Schedule Options
Every day at 11 AM — 0 11 * * * — Daily
Mon/Wed/Fri at 11 AM — 0 11 * * 1,3,5 — Every 2 days, no Sundays
Weekdays at 10 AM — 0 10 * * 1-5 — Monday to Friday
Every 2 hours — every 2h — Human shorthand
One-shot at a specific time — ISO timestamp — Single fire
Section 4: Telegram Delivery Setup
Here's how Telegram delivery works behind the scenes. This is the same setup you'd use for any automated messaging.
Step 1: Connect Hermes to Telegram
In the Hermes config (config.yaml), you add a Telegram gateway:
gateways:
telegram:
bot_token: "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN"
enabled: true
You get the bot token from @BotFather on Telegram — create a bot, and it gives you a token.
Step 2: Add the bot to your group
Create a Telegram group (e.g. "My News Bot"), add your bot as a member. The bot needs to be an admin if you want it to post without being restricted.
Step 3: Find the chat ID
Send any message in the group, then visit:
https://api.telegram.org/bot YOUR_BOT_TOKEN/getUpdates
Look for chat.id — that's your group's numeric ID. It'll be a negative number like -1001234567890.
Step 4: Set delivery in the cron job
deliver: "telegram:-1001234567890"
Or use the named shorthand if configured:
deliver: "telegram:My News Bot"
Section 5: Creating the Job
The creation call bundles everything together:
cronjob(
action='create',
name='Drake News Digest',
schedule='0 11 * * 1,3,5',
prompt='[the full prompt text]',
model='deepseek-v4-flash',
provider='custom:deepseek-direct',
deliver='telegram:Your Group Name',
enabled_toolsets=['web'],
repeat=forever
)
Section 6: Testing with Manual Fire
To test before the scheduled time:
cronjob(action='run', job_id='THE_JOB_ID')
This immediately spawns a fresh agent session with the job's prompt and delivers the result.
#cronjob #automation #hermes #drake #news #telegram