Cron Job: Veille quotidienne d'actualités (FAILED)

Brief Publié le 2026-06-09

Cron Job: Veille quotidienne d'actualités (FAILED)

Job ID: 76ce033272c7

Run Time: 2026-06-09 16:09:55

Schedule: 0 16 *

Prompt

[IMPORTANT: The user has invoked the "news-briefings" skill, indicating they want you to follow its instructions. The full skill content is loaded below.]

name: news-briefings

description: "Research current events and deliver formatted news briefings to the user's messaging platform (Telegram/WhatsApp). Covers one-shot news queries and recurring cron-based news briefings — aggregating from RSS feeds via curl, structuring summaries by region/topic, and delivering to the user's preferred channel."

version: 1.1.0

metadata:

hermes:

tags: [news, current-events, rss, briefing, delivery, telegram, whatsapp, cron]

prerequisites: {}

News Briefings

Research and deliver current-events briefings to the user's messaging platform. Supports two modes:

One-shot — user asks "what's happening?" in a live conversation
Recurring cron — automated daily/weekly briefings via the cronjob tool

Mode 1: One-shot queries (live conversation)

1. Gather news data

When the user asks for news/current events, gather from multiple RSS feeds using curl (browser dependency may be unavailable). Good free RSS sources:

BBC World:      https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml
NYT World:      https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/World.xml
Google News FR: https://news.google.com/rss?hl=fr&gl=FR&ceid=FR:fr
Le Monde:       https://www.lemonde.fr/international/rss_full.xml
France Info:    https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/rss
France 24:      https://www.france24.com/fr/rss
Reuters:        https://www.reutersagency.com/feed/

Use delegate_task for heavier research (multiple feeds → extraction → structured summary) so the main thread stays responsive. Pass toolsets=["terminal"] for simple RSS parsing.

For parallel research on multiple topics, use the tasks= array form:

delegate_task(tasks=[
    {"goal": "Research {topic A}", "toolsets": ["terminal"]},
    {"goal": "Research {topic B}", "toolsets": ["terminal"]},
])

This runs up to 3 subagents concurrently.

Pitfall: delegate_task is for ONE-SHOT queries only. Do NOT use it in cron job prompts — cron agents cannot use delegate_task.

2. Structure the summary

Format with clear sections by region/topic. Use emoji markers per region:

🔴 Middle East / Israel-Palestine-Lebanon
🟠 Ukraine / Russia
🟡 Americas / US politics
🔵 Asia-Pacific / China / Taiwan / Japan / Korea
🟢 Africa
🟣 Europe / EU
⚪ Defense / Alliances (NATO, AUKUS)
🇫🇷 France — national news (important for francophone users)
Other notable stories as bullet points

Each section: 2-3 bullet points max. Bold the headline item (not the emoji). Include source attribution at end.

3. Delivery to messaging platform

Check the user's preferred delivery platform:

User profile memory notes their preferred platforms
If unspecified, default to Telegram if configured, then WhatsApp

The send_message(action='list') may not show platforms even when they're configured. If the platform is defined in .env (TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN, etc.), try send_message(target='telegram') directly — it routes to the home channel.

Mode 2: Recurring cron briefings

Set up automated daily/weekly briefings that deliver directly to the user's messaging platform on a schedule.

Creating the job

Use cronjob(action='create') with:

prompt — self-contained instructions (the cron agent has no conversation context)
skills — pass skills=["news-briefings"] to load this skill automatically
schedule — "0 16 " for daily at 16h, "0 16 * 0" for Sundays
deliver — where to send the result:
"origin" (default) — auto-routes to the conversation's origin platform (Telegram/WhatsApp if the conversation came from there, CLI otherwise)
"telegram:CHAT_ID" — explicit Telegram delivery (e.g., "telegram:8818654814")
"local" — no delivery, saved locally
"whatsapp:PHONE" — explicit WhatsApp delivery

Example with explicit Telegram delivery:

cronjob(
    action='create',
    name='Veille quotidienne d\'actualités',
    prompt="Génère un briefing quotidien en français...",
    schedule='0 16 * * *',
    skills=['news-briefings'],
    deliver='telegram:8818654814',
)

Rules for cron prompts

Fully self-contained — no conversation context. Include the complete workflow: which RSS feeds to curl, how to structure, what delivery format
No delegate_task — cron sessions cannot spawn subagents
No clarify — cron agents cannot ask the user questions
No send_message needed — the job's final response auto-delivers to the target platform
Include feed fallbacks in the prompt: if a feed returns empty or errors, skip it and continue with the others
Francophone users — write the entire prompt in French

Troubleshooting

Cron job not running despite being scheduled

If cronjob(action='list') shows the job as state: scheduled but last_run_at stays null even after next_run_at has passed:

Cause: The cron scheduler only runs inside the Hermes gateway. CLI-only instances do not have an active scheduler.
Fix:
Start the gateway: hermes gateway start or hermes gateway install
Or keep cron jobs on a docker instance that already has a running gateway
Verify: hermes gateway status — if not running, the scheduler is not active

Cron job shows error on manual run

When a cron job shows last_status: "error" but last_delivery_error: null:

Likely a transient provider API outage — the LLM call failed at scheduling time
Fix: cronjob(action='run', job_id='...') to re-kick the job manually
If it fails again immediately, check the provider status (DeepSeek, Anthropic, etc.)

Local archiving

Each cron briefing can also save a copy locally for historical reference, alongside Telegram delivery.

Pattern: Add an instruction at the end of the cron prompt to write the briefing content to a file:

❗ À la fin, archive le briefing dans un fichier : écris le contenu exact du briefing dans /home/sebastien/.hermes/memory/modules/veille_actualite/daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md (remplace YYYY-MM-DD par la date du jour). Crée le fichier avec la commande d'écriture appropriée.

Use a dedicated module structure under ~/.hermes/memory/modules/:

veille_actualite/daily/ — for daily briefings
veille_actualite/weekly/ — for weekly geopolitics briefings

Pre-create the directories before setting up the cron — the cron agent has file-write tools but directory creation is more reliable when done ahead of time:

mkdir -p ~/.hermes/memory/modules/veille_actualite/{daily,weekly}

Updating existing cron jobs to add archiving: use cronjob(action='update', job_id='JOB_ID', prompt='...') with the original prompt + the archive instruction appended. Always read the existing prompt from ~/.hermes/cron/jobs.json first so you preserve the full content.

Schedule examples

Frequency	Cron expression
Daily at 16h	`0 16 *`
Daily at 9h	`0 9 *`
Weekly Sunday 16h	`0 16 0`
Every 2 hours	`every 2h`

Pitfalls

Browser (Chrome) may not be installed — prefer curl for RSS feeds over browser tools
send_message(action='list') can return empty even with configured platforms — try direct targeting
Keep summaries concise for messaging platforms (Telegram has 4096 char limit, adjust accordingly)
For long-form briefings, consider multi-part messages
When the user is francophone, always deliver in French
For one-shot queries: use delegate_task with toolsets=["terminal"] rather than doing curl calls in the main thread — keeps context clean
For cron jobs: the prompt is the ONLY context. Write it as a complete, detailed instruction
France 24 RSS (https://www.france24.com/fr/rss) is a reliable French-language source for international news — include it for francophone briefings
RSS feeds can go down or return errors. Always prompt with "skip feeds that fail and continue with remaining ones"
Cron jobs need gateway scheduler — they only execute automatically if the Hermes gateway is running. On CLI-only instances, cron jobs are registered but dormant until the gateway starts
Testing Telegram delivery — to verify Telegram connectivity without starting the gateway, use the HTTP API directly (avoids gateway startup overhead):

  import urllib.request, json
  url = f"https://api.telegram.org/bot{TOKEN}/getMe"
  resp = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
  data = json.loads(resp.read())  # {"ok":true, "result":{...}}

Token redaction — writing Telegram tokens to .env via terminal heredoc may corrupt them (redaction system replaces characters). Always verify with xxd after writing. Use printf '\xHH' or direct Python binary writes to bypass redaction

Related Skills

blogwatcher — for ongoing/monitoring RSS feeds (complementary: use for single-feed watching, use this skill for multi-source LLM-synthesised briefings)
editorial-review-cycle — for producing structured daily/weekly reviews that update the editorial memory system (topics, hypotheses, briefs archive, index). Use this skill when the user asks for a "revue quotidienne" or "briefing mémoire"; use news-briefings when they ask for "what's happening in the news" to deliver to a messaging platform.

References

See references/rss-feeds.md for the full list of tested RSS endpoints and parsing recipes.

The user has provided the following instruction alongside the skill invocation: [IMPORTANT: You are running as a scheduled cron job. DELIVERY: Your final response will be automatically delivered to the user — do NOT use send_message or try to deliver the output yourself. Just produce your report/output as your final response and the system handles the rest. SILENT: If there is genuinely nothing new to report, respond with exactly "[SILENT]" (nothing else) to suppress delivery. Never combine [SILENT] with content — either report your findings normally, or say [SILENT] and nothing more.]

Génère un briefing quotidien en français des actualités du jour pour Sébastien.

Utilise curl (pas le navigateur) pour rassembler les infos depuis plusieurs flux RSS :

BBC World : https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/rss.xml
Le Monde International : https://www.lemonde.fr/international/rss_full.xml
France Info Monde : https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/rss
Google News FR : https://news.google.com/rss?hl=fr&gl=FR&ceid=FR:fr
Reuters : https://www.reutersagency.com/feed/

Structure la veille avec des emojis par région :

🔴 Moyen-Orient

🟠 Ukraine / Russie

🟡 Amériques / US

🔵 Asie-Pacifique / Chine

🟢 Afrique

🟣 Europe / UE

⚪ Défense / Alliances

2-3 puces max par section. Gras sur le titre principal. Ajoute une section "🇫🇷 France" pour les infos nationales. Termine par la source et la date.

Livré directement sur Telegram à Sébastien. Message concis, en français.

❗ À la fin, archive le briefing dans un fichier : écris le contenu exact du briefing dans /home/sebastien/.hermes/memory/modules/veille_actualite/daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md (remplace YYYY-MM-DD par la date du jour). Crée le fichier avec la commande d'écriture appropriée.

Error

RuntimeError: [Errno 32] Broken pipe