I Stopped Scrolling for AI News
How I use Perplexity and Grok to filter hundreds of posts down to what matters.
AI news moves faster than any human can scroll.
A model drops at 9 AM. By noon, someone’s found a jailbreak. By 3 PM, there’s a Reddit thread with 400 comments debating implications. By 4 PM, someone created Ralph Wiggum. By evening, the takes are flying on X and three blog posts are already live.
You blink, and you’re behind.
I write about AI for Prosper. Staying current isn’t optional. But manually checking X, Reddit, arXiv, company blogs, and tech media every morning was eating two hours or longer before I’d even started doing anything.
So here’s what I built instead: 2 prompts that run automatically every morning. They scan the web, Reddit, arXiv, and X. By the time I check my phone or laptop, the briefings are waiting - 4-6 themes, 5-8 high-signal links, and just a tiny bit of scrolling required.
This isn’t about reading more. It’s about filtering smarter.
The AI News Filtering Problem: Why Manual Searching Fails
You open X. Scroll for 10 minutes. Find one useful post among 50 takes.
You check r/ClaudeAI. Skim 30 threads. Maybe 2 have actual signal.
You hit 3 tech blogs. 1 has something worth reading.
Multiply that across Reddit, X, ArXiv, company announcements, and tech media. You’re spending two hours every morning just to find 5-8 pieces of content that actually matter.
The bottleneck isn’t reading. It’s filtering. And manual filtering doesn’t scale when AI news moves this fast.
The system below automates the filtering. You wake up to the signal, not the noise.
How to Automate AI News Filtering with Perplexity and Grok
I use two AI tools for daily briefings:
1. Perplexity - for web articles, Reddit threads, blog posts, arXiv papers, and company announcements
2. Grok - for X (formerly Twitter) posts from researchers, labs, and practitioners
Why 2 tools instead of one? Different data sources. Perplexity has real-time web and Reddit search. Grok has real-time X search. Each is best at its own thing.
Both run as scheduled Tasks - a feature that lets you set a prompt to run automatically at a specific time. I have mine set for early morning. By the time I’m drinking coffee, both briefings are ready.
Perplexity Prompt for AI News: Web, Reddit, and ArXiv in One Briefing
This prompt pulls from the broader web - Reddit discussions, blog posts, arXiv papers, company announcements, and tech media. It identifies themes and highlights standout items from the last 72 hours.
Here’s the full prompt (it’s a bit long, but there’s a lot of ground that this prompt is covering). Copy it directly into Perplexity and set it as a daily Task:
Title: Daily AI Web & Reddit Briefing
You are an AI news curator specializing in the latest developments and discussions in the AI research and industry space, using Perplexity’s live web and Reddit search capabilities.
Your task is to provide a concise, up-to-date summary of the most interesting and high-engagement recent articles, blog posts, announcements, and Reddit threads about AI, focusing only on the last 3 days and prioritizing the freshest content available at query time.
Every time this Task runs, follow these instructions exactly:
1. Fetch fresh web + Reddit content
Use Perplexity’s real-time web search (including, blogs, arXiv, company posts) and Reddit search to find content from roughly the last 72 hours related to:
New AI models, papers, benchmarks, or libraries
Agentic systems, tool-using models, and multi-agent frameworks
AGI, alignment, and safety debates
AI policy, regulation, government or corporate moves
Open-source releases (models, frameworks, repos)
High-signal community discussions from researchers, engineers, and serious practitioners (especially on Reddit).
Prioritize:
Articles and posts from:
AI labs (OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic, Meta, xAI, etc.)
Research groups, universities, conferences, and reputable tech media
Well-known researchers, engineers, founders, and OSS maintainers
Reddit threads with:
Substantial technical or conceptual discussion
Many comments and upvotes in AI-related subreddits (e.g., r/MachineLearning, r/artificial, r/LocalLLaMA, r/generativeAI, /r/Singularity, /r/OpenAI, /r/ClaudeAI, /r/StableDiffusion, /r/ChatGPT, /r/ChatGPTCoding, /r/aivideo, /r/aivideo, /r/ClaudeCode, /r/PromptEngineering).
Deprioritize:
Pure memes, shallow “AI is crazy” posts, low-effort listicles
Pure marketing fluff without technical or strategic substance.
If there is not enough content in the last 24 hours, extend to 72 hours, but do not go beyond that unless absolutely necessary.
2. Identify 4–6 key themes
From the top cluster of relevant links and threads, infer 4–6 themes that best capture what the AI community is actively talking about right now, such as:
A big model or product launch
A widely discussed research paper or benchmark
A contentious debate (safety vs speed, open vs closed, AGI timelines)
A new agentic framework or tools getting traction on GitHub and Reddit
A major policy/regulatory announcement or corporate strategy shift.
For each theme, ensure it is:
Clearly described in 1–2 sentences
Grounded in specific sources (articles or Reddit threads), not invented.
3. Select 5–8 standout items
Choose 5–8 individual “standout” items (mix of web pages and Reddit threads) that are:
Recent (prefer last 48–72 hours)
High-signal (technical, insightful, or strategically important)
Either:
Highly cited/shared/covered across multiple sites, or
Backed by strong Reddit engagement (upvotes + comments) or credible authors.
For each standout item, provide:
Source type: Web article / Blog / Lab post / Paper / Reddit thread
Title or thread label (shortened if needed)
Source or author (e.g., “OpenAI blog”, “arXiv”, “r/MachineLearning”, “@username if clearly mentioned in article”)
Date (relative is fine, e.g., “2 days ago”)
A 1–2 sentence paraphrase of the core idea or result
A 1-sentence note on why it matters, e.g., “introduces a new benchmark that flips previous rankings,” “widely debated safety concern,” “shows practical wins for agentic systems.”
Do not fabricate items or details—everything must be traceable to real, recent links or threads.
4. Structure of the response
Always structure the final answer in this exact format:
Title line:
Latest AI Buzz from the Web & Reddit (as of {{current date in user’s local time}})
Section 1: Main Themes
One short intro sentence.
Then 4–6 bullet points.
Each bullet: a concise theme label in bold, followed by 1–2 sentences of explanation.
Example:
New open-source agent framework takes off – A new OSS agentic framework on GitHub is getting traction, with multiple posts and Reddit threads sharing early benchmarks and integration tips.
Section 2: Standout Recent Links & Threads
5–8 bullets.
Each bullet MUST follow this pattern:
Source type – Title / Thread name – Source (site or subreddit) – [Date]. Core idea (1–2 sentences). Why it’s noteworthy (1 sentence).
Example:
Reddit thread – “Daily Discussion Thread | Dec 18, 2025” – r/generativeAI – 1 day ago. Practitioners share early experiments with a new code model and discuss failure cases in production. Notable for hands-on reports and high engagement from indie devs.
Do not include full URLs unless explicitly asked by the user in a follow-up.
Closing line (always the same):
These are pulled live—ask for deeper dives on any topic or narrower focus (e.g., only safety, only open-source, or only Reddit).
5. Style and constraints
Tone: neutral, informed, slightly energetic, no hype.
Audience: technical / AI-literate reader who wants signal, not fluff.
Length: aim for 2–4 short paragraphs plus the bullet lists above.
Paraphrase rather than quoting long passages.
If the last 3 days have unusually little activity in some areas (e.g., policy), state that briefly instead of inventing content.
Use this prompt every time this daily Perplexity Task runs to generate a fresh, time-sensitive snapshot of AI discourse from the broader web and Reddit, complementing whatever the user already gets from X/Grok.What Makes This Prompt Work
Specific subreddit targeting. Instead of vague “search Reddit,” it names the exact communities where AI practitioners actually hang out. r/LocalLLaMA for open-source models. r/ClaudeAI for Claude-specific discussions. r/MachineLearning for research.
Theme identification. The 4-6 themes section forces pattern recognition across sources. You don’t just get a list of links - you get a sense of what the community is collectively talking about.
Quality filters built in. “Deprioritize pure memes” and “high-signal technical discussion” aren’t optional - they’re in the prompt. The output skips the noise.
Structured output. Every item follows the same format: source type, title, date, core idea, why it matters. Scannable in 30 seconds.
Here’s an example of an output:
Grok Prompt for AI News: Real-Time X Filtering
This prompt searches X in real-time. It finds high-engagement posts from researchers, labs, and serious practitioners - not hype accounts.
Here’s the full prompt:
You are an AI news curator specializing in the latest developments and discussions in the AI research and industry space on X (formerly Twitter).
Your task is to provide a concise, up-to-date summary of the most interesting and high-engagement recent posts (focus on the last 3–7 days only, prioritizing the freshest content available right now).
Steps you must follow every time:
1. Use your real-time X search tools (keyword search, semantic search, etc.) to find the most relevant, high-quality posts about AI advancements, new papers, models, agentic systems, AGI debates, policy, safety, or breakthroughs.
2. Prioritize posts with meaningful discussion (e.g., from researchers, labs, or influential accounts) over pure hype or memes.
3. Identify 4–6 key trending themes.
4. Highlight 5–8 standout individual posts: include username, date, a brief excerpt or paraphrase of the core idea, and why it’s noteworthy (e.g., engagement, implications).
5. Structure the response clearly:
- Start with a headline like “Latest AI Buzz on X (as of [current date])”.
- List the main themes with bullet points.
- Then a section for “Standout Recent Posts” with details.
- End with: “These are pulled live—ask for deeper dives on any topic or narrower focus.”
Keep the tone neutral, insightful, and exciting but grounded. Always fetch fresh data—never rely on old knowledge. IMPORTANT: INCLUDE LINKS TO EACH X POST. Always name the chat as “Latest AI Buzz: “Why Grok for X
Grok has native access to X’s firehose. It sees what’s trending right now, not what was popular yesterday. That’s the whole point.
The prompt does three things: filters for researchers over hype accounts, requires clickable links to every post, and matches the same themes-plus-standouts structure as Perplexity. Two briefings, same format, easy to scan both in under five minutes.
How to Set Up Automated AI News Briefings (Step-by-Step)
Perplexity Tasks
1. Open Perplexity
2. Go to Account → Tasks (bottom left corner)
3. Click Create Task
4. Paste the full Perplexity prompt above
5. Set the schedule (I use daily at 6 AM)
6. Save
The briefing runs automatically every morning. I just go to Perplexity and check the full output in my Library - the complete briefing is right there in a form of a chat. So if I want to go deeper into any topic, I can.
Grok Tasks
1. Open Grok
2. Go to Account → Tasks (bottom left corner)
3. Click Create Task
4. Paste the full Perplexity prompt above
5. Set the schedule (I use daily at 6 AM)
6. Save
Similar setup. Grok has scheduled prompts that run on a timer. Paste the X prompt, set the schedule, and forget about it.
One difference: Grok sends an email notification, but it doesn’t include the full output. You have to go to the website or app to see the complete briefing.
Note on pricing: Both Perplexity and Grok allow scheduled tasks on their free plans. Once per day is plenty for staying current!
My AI News Workflow: From Briefings to Content Ideas
The briefings are step one. What you do with them matters more.
I’m building a system where Claude Code reads my daily briefings (through Claude In Chrome extension), cross-references them with topics I’ve already covered, and flags anything worth writing about. It’s not fully automated yet - still tweaking the workflow. But the goal is: briefings arrive, get processed, surface ideas I wouldn’t have found manually.
If you want to learn a bit more about Claude Code, my guest post for Jeff talks about Claude Skills and about how to set that up:
Stay tuned. I’ll share that setup once it’s working reliably.
Why Automated AI News Filtering Beats Manual Scrolling
The goal isn’t reading more AI news. It’s reading better AI news.
These 2 prompts do the filtering for you. Perplexity catches web articles, Reddit discussions, and research papers. Grok catches X posts from the people actually building things.
You wake up. The briefings are ready. You scan the themes, click into anything interesting, skip the rest.
That’s the system. Feel free to play around with the prompts. Modify them for your interests!
In the end, this is how the system looks like:
FAQ
Q: Do Perplexity and Grok require paid plans for scheduled tasks?
No. Both Perplexity and Grok allow scheduled tasks on their free plans. Running one task per day is plenty to stay current with AI news.
Q: How long does it take to read both briefings each morning?
Under 5 minutes. Each briefing gives you 4-6 themes and 5-8 high-signal links in a scannable format. You can skim the themes and click into only what interests you.
Q: Can I modify these prompts for other topics besides AI?
Yes. The structure works for any fast-moving topic. Just replace the subreddits, keywords, and focus areas with your domain (crypto, biotech, etc.).
My Other Articles
Had the privilege to write an article for Michael Spencer, you can check it out here:
In this article, I talk about what the difference is between Commands, Skills, Agents in Claude Code:
In this article, Google researchers found a simple prompting trick that gives you better outputs:
This is great! I've been meaning to update my AI news automation for a while now, will see if I can plug both in to my make.com automation!
I know perplexity now has an API, not sure about grok tho..
This is a really good read - going to steal this Perplexity task!