Finance-Pulse

Finance Pulse - your private daily audio briefing

Every weekday morning this generates a fresh banking finance-function briefing, turns it into a natural-voice MP3, and publishes it as a private podcast. You subscribe once in your podcast app. After that: wake up, headphones in, play.

It runs entirely in the cloud on GitHub Actions, so your computer does not need to be on.

What you need

A GitHub account (free).
An Anthropic API key, from https://console.anthropic.com
A text-to-speech API key. Default is OpenAI (https://platform.openai.com). ElevenLabs is supported too if you prefer its voices.

Cost is roughly a few cents of API usage per episode.

One-time setup (about 15 minutes)

1. Create the repository

Create a new GitHub repository, for example finance-pulse-podcast.
Upload every file in this folder to it (keep the structure, including the .github/workflows/ folder and the episodes/ folder).

2. Add your API keys as secrets

In the repo: Settings, then Secrets and variables, then Actions, then “New repository secret”. Add:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = your Anthropic key
OPENAI_API_KEY = your OpenAI key (if using OpenAI TTS, the default)
ELEVENLABS_API_KEY = your ElevenLabs key (only if you switch the provider)

Secrets are encrypted. They never appear in the code or the feed.

3. Turn on GitHub Pages

In the repo: Settings, then Pages. Under “Build and deployment”, set Source to “Deploy from a branch”, branch main, folder / (root). Save.

Your site will be at: https://<your-username>.github.io/<repo-name>

4. Edit config.py

Open config.py and set:

BASE_URL to the Pages URL from step 3 (no trailing slash).
PODCAST_AUTHOR, PODCAST_EMAIL, and the voice if you want a different one.
Confirm ANTHROPIC_MODEL is a current model id (see https://docs.claude.com).

Commit the change.

5. Set your wake time

Open .github/workflows/daily.yml and adjust the cron line. It is in UTC.

6am US Eastern in summer = 0 10 * * 1-5
5am US Eastern in summer = 0 9 * * 1-5 Use https://crontab.guru to translate any time. Leave 1-5 for weekdays only, or change to * for every day.

6. First run

Go to the Actions tab, choose “Daily Finance Pulse”, and click “Run workflow”. Wait a minute, then check that feed.xml and a file under episodes/ appeared.

Open https://<your-username>.github.io/<repo-name>/feed.xml in a browser to confirm it loads.

Apple Podcasts: there is no built-in “add by URL”, so use Overcast or Pocket Casts (free), which both have “Add URL”. Paste your feed.xml URL.
Or in Apple Podcasts on a Mac: File, then “Add a Show by URL”, paste the feed URL; it syncs to your iPhone.

Set the show to auto-download new episodes. Done.

Daily experience

Each weekday morning a new episode is waiting. Open your podcast app, press play, and it streams to your headphones with normal lock-screen controls. The written briefing is in the episode notes if you want to read instead.

Customizing

Voice: change OPENAI_TTS_VOICE in config.py (alloy, echo, fable, onyx, nova, shimmer). For studio quality, set TTS_PROVIDER = "elevenlabs".
Content focus: edit SYSTEM_PROMPT in generate.py.
Length: adjust the word targets in SYSTEM_PROMPT.
Cover art: add a square cover.jpg (1400x1400 or larger) to the repo root.

Troubleshooting

Empty or failed run: open the failed Action, read the logs. Most issues are a missing secret or a stale model id in config.py.
No audio in the feed: confirm Pages is enabled and BASE_URL matches exactly.
Times look off: the cron is UTC; re-check the conversion for daylight saving.

A note on privacy

With OpenAI or ElevenLabs TTS, and with Claude’s web search, your briefing text is sent to those providers to be processed. That is fine for market commentary. Do not feed this pipeline confidential client material.