Material Intelligence

A weekly, entirely AI-generated publication about AI for materials science, with links to original sources. Articles are not independently human fact-checked. Publication approval does not change their AI authorship or establish scientific accuracy.

• Repository: https://github.com/camsai/news-digest
• Website: https://camsai.github.io/news-digest/
• Plan: AI for materials publication
• Tracking: Issue #1
• Custom domain: Deploy at digest.example.com
• GitHub-native generation: Copilot generation implementation

Current state

The repository is public and GitHub Pages is live at https://camsai.github.io/news-digest/. The launch field note is retrospective background.

Copilot generation uses the organization Actions secret TB_COPILOT_TOKEN_01. It authenticates as the token owner and uses that person’s Copilot seat and policies. GitHub repository operations continue to use the separate built-in workflow token. The Copilot access check has passed.

Workflow-created draft PRs require the CAMSAI organization policy and repository setting. Both permissions are enabled. GitHub combines PR creation and review approval in one repository setting; the workflow creates a publication PR, merges its validated head automatically, and explicitly dispatches Pages deployment. Validated outputs are also retained as downloadable Actions artifacts.

Local development

Use Node.js 24 and npm. Dependencies are locked in package-lock.json.

npm ci
ASTRO_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 npm run dev

Open http://localhost:4321/news-digest/. Run validation before a PR:

npm run format:check
ASTRO_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 npm run check
npm test
ASTRO_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 npm run build

The pre-commit configuration uses the local Prettier installation. If you use Python pre-commit, select Python with pyenv and install it in agents/workdir/venv; do not install globally.

Publishing setup

1. GitHub Pages is enabled with GitHub Actions as its build source.
2. Keep TB_COPILOT_TOKEN_01 available to this repository and renew it before expiration.
3. The Publish workflow validates and deploys the static dist/ artifact on pushes to main. This includes the published launch article, “From predicting crystals to designing them,” on the homepage, article page and RSS. It does not wait for Copilot or a weekly draft.
4. Keep enabled Allow GitHub Actions to create and approve pull requests in Settings → Actions → General. This is a combined GitHub permission; the supplied workflow creates and automatically merges publication PRs, without submitting approving reviews.
5. Confirm the token owner’s Copilot CLI policy and usage allowance. Optionally set repository variable COPILOT_MODEL; otherwise Copilot selects auto. No OpenAI API key is used.
6. Enable workflow failure notifications in your GitHub notification settings. Manually run Publish weekly edition once and check its PR, evidence, and usage before relying on the schedule.

The weekly schedule is Monday 00:00 UTC (09:00 JST). GitHub schedules can be delayed or dropped and need the workflow on the default branch. A Monday date identifies each edition even when a manual run happens later that week; the coverage window ends on that Monday. Existing edition branches are preserved rather than overwritten or regenerated at additional cost.

Research and review

The generator uses the pinned GitHub Copilot CLI. Authentication and billing stay with GitHub, through the token owner’s Copilot seat. GitHub documents this Actions authentication route. This removes separate AI/search provider accounts and keys; it does not make model usage free.

config/research.json configures a 14-day lookback, source endpoints, editorial topics, and a maximum of 60 candidate records. Public arXiv Atom queries retrieve up to 100 papers in the date window; GitHub release endpoints retrieve up to 30 releases per project. These public HTTP endpoints require no API key. This is curated discovery, not unrestricted web search. Unavailable feeds, omitted candidates, and unsupported submissions are recorded as gaps.

Copilot receives the collected excerpts and a JSON schema, with at most two invocations when the first selection is empty. Public feed failures get up to three attempts. AI-related records are prioritized before the candidate and prompt-size limits. Repeated empty selections stop publication and report collection counts without logging source or submission text. A four-minute per-invocation timeout and output-size limit bound execution, not monetary cost. Copilot cannot run shell commands, read files, write files, or browse; its only exposed tool is web_fetch, with URL access explicitly denied. Built-in MCP servers and custom instructions are disabled, and configuration is isolated under the agents workdir. Generation has read-only repository permissions. A separate job creates and merges the publication PR, then dispatches Pages deployment.

The intended live entry point is Draft weekly edition in Actions after merging. For local experiments, supply a Copilot-compatible token through COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN securely; a normal classic GitHub PAT is not a substitute. The workflow reads its stored token from the organization secret.

npm run digest -- --log-level info

The command produces a draft Markdown article and a dated evidence record under data/research/. Tests use synthetic fixtures inside the ignored agents workdir, without API calls.

Source collection is deterministic; the model only receives the collected evidence and approved submissions. All fetched text and issue bodies are untrusted data. Generated prose is escaped; raw Markdown HTML is disabled. Runtime validation checks dates, schema, source provenance, duplicate URLs, and approved submission IDs. It does not independently prove that a source supports every claim, nor detect all semantic duplicates. AI-authorship and non-verification disclosures remain visible even when a maintainer approves a publication PR.

Review the originating Actions run and evidence.json, including coverage gaps and usage. Check facts, novelty, affiliations, caveats, and citations. The scheduled workflow changes status: draft to status: published and retains an explicit automatic-publication disclosure before validation, PR creation and merge. Drafts and future-dated articles are excluded from the site, archive, topic pages, and RSS. Failed validation leaves the old site intact.

Copilot billing and feature access follow the token owner’s seat and its managing organization. The evidence records the requested model and invocation count; token usage is not captured in the evidence record. Collectors have been checked against live endpoints, and the pinned CLI flags have been checked. Authenticated Copilot generation passed in run 35496396445. The September 14 edition was reviewed by AI against its collected abstracts for publication. On September 27, the schedule changed to Monday 00:00 UTC and automatic draft PR creation was enabled at both the organization and repository levels.

Community submissions

Use the story issue form or submit a JSON file by PR. Maintainers create and use the labels editorial:approved, editorial:featured, and editorial:published. Approved issue bodies are read only by trusted scheduled/manual runs. PR submissions are queued after merge. A submitted URL must match a retrieved source before Copilot can cover it; otherwise the evidence record flags it for a new curated source or manual research. The publication records consumed submission identifiers and source URLs to avoid repeat coverage. After successful deployment, mark covered issues published and close them manually.

Weekly editions publish automatically after content checks, tests and build pass. The workflow does not close issues automatically or send newsletters. An hourly recovery monitor checks failed or missing publications. The plan tracks those follow-ups and the reviewed pilot.

To backfill a missed edition, dispatch Publish weekly edition with edition_date set to its original Monday (YYYY-MM-DD). Dates must be valid, non-future Mondays. Run backfills oldest first so later editions exclude already published sources. Feed requests have a 60-second timeout and up to three attempts with increasing delays.

Automatic recovery and alerts

Recover failed editions checks Actions history and the live site hourly at minute 43 UTC. It examines the last 35 days of runs and processes missing editions oldest first. Each edition gets at most two automatic recovery runs, keeping its original Monday date. Completed articles are not regenerated: if already merged but not live, recovery dispatches Pages instead. Running jobs and the first 30 minutes after a run finishes are allowed to settle before retrying.

After two unsuccessful recoveries, the monitor opens one issue per edition, assigned to and mentioning timurbazhirov, with links to the runs. This generates a GitHub notification; email or mobile delivery follows your GitHub notification settings. The monitor also reports its own failures through a separate issue. It does not send success notifications or repeat an existing edition alert. GitHub schedules can be delayed, so hourly checks are not an exact-time guarantee.