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Your AI morning briefing

Wake up to a daily summary of weather, your calendar, and top news — delivered to your inbox

Every morning at 7am, your Mac Mini pulls today's weather, your calendar events, and top headlines — and emails you a plain-English summary. No subscriptions, runs on your own hardware. Setup takes about an hour, mostly waiting for accounts.

IntermediateFree60 minutes

Tools used

n8n (free, self-hosted on your Mac Mini or PC)Ollama (free, local AI)Open-Meteo weather API (free, no account needed)Google Calendar API (free, requires a free Google Cloud account)

How to do it

  1. 1

    BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE: You will need a free Google Cloud account to connect your calendar. Go to console.cloud.google.com, sign in with your Google account, and follow the 'Enable the Google Calendar API' guide at developers.google.com/calendar/api/quickstart. This takes about 15 minutes and does not cost anything. If this step feels daunting, this is a good candidate for a Setup Session.

  2. 2

    Install n8n on your Mac Mini using the Docker install at docs.n8n.io/hosting/installation/docker — takes about 10 minutes

  3. 3

    Install Ollama from ollama.com and run: ollama pull llama3 in your Terminal

  4. 4

    In n8n, create a new workflow and add a Schedule trigger set to 7:00am daily

  5. 5

    Add an HTTP Request node pointed at api.open-meteo.com — paste in the URL for your location (the Open-Meteo website has a free URL builder at open-meteo.com)

  6. 6

    Add a Google Calendar node — connect it using the credentials you set up in step 1

  7. 7

    Add an Ollama node with this prompt: 'Summarize the following in plain English in 5 bullet points: today's weather, today's calendar events, and any news items. Be brief and practical.'

  8. 8

    Add a Send Email node pointed at your own email address

  9. 9

    Click 'Test workflow' to run it manually and check the output

  10. 10

    Once it looks good, activate the workflow — it will run automatically every morning

Watch out for

  • Your Mac Mini needs to be on (not fully shut down) at 7am — sleep mode is fine, full shutdown is not

  • The Google Calendar API setup in step 1 is the only tricky part — everything else is connecting nodes in n8n

  • If the Google API step is blocking you, the Setup Session will get you through it in 20 minutes

  • Open-Meteo is genuinely free with no account — just a URL with your latitude and longitude

The Google Calendar API setup is the part that trips people up. Book a Setup Session and we will handle it for you. Book a Setup Session →

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Your AI morning briefing | The AI Shed