Weekly family brief

The setup

You want a Sunday-night digest of your family's week. What everyone did, gems earned, screen-time used, anything that needs your attention going into Monday. One card; scrollable, scannable, ready for a 60-second review with coffee.

This is the shortest walkthrough in Build: two patterns, ~30 lines of glue. Reliable and high-leverage.

Patterns we'll chain

1. Reports and briefs: the digest skill that reads the week and posts a card.
2. Autonomous loop: heartbeat firing the digest every Sunday at 8pm.

The arc

1. Author the digest skill

A home_agent skill that reads the past week and structures it. Per kid: tasks completed, gems earned, screen-time consumed, anything pending review. Pair with the Morning brief skill as a starting template; tune for weekly cadence.

skill.write({
name: "Weekly family brief",
category: "home_agent",
prompt: `Read the past 7 days:
- task.list per kid, status: completed
- gems.list_transactions per kid
- screentime.query_state per kid, period: week
- any pending parent reviews
Format as a compact card, one section per kid.
skill.post_result with the structured payload.`,
handsReferenced: ["task_list", "gems_list_transactions", "screentime_query_state", "skill_post_result"],
inputVariables: [{ name: "family_id" }]
})

2. Schedule it

Heartbeat fires every Sunday at 8pm in your timezone. Cron is the only thing you tune.

heartbeat.create({
name: "Weekly family brief",
cron: "0 20 * * 0",                  // Sunday 8pm
tz: "America/New_York",
runSkillId: "<digestSkillId>",
skillInput: { family_id: "<your-family>" }
})

The result

Every Sunday at 8pm, a card lands in your family inbox. One scroll: each kid's week summarized. If there's anything pending, a screen-time request, a task you haven't reviewed, it's at the top. You catch up with coffee Monday morning. The loop runs itself.

Variations

• Daily morning brief: drop cron to 0 7 * * *; reduce scope to today's plan.
• End-of-day brief: cron to 0 21 * * *; focus on what landed since this morning.
• Per-kid digest: one heartbeat per kid; tighter focus, more frequent cadence.
• Trend layer: add a "themes this week" section (asks your agent to spot patterns across the journal transcripts) for deeper insight.