Skilled At Work


How to Build a Daily Newsletter Briefing Dashboard in Claude

If your inbox is drowning in unread newsletters spanning business, tech, and culture, you aren't alone. Instead of manually sifting through dozens of emails every morning, you can use Claude Cowork to automatically aggregate, summarize, and display your newsletters in a sleek, interactive daily dashboard.

Here is exactly how to set up this agentic workflow.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following ready:

  • A Claude Pro Subscription: This workflow requires access to Claude Cowork, Anthropic's agentic interface.

  • The Right Model: While models like Sonnet 4.6 work well, using Opus 4.8 typically yields the cleanest, most sophisticated dashboard designs.

Step 1: Connect Your Inbox via MCP

To allow Claude to read your newsletters, you need to grant it secure access to your email using the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

  1. Navigate to the "Customize" section on your Cowork page.

  2. Click on "Connectors" in the top-left corner.

  3. Click the + icon and select your email provider (e.g., the Gmail connector or the Microsoft 365 connector for Outlook).

  4. Follow the prompts to sign in and authorize access.

⚠️ A Note on Privacy: Granting MCP access means Claude can read your inbox to pull newsletter data. Ensure you are comfortable with this level of integration if you handle highly sensitive information in the same email account.


 

Step 2: Deploy the Dashboard Prompt

Start a new task in Claude Cowork, select your model, and paste the following comprehensive prompt. Being detailed prevents Claude from making layout assumptions you might not like:

Plaintext
Create a live artifact displaying a daily briefing of summaries for my newsletters from the last 24 hours with their links, headlines, and publication names. The artifact should update daily at 9 am. To display everything correctly, this would likely need a full thread search. It should have a sleek, modern, and intuitive design with a feature to filter by publication. Verify that there are newsletters being displayed upon creation. Feel free to prompt me with any questions about my preferences for newsletters and design.

Step 3: Fine-Tune and Launch

Once you submit the prompt, Claude will initiate a 4-step execution process: finding sender addresses, building the artifact, scheduling the daily update, and verifying the data.

During this process, Claude will actively collaborate with you:

  • Specify Your Sources: Tell Claude exactly which newsletters to track (e.g., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., or specific Substack writers).

  • Choose Your Layout: Request a specific UI style, such as a modern card design or a minimal list view.

Once you grant final permission, an interactive Artifact dashboard will pop up on your screen, updating itself automatically every morning.

Troubleshooting & Pro-Tips

  • Handling Blank Screens: If your dashboard appears empty or pulls from the wrong email folders (like "Promotions" instead of "Primary"), simply chat with Claude in the interface to troubleshoot. Tell it exactly what is missing, and it will rewrite the underlying code to fix it.

  • Keep it Simple: If you don't want a visual dashboard, you can alter the prompt to have Claude text-summarize your morning news directly in the chat interface.

  • Expand Your Ecosystem: You can use this same MCP method to connect Slack, Google Drive, or calendar tools to build a comprehensive, automated command center for your entire workday.