RSS to Gmail, finance news briefs in your inbox
You open five tabs for “quick market context,” then lose 30 minutes. By the time you have the gist, the day has already moved on.
This RSS Gmail digest hits deal folks and investors first, honestly. But marketing leads who need a clean “what happened today” recap feel it too. You get two tidy briefings a day, already summarized, sitting in your inbox.
Below is the exact n8n workflow that pulls from three finance feeds, picks the five freshest stories, rewrites them into short summaries, and emails you the finished digest.
How This Automation Works
The full n8n workflow, from trigger to final output:
n8n Workflow Template: RSS to Gmail, finance news briefs in your inbox
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The Problem: Finance News Research Turns Into Tab Chaos
Finance news is valuable, but the way you have to consume it is a mess. You bounce between RSS readers, newsletters, and search, trying to figure out what’s actually worth your attention. Then you still have to read long posts to get the point. If you’re tracking private equity, M&A chatter, and broader market movement, you can easily spend about an hour a day just “checking the headlines,” and still miss the one story that matters because it was buried under noise.
The friction compounds. Here’s where it breaks down.
- You scan dozens of headlines across sources and still don’t walk away with a clear narrative.
- Reading full articles for context takes long enough that you postpone it, which means you’re reacting late.
- Forwarding “interesting links” becomes another micro-task, and it rarely includes a summary people can act on.
- When you try to be consistent, you end up building a manual routine you can’t maintain on busy weeks.
The Solution: Turn RSS Headlines Into Two Daily Email Briefs
This workflow runs on a schedule twice a day (by default, 09:00 and 15:00). Each run pulls fresh items from three finance-focused RSS feeds: NYT Private Equity, DealLawyers M&A, and Yahoo Finance. It then merges all incoming stories into one stream, keeps only the five most recent items, and formats them into a clean text block so the summaries read like a real briefing, not a dump of links. Next, an AI Agent (using an OpenAI chat model) rewrites each story into a short, engaging 5–6 sentence summary. Finally, n8n sends the finished digest to you via Gmail, ready to skim, forward, or archive.
The workflow starts with a scheduled trigger, then collects and merges the three RSS streams. After it caps the list to five items, it transforms the feed content into a consistent structure and hands it to the AI rewrite step. Gmail delivers the result as a single tidy email to your chosen recipient address.
What You Get: Automation vs. Results
| What This Workflow Automates | Results You’ll Get |
|---|---|
|
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Example: What This Looks Like
Say you check three sources twice a day and you spend maybe 10 minutes per source to find the five stories worth reading. That’s about an hour daily, and you still have to open the articles to understand what happened. With this workflow, you spend about 2 minutes scanning one email at 9am, then another 2 minutes at 3pm. The AI summaries do the heavy lifting, so you’re getting the gist in under 5 minutes total.
What You’ll Need
- n8n instance (try n8n Cloud free)
- Self-hosting option if you prefer (Hostinger works well)
- Gmail to send the digest email.
- RSS feeds as your finance news sources.
- OpenAI API key (get it from the OpenAI API dashboard).
Skill level: Beginner. You’ll mostly paste credentials, set your recipient email, and tweak the schedule times if you want.
Don’t want to set this up yourself? Talk to an automation expert (free 15-minute consultation).
How It Works
A twice-daily schedule kicks things off. n8n runs the workflow at 09:00 and 15:00 by default, so you get a morning and afternoon pulse without thinking about it.
RSS stories are collected and merged. It reads items from NYT Private Equity, DealLawyers M&A, and Yahoo Finance, then combines them into one stream so you’re not jumping between sources.
The list is trimmed and cleaned up. The workflow limits the output to the five most recent stories, then formats the content into a consistent text block that the AI can summarize cleanly.
AI rewrites, then Gmail sends. An AI Agent using an OpenAI chat model produces 5–6 sentence summaries per item, and Gmail delivers the final digest to your inbox in one email.
You can easily modify the RSS sources to match your industry, or change the delivery channel from Gmail to Google Sheets based on your needs. See the full implementation guide below for customization options.
Step-by-Step Implementation Guide
Step 1: Configure the Schedule Trigger
Set up the schedule that starts the workflow and fan out the RSS feed reads in parallel.
- Add and open Scheduled Automation Trigger.
- In Rule → Interval, set the two trigger hours to
9and3(as shown in the workflow). - Connect Scheduled Automation Trigger to Mergers Feed Reader, Private Equity News Feed, and Yahoo Finance Updates.
- Ensure the execution is parallel: Scheduled Automation Trigger outputs to both Mergers Feed Reader and Private Equity News Feed and Yahoo Finance Updates in parallel.
Step 2: Connect the RSS Data Sources
Configure the three RSS feeds that supply the news items to the digest.
- Open Private Equity News Feed and set URL to
=https://www.nytimes.com/svc/collections/v1/publish/http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/private-equity/rss.xml. - Open Mergers Feed Reader and set URL to
=https://www.deallawyers.com/blog/feed. - Open Yahoo Finance Updates and set URL to
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rssindex. - Connect all three RSS nodes into Combine News Streams so the combined stream includes all sources.
Step 3: Merge and Limit the News Items
Merge the three feeds and cap the number of items sent to the summarization logic.
- Open Combine News Streams and set Number of Inputs to
3. - Connect Combine News Streams to Cap Item Count.
- Open Cap Item Count and set Max Items to
5.
Step 4: Transform the Feed Summary
Build a structured summary text field that will feed the AI rewrite chain.
- Open Transform Feed Summary and paste the existing JavaScript from the workflow into JavaScript Code.
- Confirm the output is a single field named
news_summarybuilt from titles, creators, dates, links, and snippets. - Connect Cap Item Count to Transform Feed Summary.
Step 5: Set Up the AI Rewrite Chain
Use the language model to rewrite the summary into a polished, narrative digest.
- Open Narrative Rewrite Chain and set Prompt Type to
define. - Set Text to the full prompt from the workflow, including the expression
{{ $json.news_summary }}exactly as shown. - Ensure OpenAI Chat Engine is connected as the language model for Narrative Rewrite Chain (AI language model connection).
- Credential Required: Connect your OpenAI API credentials in OpenAI Chat Engine (credentials are added to the parent model node, not the chain).
Step 6: Configure the Email Output
Send the rewritten narrative digest by email.
- Open Dispatch Email Notification and configure the email fields you want to send (subject, recipients, and body).
- Connect Narrative Rewrite Chain to Dispatch Email Notification.
- Credential Required: Connect your Gmail credentials in Dispatch Email Notification.
Step 7: Test and Activate Your Workflow
Validate the end-to-end flow, then enable the schedule for production use.
- Click Execute Workflow to run a manual test from Scheduled Automation Trigger.
- Confirm that Combine News Streams merges all three RSS sources and Cap Item Count limits output to 5 items.
- Verify Transform Feed Summary outputs
news_summaryand Narrative Rewrite Chain returns HTML-formatted stories. - Check that Dispatch Email Notification sends the email successfully with the AI-generated content.
- Toggle the workflow Active switch to enable scheduled runs at the configured hours.
Common Gotchas
- Gmail credentials can expire or need specific permissions. If things break, check the Gmail credential in n8n (and Google account security alerts) first.
- If you’re using Wait nodes or external rendering, processing times vary. Bump up the wait duration if downstream nodes fail on empty responses.
- Default prompts in AI nodes are generic. Add your brand voice early or you’ll be editing outputs forever.
Frequently Asked Questions
About 20 minutes if you already have your Gmail and OpenAI credentials ready.
No. You’ll connect Gmail, paste an OpenAI API key, and replace the recipient email variable.
Yes. n8n has a free self-hosted option and a free trial on n8n Cloud. Cloud plans start at $20/month for higher volume. You’ll also need to factor in OpenAI API costs (usually just a few dollars a month for light usage).
Two options: n8n Cloud (managed, easiest setup) or self-hosting on a VPS. For self-hosting, Hostinger VPS is affordable and handles n8n well. Self-hosting gives you unlimited executions but requires basic server management.
Yes, and it’s straightforward. Replace the three RSS Read nodes (NYT Private Equity, DealLawyers M&A, and Yahoo Finance) with your own feed URLs, then decide if you still want to cap the digest at five items in the Limit node. You can also tweak the AI Agent prompt so summaries focus on what you care about (deal terms, market impact, or just the headline story). If you want a different destination, swap the Gmail send step for Google Sheets or Telegram and keep the rest intact.
Most of the time it’s expired or revoked Gmail access in your n8n credentials. Reconnect Gmail in n8n and confirm the account has permission to send mail. Also check that you replaced the recipient email placeholder correctly, because a blank or malformed address can look like an auth issue. If you’re running this at high volume, Gmail sending limits can trigger temporary failures too.
By default, it summarizes five stories per run.
Often, yes. n8n is more comfortable when you want multiple feeds merged, a hard cap on items, and a more custom AI summarization chain without paying extra for every branch. It also gives you a self-hosting option, which can matter if you’re running lots of automations and don’t want per-task pricing. Zapier or Make can still be fine for a basic “RSS to email” flow, but once you add merging, formatting, and AI rewrite logic, n8n tends to stay cleaner. Talk to an automation expert if you want a quick recommendation for your exact setup.
Two emails a day. Five stories each. The workflow handles the repetitive scanning so you can focus on decisions, not tabs.
Need Help Setting This Up?
Our automation experts can build and customize this workflow for your specific needs. Free 15-minute consultation—no commitment required.
