📱 NewsBrief — AI-Powered News Summarizer for Ethiopia

Mobile-first, bilingual (Amharic/English), AI-powered news summaries & audio briefs for Ethiopia. Built in 3 weeks with Flutter + thin GenAI backend wrapper.

🌍 Problem

• Ethiopia has slow, unreliable internet, especially in rural areas.
• News is scattered (Addis Standard, Ethiopian Herald, Fana, ENA, VOA Amharic, etc.).
• Articles are long and hard to digest on mobile.
• Citizens miss important updates in economy, agriculture, health, governance.

Need: A lightweight, offline-capable app that delivers short, neutral, bilingual news briefs — with optional audio.

🚀 Solution

NewsBrief ingests multiple news feeds, deduplicates stories, summarizes them in plain Amharic/English, and provides short TTS audio.

• Daily Briefs (AM/PM): 4–6 top stories stitched into 45–90 sec audio.
• Offline Cache: Last 3–7 days of summaries + audio available without internet.
• Search & Topics: Query “agriculture”, “Addis”, “economy”, etc.
• Lightweight: Text-first, images optional, optimized for low-data devices.
• Privacy-first: No accounts; anonymous telemetry only.

🎯 Goals & Metrics (V1)

• Adoption: 2,000+ unique sessions in first month.

• Engagement: ≥30% play Daily Brief 3x/week.

• Speed:

  • Open-to-content: <1.5s (cached).
  • Audio start: <2s (pre-generated).

• Offline Reliability: 3–7 days cached briefs, 0 errors.

• Quality: Avg. ≥4.2/5 on clarity & usefulness.

🔑 Core Features

• ✅ Topic & Keyword Search (e.g., “agriculture in Amhara”).
• ✅ Plain Summaries: 3–5 bullets (≤120 words), neutral tone.
• ✅ Audio Mode: 30–60 sec per story, stitched AM/PM briefs.
• ✅ Daily Brief Screen: Morning & evening digest with notifications.
• ✅ Offline Cache: Text + audio stored locally.
• ✅ Data Saver Mode: Text-only, compressed payloads.
• ✅ Shareable Summaries: With source + time.

👥 Target Users

• Urban + rural Ethiopians with low data budgets.
• Students, farmers, small businesses, community groups.
• Low-literacy users benefiting from audio mode.

📱 Example Use Cases

• Morning Catch-Up: Tap Daily Brief (Amharic) → 60-sec summary of top news.
• Topic Pull: Search “Agriculture this week” → summaries + audio.
• Offline Ride: No data? Cached last 3 days still available.

🛠️ Tech Stack

Mobile (primary): Flutter

• sqflite (cache)
• just_audio (TTS playback)
• intl (Amharic/English i18n)

Backend: (team picks one: FastAPI / Express.js / Go Fiber)

• Jobs: Ingestor, Summarizer, TTS worker
• Storage: Postgres/SQLite (stories), Redis (cache), Object storage (audio)

Web (optional demo): Next.js (TypeScript)

AI Usage:

• LLM Summarization → JSON { title, bullets[], source, published_at, lang }
• TTS → Amharic & English voices, pre-generated for AM/PM briefs

🎨 Design Principles

• Simplicity First: 3–5 bullets, then optional audio.
• Neutral & Transparent: Always show source + time.
• Data Saver: Text primary, images optional.
• Bilingual: Amharic + English, fully supported.
• Privacy: No accounts, minimal telemetry.

📅 Execution Plan (3 Weeks)

• Week 1: Foundations → RSS ingest, first summaries, Flutter mock screens.
• Week 2: Core Features → API integration, TTS, offline cache.
• Week 3: Hardening → Performance, error states, accessibility, demo.

Demo Date: Sep 10

⚠️ Risks & Mitigation

• RSS downtime: Multi-source ingest + cache.
• LLM costs: Token limits, batching, caching.
• TTS latency: Pre-generate briefs, lazy per-story.
• Amharic quality: Prompt tuning, native review.
• Offline bugs: Strict cache fallbacks, airplane-mode tests.

🧪 Test Plan (for Juniors)

• Feed shows items with source + time.
• Search works in both Amharic & English.
• Audio plays for stories + daily briefs.
• Offline mode: app shows last 3–7 days cached.
• Notifications fire at AM/PM.

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions!

• Fork repo → create feature branch → submit PR.
• Please follow code style (Flutter/Backend/Web).
• Add tests for new features where possible.

📜 License

MIT License © 2025 NewsBrief Team