astroReport — a focused astronomy literature digest

astroReport is a personal astronomy literature-monitoring system hosted on GitHub Actions. It turns the daily stream of new arXiv papers into a focused report for a specific research programme.

What it does

On each weekday at 10:00 Beijing time, astroReport retrieves recent papers from selected arXiv categories. The current configuration follows astro-ph.SR and astro-ph.EP, with an emphasis on stellar magnetic fields, magnetic activity, and exoplanet environments.

For each batch of papers, an OpenAI-compatible model produces a complete Chinese report and a shorter digest. The concise version is sent by email with links to the full report and source papers, while the complete report is retained in the repository for 15 days.

A configurable research filter

The project separates the retrieval settings from the scientific focus. The config.json file controls categories, the lookback window, and retention policy; focus_area.md tells the summarization model which questions and research directions should receive priority.

This keeps the daily report useful as a research tool rather than a generic list of new papers. The same workflow can be adapted to a different field simply by changing the arXiv categories and focus instructions.

Implementation

astroReport is written in Python and orchestrated through GitHub Actions. It supports an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint for report generation and Resend for email delivery. Separate workflows handle the weekday report, manual email testing, and the cleanup of expired reports.