FrameDial News

Overview

FrameDial is an attention-respecting daily briefing for people who want substance over spin. Each morning it delivers 12 stories across 6 news categories, built through a fully automated pipeline: ingest events from newsapi.ai with relevance scoring, generate consensus facts with source citations, then produce two contrasting value-frame perspectives at two intensity tiers each.

The core interaction is the dial — a slider from -100 to +100 that smoothly transitions between five content zones: Frame A at full or moderate intensity, facts-only in the center, and Frame B at moderate or full intensity. Every factual claim cites at least one source. Readers see who reported what, not just what to think.

Nine value-frames — Human Impact, Accountability, Freedom & Rights, Security & Order, Economic Stakes, Institutions & Process, Cultural Identity, Social Cohesion, and Innovation & Progress — are screened for relevance to each story. The best contrasting pair is selected automatically, and readers can swap frames via dropdown selectors.

Why we built it

Generic news feeds and keyword alerts are noisy and don't explain implications. FrameDial is built to deliver signal over noise: fewer alerts, deduplicated coverage, and fast, role-aware interpretation with receipts. The dial gives readers agency over how much opinion they consume without sacrificing the underlying facts.

How it works

1. Ingest — Events pulled from newsapi.ai with keyword pre-filtering and LLM relevance scoring, balanced across 6 categories (12 stories total) 2. Generate — Per story: screen all 9 value-frames for relevance, pick the best contrasting pair, generate consensus facts with src-N citations, then generate moderate + max content per selected frame 3. Email — Compose HTML + plain text digest and send via SendGrid to subscribers 4. Read — Browse the web app, use the dial to control commentary intensity, swap frames, tap citations to verify claims

Feature highlights

• Interactive Dial — Smooth slider from -100 to +100 across five content zones: framed commentary at two intensities, or facts-only center
• Cited Consensus Facts — Every factual claim references at least one source; phantom citations are automatically stripped
• 9 Value-Frames — Human Impact, Accountability, Freedom & Rights, Security & Order, Economic Stakes, Institutions & Process, Cultural Identity, Social Cohesion, Innovation & Progress
• 6 News Categories — U.S. Politics, International Affairs, Business & Markets, Technology & Society, Science & Climate, Rights & Justice
• Daily Email Digest — Story previews with fact highlights delivered to subscribers
• Content Confidence Signals — Well-covered, Developing, or Single-angle based on source diversity

Notes

• Tech Stack: Next.js 16, TypeScript, React 19, Tailwind CSS v4, Neon Postgres + Drizzle ORM, Supabase Auth, OpenAI GPT-5.2 pro, newsapi.ai, SendGrid, Vitest
• Pipeline: Fully automated daily cron at 4 AM ET via Render; retry logic for API failures, skip-and-continue for individual story failures, never sends broken or empty emails
• For Whom: Anyone tired of spin — news readers who want to verify claims, compare perspectives, and control how much commentary they consume