European Press Review

A scheduled, automated daily digest of European news on digital speech, content deletion, and online censorship — delivered as a static web app on GitHub Pages.

Each weekday morning, a GitHub Actions job queries the Perplexity Sonar Pro API, saves a structured JSON digest, rebuilds the Svelte frontend, and deploys it to GitHub Pages. No server. No database. No subscription beyond pay-as-you-go API credits (~$1–3/month).

---

How it works

Perplexity Sonar Pro API
        │
        ▼
scraper/press_review.py     ← runs daily via GitHub Actions cron
        │  writes YYYY-MM-DD.json + index.json
        ▼
web/static/data/            ← committed to main, served as static assets
        │
        ▼
SvelteKit build             ← adapter-static, deployed to gh-pages branch
        │
        ▼
GitHub Pages                ← your live site

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Stack

Layer	Tool
Search + synthesis	Perplexity Sonar Pro
Scraper	Python 3.11 + openai SDK (Perplexity-compatible)
Frontend	SvelteKit + adapter-static
Scheduling + CI	GitHub Actions
Hosting	GitHub Pages

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Repo layout

press-review/
├── .github/workflows/
│   └── daily.yml          # cron job: scrape → commit → build → deploy
├── scraper/
│   ├── press_review.py    # fetches digest, writes JSON + index
│   └── requirements.txt
└── web/                   # SvelteKit app
    ├── src/
    │   ├── routes/
    │   │   ├── +page.js       # CSR load: fetch index + latest digest
    │   │   └── +page.svelte   # main view, client-side date switching
    │   └── lib/
    │       └── ArticleCard.svelte
    └── static/data/       # JSON digests live here

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Deploy to GitHub Pages

1. Get a Perplexity API key

Sign up at perplexity.ai/api-platform, add billing, and generate a key. Expected cost: ~$1–3/month at daily frequency.

2. Push the repo to GitHub

git init
git add .
git commit -m "init"
gh repo create press-review --public --push --source .

3. Add the API key as a secret

In your repo: Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → New repository secret

Name	Value
PERPLEXITY_API_KEY	your key

4. Set the base path variable (if not using a custom domain)

GitHub Pages serves project repos at https://username.github.io/press-review. The SvelteKit build needs to know this prefix.

In your repo: Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → Variables → New repository variable

Name	Value
BASE_PATH	/press-review

If you're using a custom domain (e.g. review.yourdomain.com), skip this step — leave BASE_PATH unset.

5. Enable GitHub Pages

In your repo: Settings → Pages

• Source: Deploy from a branch
• Branch: gh-pages / / (root)

The gh-pages branch is created automatically on the first workflow run.

6. Run the workflow

Go to Actions → Daily Press Review → Run workflow.

After ~2 minutes your site will be live at https://username.github.io/press-review.

From then on it runs automatically at 07:00 UTC, Monday–Friday.

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Local development

Run the scraper

cd scraper
pip install -r requirements.txt
export PERPLEXITY_API_KEY=your_key_here
python press_review.py
# output lands in web/static/data/

Run the frontend

cd web
npm install
npm run dev
# open http://localhost:5173

Build for production

cd web
BASE_PATH=/press-review npm run build
npm run preview  # preview at http://localhost:4173

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Configuration

Change the topic

Edit USER_PROMPT in scraper/press_review.py. The current topic covers:

• Politicians or public figures deleting social media posts
• Government-ordered content removal
• Platform moderation controversies involving political figures
• Court orders to remove political speech online

Change the schedule

Edit the cron expression in .github/workflows/daily.yml:

- cron: '0 7 * * 1-5'   # 07:00 UTC, Monday–Friday

Note: GitHub Actions cron runs in UTC. German/Central European Time is UTC+1 (winter) or UTC+2 (summer), so 0 7 * * * hits at 08:00–09:00 CET.

Extend the recency window

In scraper/press_review.py, change search_recency_filter:

extra_body={"search_recency_filter": "week"},   # or "day", "month"

---

Cost

Item	Cost
Perplexity Sonar Pro	~$0.02–0.06 per run
GitHub Actions	Free (well within free tier)
GitHub Pages	Free
Total	~$1–3/month

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Known limitations

• Citations are a flat list — Perplexity returns source URLs as a list, not linked per article. They appear in the Sources section below the digest.
• Coverage varies by topic — niche topics may return few articles on quiet news days. The editorial overview will say so honestly rather than hallucinate.
• Index lag — Perplexity's index lags by several hours. The 07:00 UTC run reliably captures the prior day's press.