# News Situation Brief (RAG-Synthesized Summary)

> News Situation Brief (RAG-Synthesized Summary) is a paid API for AI agents from api.agentstools.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.04/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15).

Searches recent news, reads top articles, and synthesizes a short cited situation brief on any topic using retrieval-augmented generation.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://api.agentstools.dev/news/brief
- Price: $0.04/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/news-situation-brief-rag-synthesized-summary-a4dc299d
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_ZwX1HwCtyX-qBul8Ddk36

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability news-situation-brief-rag-synthesized-summary-a4dc299d
```

Example prompt: Give me a situation brief on the US-China trade war — search the past week of news, read up to 5 articles, and give me a cited summary of what's happening right now.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need a synthesized, cited narrative summary of current events on a topic — not just raw headlines. It is better than a raw news search when you want anti-hallucination guarantees (citations only from retrieved articles), a digestible briefing rather than a list of links, and a synthesis of multiple sources into key points. Prefer the sibling keyword search endpoint if you only need headline lists or raw article metadata.

## Known failure modes

- No recent articles found for obscure or very niche topics
- Timelimit too narrow (e.g. 'd') with low-news topics returns sparse results
- Invalid region/locale string may fall back to default us-en or error
- max_sources out of bounds (must be 1–10) returns validation error
- Payment failure (402) if USDC balance insufficient for $0.04 per call
- Network timeout if upstream news engines are slow to respond

## How this service works

Situation brief on a topic (RAG over fresh news): searches recent news, reads the top articles and synthesizes a short cited summary of what is currently happening plus key points. Cites only the retrieved articles (anti-hallucination).

## Output

A short cited summary of the current situation on the given topic, including key points and references to the specific news articles that were retrieved and read. Only retrieved articles are cited, preventing hallucination.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET",
      "HEAD",
      "DELETE"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [
      "topic"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "query": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Alias for topic (either is accepted)"
      },
      "topic": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "The topic to brief on"
      },
      "region": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Locale like 'us-en', 'uk-en' (default us-en)"
      },
      "timelimit": {
       "enum": [
        "d",
        "w",
        "m",
        "y"
       ],
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Freshness filter (default w = past week)"
      },
      "max_sources": {
       "type": "integer",
       "maximum": 10,
       "minimum": 1,
       "description": "How many articles to read (default 5)"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/news-situation-brief-rag-synthesized-summary-a4dc299d/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from api.agentstools.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/api.agentstools.dev/llms.txt)