TechBrief

A multilingual reader for tech news and indie‑dev writing — every article gets a short summary, and AI translates it into the chosen language.

TechBrief gathers articles from a curated set of tech sources and RSS feeds and gives each one a short summary. Pick a reading language; anything not already in it is translated by AI (reading in English needs no AI at all). Read it all in a clean web page or on a phone.

Get started

Requires Node.js 20 or newer.

1. Install:

   npm install -g @pubwave/techbrief

2. Start it:

   techbrief

On the first run, a short setup guide asks a few questions (language, and which AI to use). TechBrief then starts up and opens the reader in the browser automatically.

That's it.

Choosing an AI

Translation is done by AI (summaries are generated locally without it). The setup guide offers two options:

• Local — runs on the same machine with Ollama. Free, private, no API key.
• Cloud — uses a provider with an existing key: OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter.

Run the setup again any time to change it.

Reading on mobile

TechBrief has a mobile app (iOS and Android). With the phone on the same Wi‑Fi as the computer running TechBrief:

techbrief mobile run ios       # or: android

Once it's installed, open the app and start reading.

Commands

Run techbrief help to see them all. The most common ones:

Command	What it does
techbrief	Start everything and open the reader
techbrief launch	Same as above — launch the runtime
techbrief status	Show what's running (API, web, scheduler)
techbrief down	Stop TechBrief (shuts the background services down)
techbrief logs	Show the background service logs
techbrief sync	Fetch the latest articles now
techbrief setup	Change the language or AI settings
techbrief doctor	Check that everything is set up correctly
techbrief help	List every command
techbrief version	Show the CLI version

After running TechBrief, the API, web reader, and scheduler keep running in the background so syncing continues. Use techbrief down to stop them.

AI model (local / Ollama)

Command	What it does
techbrief model local list	List installed local models
techbrief model local install	Install a local model with Ollama
techbrief model local use	Set a local model as the configured one
techbrief model local uninstall	Remove a local model from Ollama

Mobile

Command	What it does
techbrief mobile run ios	Build and run the app on iOS
techbrief mobile run android	Build and run the app on Android
techbrief mobile install	Check Flutter and install the app on a connected phone
techbrief mobile devices	List connected Flutter devices

Schedule & config

Command	What it does
techbrief schedule get	Show the sync schedule
techbrief schedule set	Update the sync schedule
techbrief config get	Show the current configuration
techbrief config set	Update configuration (language, model, days…)
techbrief init	Initialize config non-interactively (flag-driven)

Setup & maintenance

Command	What it does
techbrief install	Install npm dependencies and the Flutter mobile project
techbrief build	Build the web bundle and run Flutter static checks
techbrief up	Hint for how to start the runtime

Dockerized web stack

Command	What it does
techbrief web up	Bring up the dockerized web stack
techbrief web down	Tear down the dockerized web stack
techbrief web logs	Show dockerized web stack logs

Sources

Command	What it does
techbrief source list	List configured feed sources
techbrief source add	Add a custom feed source
techbrief source validate	Validate a feed source URL
techbrief source enable	Enable a feed source
techbrief source disable	Disable a feed source

Update & uninstall

Update to the latest version:

npm install -g @pubwave/techbrief@latest

Uninstall:

npm uninstall -g @pubwave/techbrief

This removes the command but keeps settings and saved articles in ~/.techbrief. To wipe those too:

rm -rf ~/.techbrief

Good to know

• TechBrief runs entirely on the local computer; all reading data stays there.
• The app talks to that computer over the local Wi‑Fi, so keep both on the same network.

For developers

This is an npm‑workspaces monorepo (CLI, web, mobile, server, and shared packages). To run it from source:

npm install
npm run build
npm run dev:server   # API server
npm run dev:web      # web reader (Vite dev server)

More detail lives in each package's folder under apps/ and packages/.

Built with

TechBrief is built on two sibling Pubwave projects:

• @pubwave/cli — the composable CLI toolkit powering the setup wizard and mobile install flow.
• @pubwave/editor — the rich-text editor that renders articles in the web and mobile readers.