---
name: industry-trends-weekly
description: Produces a weekly, ranked digest of news and trends for a set of tracked accounts or an industry, with a talking point the user can drop into a conversation for each item. Use when the user asks for an "industry trends digest", "what's happening in my accounts this week", "weekly news brief for [industry]", or sets up a recurring trends email.
license: MIT
compatibility: Requires web search; connected CRM optional to pull the account list. Read-only.
metadata:
  author: Builder.org
  version: 2.0.0
  persona: Strategic Steve, Marketing Meg
  rave: R4 A2 V4 E4
  category: crm
---

# Industry Trends Weekly

## What it does

A short weekly digest of what actually moved in your industry or named accounts, each item paired with a "so you can say" talking point, so your next call sounds current without you doing the scanning. Its entire value is relevance; it would rather ship three sharp items than five with padding.

## When to use

- "Industry trends digest", "what's happening in my accounts this week", "weekly news brief for [industry]".
- As a scheduled weekly email, or before a week heavy with customer calls.
- Not for a deep dive on one company before a meeting; that is `pre-meeting-brief` or `account-brief`. This skill covers the watchlist wide and shallow.

## Inputs

An industry or topic, or a tracked-account list (pulled from your CRM when connected). Optional: number of items (default 5), and what the user sells, which sharpens every talking point.

## The bar

- Every item is dated, sourced, and from the last 7 days. Older news gets in only if the user's world clearly has not seen it, and it says so.
- The talking point is a usable sentence, in speech, aimed at the reader's customer conversations, not a summary restated. The test: could you say it on a call tomorrow without sounding like a newsletter?
- Ranked by relevance to the reader's accounts and offer, not by publication prominence. A trade-journal note about a tracked account outranks a national headline about the industry.
- A quiet week ships short. Three real items beat five where two are filler, and saying "quiet week" builds the trust that makes the loud weeks land.

## Workflow

1. **Set the watchlist.** The named accounts, or the industry plus its adjacent segments (a logistics watchlist includes fuel and freight-rate news, not just competitor moves). If pulled from the CRM, use accounts with open deals or recent activity first.
2. **Gather the week.** Credible news from the last 7 days: funding, launches, leadership changes, regulation, market shifts, notable hiring. Two sources for anything surprising; one is enough for the routine.
3. **Rank ruthlessly.** Score each item by closeness to the reader's accounts and offer, times recency. Cut everything below the line rather than filling to the count. Duplicates and press-release fluff die here.
4. **Write each item:** headline in plain words, one or two lines of what happened, the source with a link, and the talking point: one conversational sentence connecting the news to something the reader's customers care about.
5. **Top the digest** with the single most important item of the week in one bold line, so a reader with ten seconds still gets the week.

## Output

```
## Trends · week of [date]
**If you read one thing:** [the week's most important item, one line]

1. **[Headline in plain words]** · [1-2 line summary] ([source, date])
   So you can say: "[a sentence usable on a call]"
2. ...

[Quiet-week note, if fewer than the requested items survived the cut.]
```

## Worked example

```
Fictional example. Never reuse these names or numbers in real output.

## Trends · week of March 2 (watchlist: regional logistics accounts)
**If you read one thing:** the national carrier that bought Ridgeline is raising minimums, and your mid-market accounts will feel it by summer.

1. **Ridgeline's new owner raises shipment minimums** · Two weeks after acquiring Ridgeline Carriers, National Freight Group announced higher minimums for mid-market shippers, effective June 1 (Transport Topics, Feb 27).
   So you can say: "Shippers your size are about to get repriced by the big carriers; a few of our customers are locking regional capacity now, ahead of June."

2. **Meridian Freight opens its Columbus hub** · Tracked account; their second distribution hub, with 4 dispatcher roles posted (company newsroom, Feb 26).
   So you can say: "Saw the Columbus announcement; second hubs are usually where dispatch processes crack. How is your team planning to scale that?"

3. **New ELD enforcement guidance lands April 1** · FMCSA clarified logging-device audits, with heavier fines for repeat gaps (industry brief, Feb 25).
   So you can say: "The April ELD guidance makes clean dispatch records a compliance issue, not just an ops one. Worth a look at how yours would hold up in an audit."

Quiet-week note: two more candidates were cut for low relevance; this was a 3-item week.
```

## Never

- Never pad to the requested count. The cut line is the product.
- Never include an undated or unsourced item, or present a press release's framing as news.
- Never write a talking point that just restates the summary with "you could mention that".
- Never bury a tracked-account item below generic industry news; named accounts always rank first at equal weight.

## Recovery

- Quiet week: ship the short digest, say it plainly, and optionally include one "still worth knowing" evergreen item, clearly labeled as not from this week.
- Watchlist too broad ("technology"): narrow to the segments where the reader has accounts, say which segments you chose, and invite a correction that persists to next week.
- No CRM access and no account list given: run industry-only and note the digest gets sharper with a named watchlist.
- Conflicting reports on a big story: include it with both sources and the discrepancy named; "reports disagree on the price" is itself a fine talking point.