Recipe H — Multi-modal news roundup

Outcome: A roundup.json file with 5 top headlines on a topic, each paired with a generated editorial illustration. Render it however you want (static page, daily email, RSS feed).

Approx cost: ~$0.21 per roundup.

Script

copy#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

TOPIC="${1:-developments in space exploration}"

# 1. Pull recent headlines via a search-capable LLM
visa-cli run-llm --json --yes \
    --model or-perplexity-sonar \
    "Top 5 recent headlines about $TOPIC. Return strict JSON array: [{\"title\":\"...\",\"summary\":\"...\"}]" \
  | jq -r '.text' \
  | jq -c '.[]' > stories.ndjson

# 2. For each story, generate an editorial illustration
rm -f roundup.ndjson
while IFS= read -r story; do
  TITLE=$(echo "$story" | jq -r .title)

  IMG=$(visa-cli generate image \
      "editorial illustration for: $TITLE" \
      --json --yes \
      | jq -r '.urls[0] // .filePath')

  echo "$story" | jq --arg img "$IMG" '. + {image: $img}' >> roundup.ndjson
done < stories.ndjson

# 3. Bundle into a single JSON array
jq -s '.' < roundup.ndjson > roundup.json
rm stories.ndjson roundup.ndjson

echo "Roundup ready: $(jq '. | length' roundup.json) stories in roundup.json"

Cost breakdown

Variations

• Daily cron — wrap in a cron job that emails the JSON / rendered HTML every morning.
• Per-illustration prompt tuning — pass the story summary to run-llm first to draft a tailored image prompt before sending to generate image.
• RSS / Atom feed — feed roundup.json into a tiny templating step.