How to Get Climbing News in Your Inbox — Beta With Your Morning Coffee

What you'll build

The usual fix is following thirty accounts and hoping the algorithm cooperates. It won't—a viral gym-fail reel will always outrank the trip report you'd have loved.

A personal brief works from your instruction instead. Every morning an AI agent searches the web fresh and writes you an email—not forwarded posts, a few real sentences about what was climbed and why the line matters, primary sources linked.

One great story a day beats thirty follows. And your prompt carries your climbing: boulderer, trad ethicist, board-training nerd—it all fits in a sentence you can edit any evening, and the next morning's brief already climbs differently.

Step by step: from zero to your first edition

The whole setup takes about two minutes. And every screenshot below comes straight from the real product — nothing is mocked up.

1. Step 1 Open morningmail.ai

   Head over to morningmail.ai. You'll see a sample edition and the Compose button — that's your entry point. Nothing to install; everything runs in the browser.

   

2. Step 2 Create your free account

   Sign up with your Google account. Every new account comes with a free first edition built in — so you can send yourself a real email before paying a cent.

   

3. Step 3 Create your first template

   A template is the blueprint of your email: name, delivery time, recipients, and your content sections. Click "New template" and the builder opens with a live preview right next to the editor. Everything saves automatically — there is no save button to forget.

   

4. Step 4 Add a news section

   Click "Add section +" and pick "News topic". You'll see six starters — real, editable prompts for a city, a sports club, a company, a tech topic, a professional field, and a personal interest. Pick one, and you're thirty seconds away from a working brief.

   

5. Step 5 Make it yours: Climbing

   In the section picker, choose the "Personal interest" starter and type Climbing into the highlighted field. The card rewrites its prompt live as you type, so you can read the exact instruction the agent will carry to work each morning.

   The starter's philosophy is one great thing a day—a story about craft, results or characters you'd share at the gym between attempts, not a wall of links. It's good as-is, and better sharpened. Open the module and add, say: "favour first ascents and comp finals over gear press releases; for new training research, summarise the method, not just the result."

   

   The exact prompt your section starts with

   One thing happening in the world of Climbing today, written for an enthusiast — not a beginner. Skip celebrity gossip. Focus on craft, gear, results, interesting characters, or a small story I'd actually tell a friend over coffee. Quality over quantity.

6. Step 6 Set your delivery time and send yourself a test

   Almost there! Choose when the email should arrive and add your address as a recipient. Hit "Send test" — your first edition is free — and check your inbox. If something reads off, tweak the prompt and send again. Then flip the template to Active. Congratulations — you've just built your own morning brief!

   

Get more out of your brief

Declare your discipline

Bouldering, sport, trad, alpine—"climbing" is four sports pretending to be one. A clause like "I boulder and follow IFSC bouldering; mention rope events only for finals" keeps the brief on your wall instead of somebody else's.

Sync the brief with the comp calendar

World Cup season is dense; the off-season isn't. Add "during IFSC season, lead with results and notable performances" and the brief covers comps in spring, then drifts back to ascents and stories in winter—no prompt surgery needed between.

Ask for context on big ascents

A name and a grade is trivia; history is a story. Request "for significant ascents, one sentence on where the route sits historically" and a repeat of a testpiece arrives with the framing that makes it worth retelling.

Keep access and ethics on the radar

Crag closures and bolting debates rarely trend, but they decide where you actually climb. One line—"include access or ethics news when it affects climbers in my region"—makes the brief useful beyond entertainment.

Weekly works too — use the weekday chips

Every template has a delivery time and selectable weekdays. A Friday brief before a weekend at the crag is a popular pattern; during World Cups, flip the same template back to daily with two taps.

Good sources to anchor your brief on

The agent searches the open web every morning and cites where it read things. These are the sources I'd point it at in your prompt:

• IFSC — The federation itself — World Cup schedules, results, rankings and rule changes for lead, boulder and speed, straight from the primary source.
• Climbing Magazine — Long-form features, ascent reporting, training columns and gear reviews from one of the sport's longest-running English-language publications.
• UKClimbing — News, logbooks and the liveliest forums in the sport — where ascents get verified, graded and argued about, often before anywhere else.
• PlanetMountain — The European reference for alpinism and hard rock — first ascents in the Alps and beyond, interviews and expedition reports with real depth.
• 8a.nu — The ascent database and news site where hard sends are logged and grade consensus forms — the sport's living scoreboard outside competitions.

Frequently asked questions

What does the climbing brief cost?

The first edition is free and needs no credit card. After that, each send costs a few credits per section depending on the AI model tier—and credits never expire, so a weekends-only cadence never wastes them.

Isn't Instagram enough for climbing news?

Instagram is where climbing news performs, not where it's organised. You get what the algorithm rates, minus what it buried. A written brief answers your standing instruction instead: searched fresh each morning, one story chosen for you, sources linked—zero reels to swim through.

Can it cover both competitions and outdoor ascents?

Yes—and you set the balance. The prompt is fully editable, so "comps first during IFSC season, otherwise first ascents and notable repeats" is a perfectly normal instruction the agent re-reads every single morning.

Will it report training research accurately?

The agent links its primary sources, so every claim comes with the paper or article behind it. Ask it to "summarise the method and sample size, not just the headline finding"—a good habit for any research-heavy brief.

Can my climbing partners get the same email?

Yes—a template can have multiple recipients, so the whole rope team wakes up to the same brief. You can also share a section to the public community gallery for climbers you've never met.