cryyer

Cryyer

Automated weekly email updates for beta testers, with per-product voice powered by LLM-drafted content.

Website: cryyer.dev GitHub: atriumn/cryyer Issues: Report a bug

Cryyer follows a two-stage pipeline:

• Weekly Draft (cron, Mondays) — gathers GitHub activity (merged PRs, releases, notable commits), generates an email draft via LLM, and creates a GitHub issue for human review.
• Send on Close — when a draft issue is closed (approved), emails are sent to subscribers via Resend.

Quickstart

npm install -g cryyer   # or: npx cryyer

1. Initialize a product

Run the interactive setup to create a product config and scaffold your .env:

npx cryyer init

This walks you through product name, GitHub repo, email subject template, and voice/tone — then writes a products/*.yaml file and optionally creates .env from .env.example.

You can also create products/*.yaml files manually — see Product Configuration for all fields.

2. Set environment variables

Fill in your .env (or copy .env.example if you didn't scaffold it above):

cp .env.example .env

At minimum you need:

GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_...
RESEND_API_KEY=re_...
FROM_EMAIL=[e-mail]
LLM_PROVIDER=anthropic          # or openai, gemini
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...    # key for your chosen provider

See .env.example for all variables and their descriptions.

3. Add subscribers

Choose a subscriber store — the simplest for local dev is JSON:

export SUBSCRIBER_STORE=json

Create subscribers.json (see subscribers.example.json):

[
  { "email": "[e-mail]", "name": "Alice", "productIds": ["my-app"] },
  { "email": "[e-mail]", "productIds": ["my-app"] }
]

4. Validate your setup

npx cryyer check

This verifies your product configs, GitHub token, LLM provider API key, subscriber store, and email (Resend) configuration — and reports what's missing or misconfigured.

5. Run

Preview your first draft without sending:

npx cryyer run --dry-run

When you're ready to run for real:

npx cryyer run          # full pipeline: gather → draft → send

Or run the two stages separately:

npx cryyer draft        # generate drafts → create GitHub issues
npx cryyer send         # send emails when a draft issue is closed

Subscriber Stores

Set SUBSCRIBER_STORE to choose your backend. Default is supabase.

JSON File (simplest)

SUBSCRIBER_STORE=json

Variable	Default	Description
SUBSCRIBERS_JSON_PATH	./subscribers.json	Path to subscriber data
EMAIL_LOG_JSON_PATH	./email-log.json	Path to email send log

File format — array of objects with email, optional name, and productIds:

[
  { "email": "[e-mail]", "name": "Alice", "productIds": ["my-app", "other-app"] }
]

Supabase (default)

SUBSCRIBER_STORE=supabase  # or just don't set it

Variable	Description
SUPABASE_URL	Your Supabase project URL (https://[project-id].supabase.co)
SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY	Supabase service role key

Expects a beta_testers table with columns: email, name, product, unsubscribed_at.

Google Sheets

SUBSCRIBER_STORE=google-sheets

Variable	Description
GOOGLE_SHEETS_SPREADSHEET_ID	The ID from your spreadsheet URL
GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL	Service account email
GOOGLE_PRIVATE_KEY	Service account private key (PEM format)

Cryyer looks for a sheet tab named after the product ID (e.g. my-app), falling back to the first sheet. Expected columns: email, name (optional), unsubscribed (optional, set to true to exclude).

Email send logging is a no-op with this backend (read-only).

Google Sheets setup walkthrough

1. Enable the Google Sheets API

• Go to console.cloud.google.com (create a project if you don't have one)
• Navigate to APIs & Services > Library
• Search for "Google Sheets API" and click Enable

2. Create a service account

• Go to APIs & Services > Credentials
• Click Create Credentials > Service account
• Name it (e.g. cryyer-sheets-reader) and click Done

3. Generate a key

• Click the service account you just created
• Go to the Keys tab
• Click Add Key > Create new key > JSON
• Save the downloaded file

4. Set your environment variables

From the downloaded JSON file, grab client_email and private_key:

GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL=[e-mail]
GOOGLE_PRIVATE_KEY="-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nMIIE...\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n"

5. Get the spreadsheet ID

From the spreadsheet URL:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/SPREADSHEET_ID_HERE/edit
                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

GOOGLE_SHEETS_SPREADSHEET_ID=1BxiMVs0XRA5nFMdKvBdBZjgmUUqptlbs74OgVE2upms

6. Share the spreadsheet

Share the spreadsheet with your service account email (from step 4) as an Editor (required for add/remove subscriber support; Viewer is sufficient for read-only use).

7. Set up columns

Row 1 should have these headers:

email	name	unsubscribed
[e-mail]	Alice
[e-mail]	Bob
[e-mail]		true

Name the sheet tab after your product ID (e.g. my-app), or just use the default first sheet if you have one product.

LLM Providers

Set LLM_PROVIDER to choose your LLM backend. Default is anthropic.

Variable	Default	Description
LLM_PROVIDER	anthropic	anthropic, openai, or gemini
LLM_MODEL	Per-provider default	Override the default model
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	—	Required when LLM_PROVIDER=anthropic
OPENAI_API_KEY	—	Required when LLM_PROVIDER=openai
GEMINI_API_KEY	—	Required when LLM_PROVIDER=gemini

Default models: Anthropic claude-sonnet-4-5-20250514, OpenAI gpt-4o, Gemini gemini-1.5-flash.

Product Configuration

Products are defined as YAML files in products/. Each file represents one product.

Field	Required	Description
id	Yes	Unique identifier, also used as GitHub issue label
name	Yes	Display name
voice	Yes	LLM voice/tone instructions (injected into the draft prompt)
repo	Yes	owner/repo for GitHub activity gathering
emailSubjectTemplate	Yes	Subject line template — use {{weekOf}} for the date
tagline	No	Product tagline
from_name	No	Override sender name for this product
from_email	No	Override sender email for this product
reply_to	No	Reply-to address

GitHub Actions Workflows

weekly-draft.yml

Runs every Monday at 1pm UTC. Gathers GitHub activity and creates draft issues.

Secrets needed: GITHUB_TOKEN, CRYYER_REPO, and the API key for your chosen LLM_PROVIDER.

send-update.yml

Fires when an issue with the draft label is closed. Sends emails to subscribers.

Secrets needed: GITHUB_TOKEN, RESEND_API_KEY, FROM_EMAIL, plus the secrets for your chosen SUBSCRIBER_STORE.

ci.yml

Runs on push/PR to main. Lints, typechecks, and runs tests.

MCP Server

Cryyer includes an MCP server that lets you review, edit, and send drafts conversationally from any MCP client. It also supports subscriber management.

The MCP server uses stdio transport and is available as a separate binary: cryyer-mcp.

Standalone usage

npx cryyer-mcp

Or if installed locally:

pnpm run build   # compiles dist/mcp.js
node dist/mcp.js

Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cryyer": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["cryyer-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "GITHUB_TOKEN": "ghp_...",
        "CRYYER_REPO": "owner/repo",
        "CRYYER_ROOT": "/path/to/cryyer",
        "RESEND_API_KEY": "re_...",
        "FROM_EMAIL": "[e-mail]",
        "SUBSCRIBER_STORE": "json",
        "LLM_PROVIDER": "anthropic",
        "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY": "sk-ant-..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Other MCP clients (Cline, Continue, Windsurf, etc.)

Any MCP client that supports stdio transport can use Cryyer. The generic config is:

• Command: npx cryyer-mcp (or node /path/to/cryyer/dist/mcp.js)
• Transport: stdio
• Environment variables: same as above

Only GITHUB_TOKEN and CRYYER_REPO are needed for read-only tools (list_drafts, get_draft). Other env vars are needed for sending, regenerating, and subscriber management.

Debugging

Test the server interactively with the MCP Inspector:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node dist/mcp.js

All log output goes to stderr (stdout is reserved for JSON-RPC). If something isn't working, check stderr for error messages.

Tools

Tool	Description
list_drafts	List open draft issues
get_draft	Get full draft content with subscriber count
update_draft	Save revised subject + body
send_draft	Send emails, close issue, post stats
regenerate_draft	Re-gather activity + re-draft via LLM
list_products	Show configured products
list_subscribers	Show subscribers for a product
add_subscriber	Add a subscriber to a product
remove_subscriber	Unsubscribe someone from a product

Prompt

Use the review_weekly_drafts prompt for the Monday morning review workflow — it walks through each pending draft and asks whether to send, edit, regenerate, or skip.

Development

pnpm install         # install dependencies
pnpm run build       # compile TypeScript
pnpm run init        # interactive product setup + .env scaffolding
pnpm run check       # validate config, tokens, and connections
pnpm run typecheck   # type-check without emitting
pnpm run lint        # ESLint
pnpm test            # run tests (vitest)
pnpm run test:watch  # run tests in watch mode
pnpm run dev         # build + run
pnpm run mcp         # run MCP server