MNS Launches Automated News Clerk in Institute for Informatics Slack
The MNS group announces the deployment of its automated news clerk, a Slack bot designed to significantly streamline and enhance the publication of news stories on the MNS Hugo website. The mns-news-clerk assistant is now fully operational within the Institute for Informatics Slack workspace at
ivi-uva.slack.com.
Interaction with the bot is facilitated via direct message or by mentioning it within designated channels. Rather than requiring rigid commands or manual markdown editing, the clerk functions as an interactive conversational agent. Users can simply discuss their news stories, share ideas, or request updates in plain language.
Article creation and editing are handled collaboratively. Authors can provide rough notes, bullet points, or drafts, optionally accompanied by image attachments. The clerk drafts or edits articles, presenting previews or diffs directly in Slack for review. Authors can converse with the bot to refine the text, request adjustments, or supply missing details.
Once the author gives clear approval to publish, the mns-news-clerk automates the publishing sequence. This includes automated markdown validation and confirmation of MNS membership against an authorized author roster. Validated changes are then committed, archived in content/news/, and merged into the master branch for immediate publication on the MNS website.
Revising or removing existing articles is handled with the same natural interaction: users can simply ask the clerk to find and update or delete a story. Permissions ensure that only the original author can modify or remove their articles.
Successful article publication mandates the inclusion of essential front matter: a title, a tags list (which must invariably include News), and a date formatted as YYYY-MM-DD. Furthermore, the article body must contain substantive content. Image inclusion is supported for PNG, JPG, JPEG, GIF, and WEBP formats. Images are linked using the  syntax and must be attached within the same conversation. Image inclusion is optional. The clerk processes one article concurrently to maintain operational clarity.
For transparency, it is noted that the mns-news-clerk was developed utilizing Cursor with Privacy Mode activated, thereby preventing the site repository from being used for model training purposes.