Staying informed about Japan through English-language media means reading what foreign correspondents choose to cover — filtered through a particular lens, usually a beat or two behind. I wanted something closer to the original source: a curated daily briefing drawn directly from Japanese newspapers, translated and contextualised for an English-speaking reader who lives here. I provided the editorial direction and the design; Claude, Anthropic's AI, built the entire application across a series of iterative sessions.
The result is a Next.js web app with a Supabase backend. Each morning, a scheduled pipeline fetches headlines from major Japanese outlets, uses Claude to select, summarise and translate the most significant stories, and publishes a briefing with editorial notes and a Word of the Day. The front end uses Playfair Display and Libre Baskerville for an editorial feel, with a warm buttercream light theme and a deep sumi-ink dark mode.