Friday News Tip Override — Design Spec

Date: 2026-04-18 Status: Approved Project: sap-devs-cli

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Overview

On Fridays, sap-devs tip overrides the normal daily tip with the latest SAP Developer News episode fetched live from YouTube RSS. If the fetch fails, a static nudge with the playlist URL is shown instead. All existing tip flags (--plain, --markdown, --new) continue to work unchanged.

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Behaviour

Condition	Output
Not Friday	Normal tip selection (no change)
Friday, fetch succeeds	Live tip: episode title + watch URL + trimmed description
Friday, fetch fails or returns empty	Static tip: hardcoded nudge + playlist watch URL
Friday, --new flag or SAP_DEVS_DEV=1	Normal tip selection (override bypassed)

The override is bypassed when useRandom is true — --new and dev mode both set this — so users can always get a regular tip by passing --new.

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Architecture

All logic lives in cmd/tip.go. No changes to internal/content or the pack data model.

New function: fridayNewsOverride() *content.Tip

fridayNewsOverride()
  ├─ time.Now().Weekday() != time.Friday → return nil
  ├─ youtube.FetchPlaylist(newsPlaylistRSS) fails or empty → return staticFridayTip()
  └─ success → return formatFridayTip(episodes[0])

Returns nil when no override applies; caller falls through to normal SelectTip.

New function: formatFridayTip(ep youtube.Episode) *content.Tip

Pure function — no I/O, fully testable.

• Title: "SAP Developer News — " + ep.Title
• Content: ep.URL + "\n\n" + trimmedDescription
• Description is trimmed to ≤280 Unicode characters (rune count, not bytes); a … suffix is appended when truncated
• When ep.Description is empty, content is ep.URL only (no trailing blank line)

Static fallback: staticFridayTip() *content.Tip

Hardcoded, no network call:

• Title: "It's Friday — SAP Developer News is out!"
• Content: "Watch the latest episode:\n" + newsPlaylistURL

Call site in tipCmd.RunE

if !useRandom {
    if tip := fridayNewsOverride(); tip != nil {
        // render and return, same path as normal tip
    }
}
// existing SelectTip logic unchanged

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Constants

newsPlaylistURL is added to cmd/news.go alongside the existing constants:

newsPlaylistURL = "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6RpkC85SLQAVBSQXN9522_1jNvPavBgg"

newsPlaylistRSS (already defined in cmd/news.go) is reused for the live fetch — no duplication.

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Error Handling

fridayNewsOverride never returns an error. Any fetch failure silently produces the static fallback. This keeps tipCmd.RunE clean and ensures sap-devs tip always produces output on Fridays.

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Testing

Tests live in cmd/tip_test.go (package cmd, so unexported helpers are accessible).

Test	What it verifies
TestFormatFridayTip_ShortDescription	Short description appears in full in Content
TestFormatFridayTip_LongDescriptionTrimmed	Description >280 bytes is trimmed with …
TestFormatFridayTip_EmptyDescription	Empty description → Content is URL only, no trailing blank line

fridayNewsOverride itself is not unit-tested (weekday dependency + live HTTP), consistent with the rest of cmd/ which does not unit-test network paths.

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Files to Create / Modify

File	Change
cmd/news.go	Add newsPlaylistURL constant
cmd/tip.go	Add fridayNewsOverride(), formatFridayTip(), staticFridayTip(); call override in tipCmd.RunE
cmd/tip_test.go	Add 3 tests for formatFridayTip

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Out of Scope

• pinned_weekday field in the tip data model (superseded by live fetch approach)
• Per-pack configuration of the Friday override
• --force-friday flag for testing without changing the system clock