Weekly Cron: Auto-Research the Top 3 AI Tools for Your Next Video

The Self-Improving Research Pipeline

Metrics Media wanted a system that finds trending AI tools before the competition, ranks the top 3 for tutorial videos, and keeps getting better at it. The solution: a weekly cron job that not only does the research — it writes a SKILL.md so the approach improves over time.

“Research the top trending AI tools right now and come back with the top three that would make for an interesting tutorial video. Create a new skill based on your approach and call it YouTube-video-research. Can you set up a weekly job that runs every Monday at 9:00 AM using that skill?”

— Metrics Media on YouTube

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Problem	Solution
Wasting hours researching trends	Hermes does it Monday morning
Not knowing what’s hot before competitors	Automated trend scanning
Reinventing the research process each week	Skill persists and improves
Forgetting to check sources	Cron runs without fail

The Self-Improvement Loop

1. Hermes researches trending AI tools from multiple sources
2. Ranks top 3 based on tutorial potential
3. Creates or updates a SKILL.md with the methodology
4. Next Monday: the skill is better than the last run

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Setup

1. Define your niche — AI tools, SaaS, marketing, whatever you cover
2. List research sources — Product Hunt, GitHub trending, HN, Reddit, Twitter
3. Create the research skill — Prompt Hermes to write the SKILL.md
4. Set up the cron — 0 9 * * 1 (every Monday at 9am)
5. Wire delivery — Output to email, Discord, or your content calendar
6. Review and shoot — Monday morning, you have your topics ready