# 🎯 Project Spec: Ad-Free News Brief

## Overview
A minimalist news aggregator that delivers clean, ad-free news summaries from RSS feeds. No popups, no tracking, no clutter — just the news.

**Target Users**: Students, busy professionals who hate news site clutter
**Impact Goal**: 1,000+ daily active users
**Time to Build**: 2-3 weeks MVP, ongoing iteration

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## Impact First

### What It Should Create
- **Measurable usage**: 1,000+ daily users logging in
- **Time saved**: 15-30 min/day not dealing with ads/clutter
- **Privacy**: No tracking, no data sold

### What Admissions Officers Look For
- **Entrepreneurship**: Identifying a problem and solving it
- **User focus**: Building for real users, not yourself
- **Metrics thinking**: Targeting 1,000 users shows you understand growth

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## Work Backwards from Impact

### To get 1,000 DAU:
1. Target students at your school first (100 users)
2. Cross-post to Reddit (r/students, r/productivity)
3. Get featured on Product Hunt
4. Word of mouth from satisfied users

### To measure impact:
- Use Vercel analytics (free)
- Track daily unique visitors
- Track articles read per session

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## Technical Stack

| Component | Technology | Cost |
|-----------|------------|------|
| Frontend | Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS | $0 |
| RSS Fetching | rss2json.com (free) | $0 |
| Deployment | Vercel | $0 |

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## Core Features

1. **Feed Display**: List of headlines from curated sources
2. **Clean Reading**: No ads, no popups
3. **Categories**: Tech, World, Science
4. **Dark Mode**: For late-night studying
5. **Share**: Copy link

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## Implementation Plan

### Week 1: MVP
- [ ] Set up Vercel
- [ ] Fetch 5 RSS feeds
- [ ] Display headlines
- [ ] Deploy

### Week 2: Polish
- [ ] Dark mode
- [ ] Categories
- [ ] Clean reading view

### Week 3: Growth
- [ ] Reddit launch
- [ ] Product Hunt
- [ ] Track metrics

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## How to Discuss in Applications

### Say:
> "I was stressed by cluttered news sites, so I built a simple reader. Within 3 months, 500+ students used it daily."

### Don't Say:
> "I built a clone of Google News"

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*Spec completed: 2026-04-28*
*Generated by Hermes Babu*