He Needed a Morning Brief So He Built One - Lucas Perry
Mar 12, 2026Inside our AI Upgrade for PR & Comms cohort, Lucas Perry built a Morning Brief dashboard that does his morning scan for him.
Vibe-coded in Lovable. Perplexity deep research pulling overnight sector intel at 9am. Google Alerts piped through App Script into live Sheets for client media monitoring and prospect tracking. Two exportable briefs, one media-only, one full newsletter, both clean enough to forward. A language toggle that flips the whole interface and output between English and German in one click.
Six weeks ago this guy was learning what an API key was.
Problem, named
Lucas Perry works in defense and security consulting. His mornings used to look like most PR and comms professionals' mornings. Scanning headlines. Checking Google Alerts. Trying to piece together what happened overnight across a sector that moves fast.
Regulatory shifts. Geopolitical moves. Client coverage he should have seen already. Prospect announcements he could use as a reason to reach out.
All of it scattered across a dozen tabs and three email inboxes. Nobody was synthesizing it for him.
So he built the thing himself.
What He Actually Made
Lucas's capstone project from our AI Upgrade for PR & Comms cohort is a Morning Brief dashboard, vibe-coded in Lovable, that runs daily and pulls together everything a defense sector consultant needs before their first meeting.
Sector intelligence. A Perplexity deep research query runs every morning at 9am, surfacing the most important announcements in the last 24 hours. Industry moves. Regulatory developments. Geopolitical shifts. Each item categorized and linked to source material.
Client media monitoring. Lucas connected Lovable to a live Google Sheet that pulls from Google Alerts he set up for his client portfolio. He App Scripted the whole pipeline. Alerts fire, data compiles, the dashboard surfaces anything flagged. If a client shows up in the news, he knows.
Prospect tracking. Same architecture, separate sheet, different companies. Target accounts monitored for announcements, coverage, anything he could use as a hook for outreach. Part of the job in consulting is generating new business, and the best outreach starts with "I saw your announcement this morning."
AI-generated briefs. A media-only summary. A full newsletter-style brief that includes sector news. Both exportable, both clean enough to forward to a colleague or send to his own inbox.
Language toggle. Lucas works across languages. One click switches the entire interface and the generated briefs between English and German. He regenerates, and the output comes back localized.
The Part That Matters
Lucas didn't know how to build any of this six weeks ago.
He's a PR and communications professional who works with defense and security clients. The tools got good enough that a comms professional with clear thinking about what they need can just build it. Perplexity for the research layer. Google Alerts and App Script for the monitoring pipeline. Lovable for the interface. The whole thing wired together by someone who six weeks earlier was learning what an API key was.
This Is the Pattern
Every cohort, the same thing happens. People walk in with a real problem from their real job. Something that's been bugging them. A workflow that takes too long, a monitoring gap, a report they've been assembling manually every morning.
By week six, they present the thing they built to fix it.
Lucas's Morning Brief is a tool he's going to use Monday morning. He presented it, walked us through the Perplexity integration, the Google Sheets pipeline, the language toggle, the generated newsletter brief. The whole room could see it working.
The PR and comms professionals who go through this cohort learn to think clearly about what they need and then make it real with tools that are available right now.
What's Next
The AI Upgrade for PR & Comms runs live cohorts throughout the year. Six weeks of hands-on coaching from Pete Pachal (Fast Company, Media Copilot), Peter Bittner (UC Berkeley), and Kris Krug (BC + AI Ecosystem Association). You walk out with a working tool and a community of comms professionals who are all building.
Bring a real problem you want to solve.
Check out upcoming cohorts at The AI Upgrade.
Kris Krüg is co-founder of The Upgrade Academy, recovering photographer, and professional instigator of creative chaos. He's spent 20+ years watching technology either amplify or stifle human potential. He's chosen amplification.
Peter Bittner entrepreneur, AI product thinker, new media journalist, and UC Berkeley lecturer, is the methodical yin to Kris's creative yang, turning chaos into deployable systems. Together, they've empowered hundreds of professionals.
