Trace: Tech & AI News
Tarat (solo developer behind Trace) · Writing
Trace: Tech & AI News is a daily digest app that pulls from 400+ tech and AI sources, groups duplicate coverage into single ranked stories, and hands you a short briefing you can finish in about five minutes. It works as a web feed, a morning email, a Chrome new-tab extension, and a read-only feed your AI agent can query. The pitch is simple. Stay current on tech news without opening ten tabs or skimming a firehose.
About Trace: Tech & AI News
What Is Trace: Tech & AI News
Trace is a personalized news aggregator built for people who care about tech and AI but don't want to read everything. Instead of showing you every article, it collects reporting on model launches, company changes, layoffs, security news, and policy shifts, then merges stories that cover the same event into one card with the original links attached. You get the event, not five near-identical write-ups of it.
The product has three surfaces that share the same ranked stories. There's a web feed that updates hourly, an optional morning email with the ten biggest items from the last 24 hours, and a Chrome extension that puts the feed on every new tab. It works. Pro users also get read-only agent access, so a tool like Claude, Codex, Cursor, or OpenClaw can fetch the same brief and quote it back to you. That's the hook.
Trace is built by a solo developer, Tarat, who launched it at the end of January 2026. That's worth knowing for two reasons. It's a small operation. So flag it. Features move fast, but support and uptime depend on one person. Worth flagging. The free tier is generous too, enough to use as your only news feed, while Pro at $5/month adds the email brief, full archive search, and agent access. If you already pay for a news product, this may not replace it. But if your current system is thirty bookmarked tabs, Trace fixes that specific problem well.
Getting Started
- Open yourtrace.online and start reading the free feed, or create an account to save bookmarks and turn on the "For you" ranking.
- Pick the topics you care about in your profile. Your feed then reorders around those interests every day.
- Turn on the morning email if you want a 5-minute brief instead of a feed you have to remember to check.
- Optional: add the Chrome extension so the ranked feed loads on every new tab.
- Optional for Pro: create a read-only agent key and paste the setup prompt into Claude, Codex, Cursor, or your MCP client to pull Trace into your agent.
Product Information
A quick look at Trace: Tech & AI News's pricing, supported platforms, and performance.
Best for
The users, tasks, and scenarios where this tool fits best.
Users
- Tech and AI professionals who need to stay current but don't have time to read the full firehose
- Developers and AI agent users who want their assistant to know what's moving today, using Pro's read-only MCP access to pull the same ranked feed into Claude, Codex, or Cursor.
- Casual tech followers who want one clean, ranked brief instead of a dozen bookmarked sites
Tasks
- Getting a 5-minute morning briefing on the biggest AI and tech news from the last 24 hours, without sorting through duplicate coverage of the same event.
- Feeding current, structured tech news into an AI agent or bot workflow, so the agent quotes real source links instead of hallucinating recent events.
- Tracking a specific beat like model releases, security incidents, or policy changes by following the topics you select and letting the feed re-rank around them.
Scenarios
- Opening a new browser tab and immediately seeing the ranked feed instead of a blank page, thanks to the Chrome extension.
- Catching up on a commute or coffee break with the morning email, since the ten-item brief is designed to be read in a few minutes.
- Wiring Trace into an existing Discord, Slack, Telegram, or WhatsApp bot so your team channel gets a daily tech brief without anyone opening a news site.
Key features
Grouped, ranked stories without the duplicate noise
When several publications report the same event, Trace folds that coverage into one story and keeps the original source links attached. You read the event once, ranked by importance, instead of five versions of the same headline. Simple. That grouping is the core reason the feed stays short enough to finish. No wasted clicks. Trace Tech & AI News leans on this hard. Without it, the five-minute promise breaks down fast.
A feed that updates every hour
New coverage lands throughout the day and gets grouped and ranked as it arrives. You see what's moving when you open Trace, rather than refreshing a stack of tabs to find out. Why does that matter? Because a stale feed is worse than no feed. Pro users can also search the complete daily archive. It just runs in the background. Set it and forget it.
Ten big things in tech and AI, every morning
The optional morning email picks the ten biggest stories from the last 24 hours, chosen for the topics you follow, with a note on why each one matters. It's a briefing, not the whole internet, and it's the fastest way to stay current if you'd rather not open a feed at all. Ten items. Five minutes.
Topic filters and a personal "For you" ranking
You choose the topics you care about, and the feed reorders around them. Coverage in areas you follow moves up; the rest falls back. No manual sorting needed. Pro unlocks a full personalized Pulse that goes deeper than the topic list alone.
Read-only agent access via MCP
Pro users can create a read-only agent key and connect Trace to Claude, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw, or any MCP client. The agent can ask what moved today and quote the same ranked feed you read, which keeps an assistant's tech knowledge current. Access is read-only and stops when the key is revoked or Pro ends.
Chrome extension for every new tab
The extension puts the ranked feed on each new tab, so your default homepage becomes a live tech briefing. No separate app to remember opening and no manual refresh. It's just there.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Pulls from 400+ sources, so coverage is broadly sourced rather than one outlet's take.
- Groups duplicate stories into single ranked cards, which is what makes the five-minute format actually work.
- Same ranked feed across feed, email, Chrome extension, and agent access, so you don't relearn your workflow per surface.
- The free tier includes the personalized feed, topic filters, bookmarks, and unlimited source links.
- Pro is only $5/month and adds the daily email, archive search, and read-only agent access.
- Sources are linked, so you can jump to the original reporting when a headline grabs you.
Cons
- It's a solo-developer project, so uptime, support, and feature pace rest on one person, and there's no team behind it if something breaks.
- The best parts, the morning email and agent access, sit behind Pro, so the free plan is a feed-and-filters product without the daily push.
- Agent access is read-only and only covers today's ranked feed, so it can't write to your account or act on news for you.
- If you want long-form analysis or opinion, this is a ranked digest, not a place to read deep takes.
Frequently asked questions
It's a personalized tech and AI news aggregator that reads 400+ sources, groups duplicate coverage into single ranked stories, and delivers a short daily brief. You can read it as a web feed, a morning email, a Chrome new-tab page, or through a read-only feed your AI agent can pull.
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