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Free Research & Intelligence Desk-reviewed

Newsjack

Free, open-source PR skills that turn Claude and other AI assistants into a monitoring and pitching aide, a first look

Featured in: Best AI tools for media relations and PR in 2026

Visit Newsjack Verified Oct 2026 · Next review scheduled Jan 2027

Newsjack is a free, open-source set of PR skills: plain instruction files, plus a small command-line tool, that teach an AI assistant to do specific comms jobs. It runs in Claude (Claude.ai, Claude Code and Cowork) and in several other agents, with a limited mode for ChatGPT. The skills fall into four groups: detecting stories (monitoring, triage, story-origin checks, coverage tracking), acting on them (angles, headlines, a deliberately harsh pitch critique, reactive comment, fact-checks, journalist fit checks and crisis holding statements with a legal-review step), strategy (a PR strategist, a six-month calendar and a newsworthiness check) and AI visibility (a prompt-panel toolkit that declines to invent a single visibility score). It is built by Elvis Sun, founder of the paid media-list tool Medialyst, with PR agency founder Carly Martinetti, and it is released under the MIT licence. Most skills work without Medialyst; a few use it for journalist data if you choose to connect it. This is a first look: we have read the code and documentation but not yet tested it in daily work.

For comms teams: comms practitioners already working in Claude who want ready-made PR workflows.

Best for

  • • Comms practitioners already working in Claude who want ready-made PR workflows
  • • Small teams and consultancies testing what an assistant can do across the media-relations cycle
  • • Anyone comfortable reviewing open-source code before installing it

Pricing

Free and open source (MIT licence). Optional paid Medialyst account for journalist data, from $149/month.

Checked 20 October 2026 on newsjack.sh and the GitHub repository. The skills cost nothing; you need your own AI assistant subscription. The PR calendar skill relies on Medialyst's feed, and the find-journalists skill asks before spending Medialyst credits.

Pricing last verified Oct 2026 – check vendor site for current rates.

What works well

  • + Free, open source and readable, so you can see exactly what each skill tells the assistant to do
  • + Covers the whole media-relations cycle, from spotting a story to tracking the coverage
  • + Built-in restraint, including a legal gate on crisis statements and no invented AI visibility score
  • + Actively maintained, with frequent releases

Watch out for

  • - Not yet tested by Comms With AI; a hands-on review will follow
  • - Install routes assume some comfort with plugins or the command line
  • - Default news feeds lean to US sources; UK coverage depends on how you set it up
  • - The plugin connects to Medialyst, a paid service from the same founder, so treat that as a separate data decision

When to choose this

Consider Newsjack if your team already works in Claude and wants tested PR workflows to start from, and someone can review what you install. Treat this as a first look rather than a tested recommendation until our hands-on review.

Who should look elsewhere

If your organisation does not allow staff to install plugins or third-party skills, Newsjack is not for you, and the templates in our library give you the same kind of structured prompts without an install. If you need a journalist database with verified contacts, look at a media database such as Roxhill Media or Muck Rack.

Key features

  • • News monitoring, triage and story-origin checks
  • • Angle, headline and reactive-comment drafting
  • • Pitch critique and journalist fit checks
  • • Crisis holding statements with a legal-review gate
  • • Voice extractor that also strips stock AI phrasing
  • • Coverage tracking, press clips and highlight reels
  • • AI visibility prompt panels without an invented score

Governance & data

Data inputs Brand details, monitoring profiles, competitor lists, draft statements and any journalist data you pass to your assistant; monitoring data is stored locally on your machine
Model training & controls Governed by your AI assistant's own terms. If you connect Medialyst, its data terms apply to what you send there
Admin, SSO & permissions None of its own. Control comes from how your organisation manages plugins and skills in its AI assistant
Audit trail & approvals Not provided. Skills are versioned on GitHub, so you can pin and record the version you use
Risk notes Command-line installs update themselves before each run unless auto-update is switched off; pin a version and read the skill files before installing. The plugin registers Medialyst's remote connector, so decide separately whether brand and competitor details may go there. Keep crisis and reactive outputs under human and legal review.

Governance information is based on publicly available vendor documentation. Verify with your vendor before procurement decisions.

Integrations

ClaudeMedialyst (optional)Slack (optional)X API (optional)

Available on

Claude.aiClaude CodeCoworkCommand line

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Deciding whether to adopt it?

Three free templates take you from a review to a decision you can defend, and a record of it.

Evaluation Framework Score it against the criteria that matter for comms work. Bench Test Run it against your own brief before you commit budget. AI Tool Register Record what you approved, what you declined, and why.

Making the call across a whole team or tool stack? Deploy Comms With AI builds the policy and the register with you.