Orca Brief · The morning briefing · Mac and Windows
The day, in one screen. Before the first meeting.
At seven on a weekday Orca writes the briefing: today's diary, the week ahead, the weather, five UK headlines, and a line on what it read in overnight. It lands as a push on your phone and sits in the Daily Briefing tab, next to the meeting briefs, the follow-ups from the last fortnight and whatever markets you watch.
Orca Brief is a tab inside Orca, included in the licence. The briefing is on by default, 07:00 Monday to Friday, and there is a Run Briefing button for the days that start early.
Written while you're still asleep. Read where you are.
The briefing is deliberately narrow. It tells you the day, the week and the weather, and it leaves the rest of Orca to deal with the rest.
It writes itself at 07:00
Weekdays, on by default. Orca reads today's calendar and the next six days, pulls the hourly forecast and up to five Guardian UK headlines, folds in the top priorities from your plan, and writes the briefing.
It arrives as a push
The title and the summary go out as a notification: native, Pushover and Telegram by default, WhatsApp if you have paired it. The full briefing waits in the Daily Briefing tab, one per day.
The meeting briefs follow
Thirty minutes before each external meeting, a brief on who you're meeting lands with its own push: "Meeting prep: " and their names. Or press Prep now and have it sooner.
Meeting briefs
Who you're meeting, and what you last said to them.
For each person in the room, up to three, Orca reads the last five transcripts, the last five emails, the contact record and its facts, your open work items, your own notes on them, and any cached LinkedIn activity. Then it writes four short sections you can read in the lift.
- External meetings only. It needs at least one real attendee who is not you and not a meeting room. Internal catch-ups do not get a brief unless you force one on for that meeting.
- Private by design. The brief is yours. It is never written into the shared calendar event, so nobody else on the invite sees your notes on them.
- Per meeting switch. Turn briefing off for a particular meeting, or on for one that would normally be skipped.
The rest of the tab
Follow-ups that nag, headlines that refresh, markets you chose.
Follow-ups. Every external meeting that ended in the last fourteen days sits here until it is dealt with: the summary, the email and Teams drafts Orca wrote for it, and the action items still open. "Needs follow-up" or "Drafts ready", and you can see which at a glance.
Headlines. A live carousel from BBC UK, BBC Business, Guardian UK, Sky News UK and BBC Tech, six items a feed, refreshed every fifteen minutes. Under it, a short "From Orca" panel for tips and what changed in the last update.
Markets. A watchlist you set yourself, symbol by symbol, with live quotes every five minutes. There is no default list, because nobody wants someone else's portfolio in their morning. It needs a Finnhub key of your own.
Narrow on purpose, and honest when it fails.
A briefing you stop reading is worse than none. So this one stays short and says when something did not happen.
Four sections, not forty
Today, the week, the weather, the news. Tasks, work items and markets live in their own tabs where you can act on them. The briefing is for reading in two minutes.
It tells you when it didn't run
The last line is written by code, not by the model: how many recordings, transcripts and emails were read in overnight. If the nightly run failed, that line goes red and says so.
One briefing per day
Run it again and it updates the same day's briefing rather than stacking a second one. The list stays a list of days, not a pile of re-runs.
How it fits
The briefing reads. These are where you act.
Orca Brief is a part of Orca. It opens the day; the parts below are where the day gets done.
Pricing
Included in the Orca licence.
£250/licence/month
Everything included, Claude usage too
- No separate purchase
- Claude usage included, with a fair-use ceiling
- Yours while the licence is active
One licence, the whole assistant
This page is one part of it. Every part below comes with the same licence.
- Orca Inbox
- Orca Autopilot
- Orca Calendar
- Orca Book
- Orca Meet
- Orca Post
- Orca Brief You are here
- Orca Notes
- Orca People
- Orca Chat
- Orca Plan
- Orca Clip
- Orca Mobile
- Orca Today
- Orca Screen recording storage
Claude API usage, setup support and updates are in the monthly price. The pricing page has the one-off setup fee and the rate for six licences or more.
Also available: Orca Time, £2.79 per seat a month, with Orca Snap included.
Questions: chris@simmance.ai.
The questions people ask first.
Can I change the time?
Yes. 07:00 on weekdays is the default. Set a different time, or switch the job off and use Run Briefing when you want one.
Where does the push go?
To whichever channels you have on: the native desktop notification, Pushover and Telegram are on by default, and WhatsApp joins them once you have paired your phone. The phone app shows the briefing too.
Why isn't my 11:00 internal call getting a brief?
Because meeting briefs are for external meetings: at least one attendee who is not you and not a room. You can force one on for a specific meeting if you want it anyway.
Which news does it use?
The written briefing takes up to five Guardian UK headlines. The carousel in the tab is live RSS from BBC UK, BBC Business, Guardian UK, Sky News UK and BBC Tech, refreshed every fifteen minutes.
Does it include my tasks and my markets?
No, and that is on purpose. The written briefing is diary, week, weather and news. Tasks, follow-ups and the market watchlist sit in their own places in the tab, where you can act on them rather than just read about them.
Know the day before it starts.
Orca Brief is part of Orca · Mac and Windows | Also see Orca Plan, Orca Today and Orca Calendar