AI-Powered Summaries
Let AI automatically summarize your curated links.
When you add a link to an issue, Distill automatically fetches the page content and generates a summary using an AI pipeline. You get a readable, concise summary without having to read and write one yourself — though you can always edit it to match your voice.
How the AI pipeline works
Distill's summarization pipeline has two stages:
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Firecrawl scraping — Firecrawl fetches the full content of the URL, handling JavaScript-rendered pages, paywalls-adjacent layouts, and other common web content structures. It extracts the article's main body text, filtering out navigation, ads, and boilerplate.
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Gemini summarization — The extracted text is passed to Google Gemini with instructions to produce a concise, informative summary suitable for a newsletter. The summary captures the key points of the article in 2-4 sentences.
The AI pipeline uses Firecrawl for content extraction and Google Gemini 2.5 Flash for summarization. Both are optimized for speed — most summaries are ready within 5-10 seconds of adding a link.
When summarization happens
Summarization is triggered automatically when you add a link to an issue. You do not need to click anything — the process starts in the background as soon as the URL is submitted.
The link card shows a loading indicator while the summary is being generated. Once complete, the card updates with:
- The article title (extracted from the page)
- The AI-generated summary
- The source domain
Supported content types
The AI pipeline works best with text-heavy web content:
- Works well: News articles, blog posts, research summaries, press releases, opinion pieces
- Works with limitations: Long-form reports (may summarize only part of the content), pages with complex layouts
- Limited support: Paywalled content (Firecrawl can only access what a regular browser would see without a subscription), video-only pages, PDF files linked directly, pages requiring login
If an article is behind a paywall, Firecrawl will only see the content visible to an unauthenticated visitor — typically the headline, lede, and a few sentences before the paywall cuts off. The resulting summary will be incomplete. In these cases, you should edit the summary manually.
Editing a summary
AI summaries are a starting point — you can edit them at any time before sending:
- Click the summary text on a link card in the issue editor.
- The text field becomes editable inline.
- Make your changes — rewrite the summary, trim it, or add your own commentary.
- Click outside the field to save.
Changes are saved immediately and persist until you explicitly regenerate.
Regenerating a summary
If you want to discard your edits and get a fresh AI summary:
- Hover over the link card.
- Click the Regenerate icon (circular arrows).
- The card returns to a loading state while the pipeline re-runs.
- The new summary replaces the previous one.
Regenerating discards any manual edits to that summary. If you have made changes you want to preserve, copy the text before regenerating.
Why summaries sometimes need editing
AI summaries are accurate most of the time, but a few situations may require manual review:
- Paywalled content: Only the preview text is available, so the summary may be incomplete.
- Very long articles: The pipeline may focus on the beginning of the article and miss conclusions or key findings near the end.
- Listicles and how-to guides: The summary may describe the article type rather than its actual content ("This article provides 10 tips for..."). You may prefer to write a more specific summary.
- Your voice: AI summaries are neutral in tone. If you want your newsletter to reflect your personal commentary or perspective, edit the summary to add your take.
Article titles
Alongside the summary, Distill extracts the article's title. If the extracted title is incorrect or too long for your layout, you can edit it the same way as the summary — click the title on the link card to edit inline.