fix: don't put folks on blast for missing summaries.

also, remove the dependency on `textwrap`.

adds a usage description of the feature to the README
and an entry to CHANGES.md

Author: robbielyman

CHANGES.md

@@ -7,6 +7,9 @@ this project doesn't really have releases (or even versioning, until now), it
 is a project that effects Recursers in "real ways".  It would be nice to have a
 place to quickly see the latest changes that the project has undergone.
 
+## 2025-06
+
+- [#190] Add text from the blog post summary to the Zulip announcement, if present -- @robbielyman
 
 ## 2021-09
 

README.md

@@ -100,6 +100,12 @@ already been seen by blaggregator. So, if you published more than 2 posts
 between consecutive (hourly) crawls by blaggregator, only the last two posts
 will be notified on Zulip.
 
+### My blog post appears on Zulip, but with no summary quote.
+
+The quote is pulled from [feedparser's](https://pypi.org/project/feedparser/) summary field,
+which in turn is populated with, e.g. RSS or Atom's "summary" or "description" fields.
+Make sure that your feed is generating content for those tags!
+
 ### My blog is multi-purpose and not wholly code/Recurse Center specific
 
 No problem! RCers usually enjoy reading non-technical posts by others. 

home/zulip_helpers.py

@@ -3,7 +3,6 @@
 import logging
 import os
 import re
-import textwrap
 
 # 3rd-party library
 from django.conf import settings
@@ -18,8 +17,8 @@
 ZULIP_EMAIL = os.environ.get("ZULIP_EMAIL")
 MESSAGES_URL = "https://recurse.zulipchat.com/api/v1/messages"
 MEMBERS_URL = "https://recurse.zulipchat.com/api/v1/users"
-ANNOUNCE_MESSAGE = "{} has a new blog post: [{}]({})\n```quote\n{}\n```"
-PLACEHOLDER = "Consider adding a `summary` to your next blog post! It'll show up here."
+ANNOUNCE_MESSAGE = "{} has a new blog post: [{}]({})\n"
+QUOTE = "```quote\n{}\n```"
 log = logging.getLogger("blaggregator")
 
 
@@ -46,9 +45,10 @@ def announce_posts(posts, debug=True):
         subject = title if len(title) <= 60 else title[:57] + "..."
         path = reverse("view_post", kwargs={"slug": post.slug})
         url = "{}/{}".format(settings.ROOT_URL.rstrip("/"), path.lstrip("/"))
-        summary = post.content if post.content else PLACEHOLDER
-        summary = textwrap.shorten(summary, width = 200, placeholder = "...")
-        content = ANNOUNCE_MESSAGE.format(author, title, url, summary)
+        content = ANNOUNCE_MESSAGE.format(author, title, url)
+        if post.content
+            summary = post.content if len(post.content) <= 480 else post.content[:477] + "..."
+            content = content + QUOTE.format(summary)
         send_message_zulip(to, subject, content, type_="stream")