outreach-write

Write the sequence

What this does

Turns a target and an offer into the actual text of a 3 or 4 step outbound sequence, written around the prospect's problem rather than around your product, on email, on LinkedIn, or on both with a different prompt for each. It decides first whether the campaign is one message per person or two A/B variants for everybody, says what generating it will cost, writes outreach/sequence.md in the shape Emelia sends, then runs a checker over that file and reports every finding. Copy with a blocking finding does not go to the launch step.

When to use it

Use it after the list exists and before the flow is designed (outreach-sequence needs approved copy to build the tree). Use it again when a running campaign gets opens and no replies, which is a copy problem, not a deliverability one. Use it for LinkedIn as well as for email: the invitation note, the messages and the InMail are written here, with the prompt in section 1 under "Mode A on LinkedIn", not by adapting the email copy.

Use a different skill when: you want per contact icebreakers at scale (outreach-personalize), the step tree, delays and A/B split (outreach-sequence), or answers to people who replied (outreach-replies).

Inputs

Input	Where it comes from	If it is missing
Segment, titles, pain, trigger	outreach/icp.json	Ask for the four angle questions below, then write
Column names	header row of outreach/leads.csv	Write with firstName only and say so
What the product does, in one sentence	the user	Ask. Do not invent a product
One number you can defend	the user	Write without proof and say the sequence has no proof
One customer you may name	the user	Use mechanism proof instead (section 6 below)
Sender name, company, city	the user	Ask. An email with no identity behind it is not legal in most markets. A LinkedIn message carries that identity in the profile, so it does not repeat it
Which channels the steps use	outreach/campaign.json, or the user	Ask. Email and LinkedIn are written by different prompts, and a multichannel campaign needs both
The language, one per country if the list spans several	question 1 in section 1	Ask. Never default to English on a list that is not English speaking
Formal or informal you, in languages that separate them	question 2 in section 1	Ask, except in English. Default to the formal one and say that you did
The gender of the person signing, in languages that agree	question 3 in section 1	Ask, and say why in the same sentence. Never infer it from a first name
A signature configured on the sending identity	the Emelia account	Ask the user to set one before the launch. {{signature}} renders nothing when there is none
How many contacts will be written for	outreach/leads.csv	Ask. The count decides the mode and where the generation runs, see section 1

Never invent a customer name, a metric, a case study or a mutual connection. If the user offers a number, ask where it comes from and write the source into the file.

How to do it

1. Pick the mode, and price the generation before you start

Two ways to write a campaign. Decide with the user, out loud, before writing a word.

Mode A, one message per person. Every contact gets a message written for them, and that message is pushed into a custom variable. The Emelia step body is then that variable and nothing else (section 10). It is the only shape where the whole email, not just its first line, is about this person, and it costs one model call per contact.

Mode B, one text for everybody. The sentences are written once. Do not write one bland message and pretend it is personal: write two variants that test genuinely different approaches, so the send teaches you something.

There is a middle shape, and it is the most common one: a written body plus a personalized opening line in a variable. That is Mode B for the copy, since the sentences are written once, and Mode A for the bill, since you still generate one thing per contact. outreach-personalize covers it.

Write the mode into the header of outreach/sequence.md, because the rest of the pipeline reads it.

Mode A: the per contact writing prompt

This is the email prompt. The LinkedIn one is a different prompt with different rules, and it is two subsections below, under "Mode A on LinkedIn".

The prompt is in references/per-contact-prompt.md, reproduced word for word. It writes a 4 step sequence for one named contact: a pattern breaking opener, a follow-up built on a story or an analogy, a value step that comes at the offer from an unusual angle, and a break-up that creates timing without inventing scarcity. It is deliberately creative, it forbids invented facts, and it returns the subject and the body of each of the four emails and nothing else.

Use it unchanged. Do not translate it, shorten it, reorder its blocks or correct its English, and leave its two French sentences alone: they are house rules, not an oversight. Three placeholders get filled and a few lines get appended to its block 2. That is the entire adaptation surface.

Placeholder	Filled with	Source
{variable}	the language, named in English	question 1 below
{{PROSPECT}}	one labelled block per contact	a row of outreach/leads.csv
{{COMPANY_INFO}}	your offer, written once for the campaign	outreach/icp.json, plus the number and the customer name the user gave

The prospect block is built from first_name, last_name, job_title, seniority, company_name, company_website, company_industry, company_headcount, city, country_code, linkedin_url, segment and signal, plus icebreaker with its icebreaker_source and icebreaker_date when outreach-personalize has written them. An empty cell becomes a missing line, never unknown, and email and phone stay out of it. The company block comes from offer.what, offer.problem, offer.proof, offer.price_point and the segment's why_different, kept under about 150 words because the prompt handles a thin brief well and a pasted homepage badly. The line by line shape of both blocks, with a filled example, is in the reference, sections 3 and 4.

Ask these four questions before you generate anything

The prompt writes in one language, in one register, for one signer. Getting any of those wrong is not a style problem, it is a mistake in the first sentence of every email you send. Ask. Do not infer.

1. The language. Always. If outreach/icp.json makes it obvious, state the assumption rather than asking blind, and still wait for the answer.

Which language should I write these emails in? If the list spans several countries I can write one language per group: tell me which ones and I will route on country_code in outreach/leads.csv.

Dans quelle langue est-ce que j'écris ces emails ? Si la liste couvre plusieurs pays, je peux écrire une langue par groupe : dites-moi lesquelles, je répartis sur la colonne country_code de outreach/leads.csv.

Several languages means several runs: one language, one set of answers below, one generation, one sample of 20 read in that language.

2. The form of address. Only for languages that make the distinction: French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Polish and the others in the table in the reference, section 6. Never ask it in English, where the question has no meaning and asking it only makes you look automated.

French separates "tu" and "vous". Which do you use with this segment? "Vous" is the safe default in cold B2B, "tu" only if you already speak that way to these people.

Le français distingue le tutoiement et le vouvoiement. Lequel voulez-vous pour ce segment ? Le vouvoiement est la valeur sûre en B2B à froid, le tutoiement seulement si vous parlez déjà comme ça à ces gens.

3. The gender of the person signing. Only for languages where what the sender says about themselves agrees: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Polish. Ask it even when it feels intrusive, explain why in the same breath, and never infer it from a first name. If the conversation already established it, do not ask twice.

One grammar question, and I would rather ask it than guess. In French, what the sender says about themselves agrees: "je serais ravi" becomes "ravie" when a woman signs. Which form should I use for the person signing these emails? I will not work it out from a first name.

Une question de grammaire, que je préfère poser plutôt que deviner. En français, ce que l'expéditeur dit de lui s'accorde : « je serais ravi » s'écrit « ravie » quand c'est une femme qui signe. Quelle forme est-ce que j'utilise pour la personne qui signe ? Je ne le déduis pas d'un prénom.

The recipient's gender is a different problem, and the answer is not to ask: the list does not carry it reliably, so drop gendered salutations altogether. "Bonjour Marc" rather than "Cher Monsieur", "Guten Tag Marc Leroy" rather than "Herr Leroy".

4. The rules for that language. Do not ask this one open. Read the lines for the chosen language out of the table in the reference, section 6, show them, and ask what to add.

For French I will add these rules to the prompt: [the lines from the table]. Anything to add, or a house rule of your own?

Pour le français, j'ajoute ces règles au prompt : [les lignes du tableau]. Vous voulez en ajouter, ou imposer une règle maison ?

What happens to the answers. They become variables injected into the prompt: the language replaces {variable} on line 1, and the register, the signer's gender, the language rules and any house rule become lines appended to the end of block 2, "Style and Tone Requirements", in the same dash list as the rest. The order and a worked example are in the reference, section 5. Write the answers into the header of outreach/sequence.md as well (Language:, Address:, Signer:), because the second batch six weeks from now has to come out in the same voice.

The prompt writes the body, Emelia adds the rest

The prompt ends on "DON'T INCLUDE ANY VARIABLES OR SIGNATURES" and tells the model not to sign or invent a name. Section 10 of this skill says the step body is the message variable, then {{signature}}, then the opt out link from step 2 on. That is one rule seen from two ends, not a contradiction: the model produces the body alone, and Emelia assembles the email at send time.

So a generated value carries no {{...}} of any kind, no "Best regards", no name, no company line, no unsubscribe link. It does carry its own greeting, spelled out in full ("Bonjour Marc,"), because Mode A has no variable to fall back on. Two consequences to say out loud: a wrong first name is baked into the text and no fallback will save it, and a value that arrives with a sign off inside it is a "wrong" row in the sample gate, not something you tidy up by hand.

The reverse mistake is as common: do not add a signature to the prompt to make the message "complete". {{signature}} renders the signature of whichever identity sends, and that is what lets the same 1,000 messages go out from three mailboxes and sign correctly.

Length: 3 to 4 short paragraphs against 300 characters

The prompt caps an email at "3-4 short paragraphs max". This repository measures the same thing in characters: 74, then 148, then 74. Three paragraphs, 300 characters of body, the last one a question carrying the ask. It was measured in the Emelia editor, it is explained in outreach-audit section 3, and it is what scripts/audit-emails.py enforces.

The two agree, and the arithmetic is the useful part. Four paragraphs inside 300 characters is about 75 characters each, which is one rendered line on a phone. "Short paragraph" therefore means one or two sentences of 12 to 20 words, and a fourth paragraph comes out of the same budget instead of being added on top of it. The greeting line is not counted, and there is no sign off to count.

Step	Body characters	Hard cap
1	220 to 300	380
2	90 to 220	280
3	150 to 300	380
4, the break up	80 to 200	260

Measure it, do not eyeball it. The carrier in sequence.md has nothing to measure, so write the rendered sample from outreach-personalize section 7 into outreach/sample-rendered.md, in the same ## Step N and fenced body shape as sequence.md, and run the audit over that file:

python3 scripts/audit-emails.py outreach/sample-rendered.md

When it overshoots, and it will, fix the generation and not the messages:

1. Add one line to the block 2 injection, with the numbers in it, and regenerate the sample: Keep each email within these limits, measured on the body without the greeting: email 1 between 220 and 300 characters, email 2 between 90 and 220, email 3 between 150 and 300, email 4 between 80 and 200.
2. Still long? The creative opener is eating the budget. Move the proof paragraph into step 2 and let step 1 carry the observation and the ask.
3. One message over while the other nineteen are inside is a row, not a rule. Regenerate that row.

Never buy the length back by cutting the ask, and never by merging the paragraphs into two longer ones: the shape is checked as well as the total. A message over the hard cap does not ship, and at 1,000 rows nobody is going to edit them one by one, which is why a sample that overshoots is fixed at the prompt before the other 980 exist.

What comes back, and where it goes

Four objects in step order, each with a subject and a body, written into subject_line, message, subject_line_2, message_2, and so on to step 4. Steps 2 and 4 stay in the thread of the step before them, so their generated subjects are not used in Emelia. The JSON contract and the full column mapping are in the reference, section 7.

The rest of this skill still applies to Mode A. The angle (section 2), the proof rules (section 6), the ask (section 7) and the assembly rules (section 10) are constraints on the output of that prompt, not alternatives to it. A per contact message that breaks them is still bad copy, it is just bad copy a thousand times.

Mode A on LinkedIn: the message prompt

There are two per contact prompts in this skill, and they are not the same prompt with a different word count. The email one is references/per-contact-prompt.md. The LinkedIn one is references/linkedin-message-prompt.md.

You are writing	Prompt	It produces
EMAIL steps	per-contact-prompt.md	4 emails, each with a subject and a body
CONNECTION, MESSAGE and INMAIL steps	linkedin-message-prompt.md	an invitation note, 3 messages, and an InMail when the flow has one
A multichannel campaign	both, in the same run	the email columns and the li_ columns on the same row

A multichannel template needs both, and that is normal rather than a sign you chose wrong: linkedin-email and smart-multi-channel in outreach-sequence section 1 both carry email steps and LinkedIn steps, so the same contact gets messages from both prompts. Run them one after the other, with the same answers to the four questions, and keep the two sets of columns apart.

Never translate an email into a LinkedIn message. Four rules make it a different piece of writing, and all four are in the prompt:

• You do not sign. No name, no company, no job title, no signature block.
• Every message ends on a question. The invitation note is the only exception.
• No closing formula. Not "Bien à vous", not "Cordialement", not "Best regards", not "Looking forward to hearing from you".
• You introduce yourself far less. The reader opens your profile in one click, so a paragraph explaining who you are spends the two lines that decide whether they keep reading, on information already on their screen.

Four more come from the channel itself:

• The invitation note is capped at 300 characters, spaces included, and the Emelia invitation editor flags anything longer. The best note is often no note: an empty one is usually accepted more often than a pitched one, which is why the Emelia templates ship the invitation empty. Generate one anyway, show both options, let the user pick.
• There is no subject line and the window is narrow. The first sentence does the work a subject would do, and the message is read in a column about half the width of an email, usually on a phone. Two or three short paragraphs, not four.
• No HTML. Verified against the V3 LinkedIn preview on 9 September 2026: the body is escaped before it is rendered, so a <p> or a <b> arrives as visible characters, not as formatting. The same preview resolves {{...}} against the contact, its custom fields and its company, and nothing else, which is why {{signature}} and {{unsubscribe_link}} have no meaning in a LinkedIn step. A LinkedIn step body is the message, and only the message.
• No unsubscribe link, because it is not an email. Section 10 below is about email steps. Do not carry its footer over: the exit on LinkedIn is that they stop replying, or they disconnect, and both work without you adding anything.

And one that is easy to miss: the first message arrives after an acceptance. This person clicked accept. Writing to them as though they had never heard of you wastes the one thing you have that a cold email does not. The prompt says so, and also says not to thank them for accepting, which is the other half of the same mistake.

Ask the same four questions first, from the block above: the language, the form of address for languages that separate them, the gender of the person writing for languages that agree, and the rules for that language. Ask them once and reuse the answers on both channels. Question 3 catches people out here: not signing removes the name, not the grammar, so "je serais ravi d'en parler" is still wrong when a woman writes it.

The lengths, the prospect and company blocks, the JSON contract, the li_ columns and the checks on the sample of 20 are all in references/linkedin-message-prompt.md.

Mode B: two variants that test something

A variant is not a synonym. If A and B differ only in wording, a win tells you nothing you can reuse on the next campaign. Change exactly one thing, keep everything else identical, and write down what you expect to learn.

What you vary	Variant A	Variant B	What a win tells you
The angle	the workaround costs time	the workaround carries a risk	which of the two is live in this market
The promise	fix the problem	see the problem	whether they already know they have it
The ask	a question about ownership	an offer to send the short version	whether the segment answers questions from strangers
The proof	a named customer	the mechanism, in one sentence	whether social proof or competence opens this door
The subject	a bare noun phrase	a question about their world	how they triage, not what they buy

Rules that make the test worth running:

• One variable at a time. Two changes and the result is a coin flip with extra steps.
• Same list, same days, same sending accounts. A variant sent from a warmer mailbox wins for the wrong reason.
• Both variants must be defensible. Writing a weak B to make A win is a waste of a send.
• The metric is replies, never opens.

Check the list is big enough before you write two of anything. The sample size table lives in outreach-sequence, under "A clean A/B test". Short version: on 1,000 contacts you can detect 5% against 10% replies, not 5% against 6%. If the list cannot carry the test, say so, write one version, and call it a learning campaign rather than a test.

Generation volume, and where the generation runs

Say this when the user asks for the messages, not in a footnote afterwards.

Messages to generate	Where it runs	What to do
Up to about 200	a normal Claude Code subscription	Fan out over parallel agents, ten contacts each
200 to about 1,000	the subscription over several days, or an API key	Ask which the user prefers before starting
1,000 and above	an Anthropic API key, billed per message	Use Claude Sonnet, model id claude-sonnet-5

A sequence is a handful of model calls. A per contact message is one call each, so the two scale very differently. Writing 100 to 200 sequences in a day sits comfortably inside a normal Claude Code subscription. Generating 1,000 or 10,000 per contact messages does not, and starting anyway means stopping halfway down the list with half a campaign written and no way to finish it today. For that volume the user sets ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and the run goes against the Anthropic API, billed per message. Use Claude Sonnet: writing a cold email from a filled brief is not a reasoning problem, Sonnet does it as well as a larger model, and at 10,000 rows the price is what decides.

An order of magnitude, with its assumptions on the table: at roughly 1,500 input and 300 output tokens per message, and Claude Sonnet 5 listed at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens on anthropic.com/pricing in September 2026, 1,000 messages come to about $6, and less with a cached instruction block and the Batch API. Check the current price before you quote it to anyone.

The question to ask before any run above 200:

Your list has 4,000 contacts. One message each means 4,000 model calls, which will not fit inside a Claude Code subscription. Three options: write 200 today as a first batch and continue tomorrow, run the whole list on an Anthropic API key with Claude Sonnet, roughly $25 at today's prices and one evening, or drop to two A/B variants for the whole list and spend nothing on generation. Which one?

Never start a run above 200 messages without that answer.

Generate in parallel, never in one long loop

One agent writing a hundred sequences one after another is the slowest possible way to do this, and it is also the worst: by message sixty it has forgotten the brief and every opener sounds the same. Split the contacts and fan out.

1. Write the brief once, to a file, and pass its path to every agent. It carries the offer, the segment, the language, the register, the signer's gender, the length table, the four step progression and the output shape. One file means one voice, and a correction to it applies to every agent you launch next.

2. Split the contacts into slices of about ten, each in its own JSON file, each with its own output file. Disjoint slices, so no two agents write the same person and no work is paid for twice.

3. Launch them in the same message, not one after another. Ten agents of ten finish in about the time one agent takes to write ten.

4. Tell the user what you launched before it starts, and report each slice as it lands. Silence for ten minutes reads as a hang.

5. Read the outputs back and check them yourself, against the brief: the count, the ids, the lengths, the forbidden characters, and the repetition across slices, which is the one failure no single agent can see:

   python3 scripts/check-repetition.py outreach/copy/out-*.json
   

   It reports every sentence more than a couple of contacts share, and which step it sits in. Expect the subject lines and the openers to come back clean and the asks to be the problem: on a real run of 75 contacts the same closing question came back 17 times, because every agent reached for the same phrasing once the personalised part was written. The offer facts are allowed to repeat, they are facts. The question at the end is not: it is the line that earns the reply, and a hundred people getting the same one is a hundred people getting a template. Fix it by rewriting those sentences with a rotation of genuinely different asks, or by re-running the slices with an instruction to vary the ask, never by editing a hundred messages by hand.

Tell each agent to write the messages itself and not to write a script that generates them. An agent that hits a wall on a long task will reach for a template loop, and a templated message is a Mode B message with extra steps and Mode A's bill.

The same shape applies to any step that loops: sourcing several cities, auditing several mailboxes, enriching several batches. If it divides into independent slices, it runs as parallel agents.

2. Find the angle before you write a word

Answer these four in one sentence each. Say them to the user.

1. What happens in this person's week that your product touches?
2. What are they doing about it today? (usually: a spreadsheet, an agency, an intern, or nothing)
3. What does that workaround cost, in a unit they already measure? (hours, euros, headcount, churn, on call nights)
4. Why now? (a hire, a funding round, a launch, a regulation, a season, a tool they just installed)

If you cannot answer three of the four, the problem is the targeting. Stop and go back to outreach-icp rather than writing prettier sentences around a guess.

The angle is one sentence with this shape, and the product does not appear in it:

You are probably [workaround], which costs [unit], and [why now] makes it worse.

One angle per segment. If the list holds three segments, write three sequences. Do not write one sequence and hope a variable covers the difference.

3. Subjects

• 3 to 6 words, 30 to 45 characters. On a phone in portrait, the mail apps show roughly the first 35 characters of a subject line, so treat everything past that as decoration. Check that the first 35 characters still make sense alone.
• Sentence case or lowercase. Title Case reads like a newsletter.
• No brackets, no currency, no "Re:" or "Fwd:" you did not earn, no exclamation mark.
• The subject sells the open, not the offer. Keep the offer out of it.
• The test: would a colleague send you this subject about this? If it only works coming from a vendor, rewrite it.

Shapes that survive: the bare noun phrase (onboarding drop off), the question about their world (who owns invoicing at {{companyName}}), the two word context ({{companyName}} and SOC2), the honest admission (probably not your problem).

Do not put a variable in a subject unless every row has a value for it. An unresolved variable renders as an empty string in Emelia, so quick question about is what part of your list receives. Wrap it in a fallback or drop it.

4. The opening line

Rules, all three at once:

• It contains no I, no we, no our, and not your company name.
• It is one sentence.
• It is falsifiable, meaning that if it were wrong the reader could correct you.

Delete on sight: "I hope this email finds you well", "My name is X and I am the founder of Y", "I am reaching out because", "I came across your profile", "I wanted to introduce", "Hope you are having a great week".

The shape that works is observation then implication:

Your changelog says the v3 API went public in June. [observation, checkable] Most teams ship the public API before the response monitoring. [implication]

When the row has an icebreaker from outreach-personalize, that is the observation. When it does not, the implication becomes the opener on its own, which is why the second line must stand alone.

5. The body: about 300 characters, which is 45 to 50 words

Characters are what the checks measure, because that is what decides how many lines a phone renders. The reference shape is 74 characters, then 148, then 74: one medium paragraph, one long, one short that carries the ask and ends on a question. See the length table in outreach-audit, which both scripts read from.

One problem, one proof, one ask. Nothing else.

• One or two sentences per paragraph, blank line between them. It will be read on a phone with a thumb over half the screen.
• No bullet list in step 1. Bullets read as a deck.
• No attachment, no image, no logo, no banner. Emelia adds a tracking pixel when trackOpens is on, so any image you add is the second image in a cold email.
• Zero or one link in step 1. When trackLinks is on, every link is rewritten as a redirect, so a link in a first cold email is an unknown redirect from an unknown sender. Put the link in step 2 or later. The opt out link does not count against this: it is never rewritten (section 10).
• Plain text beats HTML. If the user's step is HTML, keep the markup to paragraphs.

Those word counts are a habit, not the gate. The checker measures characters, because characters are what a phone renders: 220 to 300 on step 1, hard cap 380, and less on the follow-ups. The table is in the Mode A section above and the reasoning is in outreach-audit section 3. Three hundred characters is about 47 words, so treat the top of the word range as the point where you are already writing a second email. Where the two disagree, the character table wins, because it is the one that blocks.

6. Proof

Only three forms count.

1. Named customer: who, what changed, over what period. "Kestrel Pay caught a schema regression 40 minutes before their first ticket" beats "we help engineering teams save time". Use only a name the user confirmed they may use.
2. Mechanism proof, when there is no name to use: one concrete sentence about how it works that only somebody who built it could write. "We assert on the response body, not the status code" is proof. "Best in class monitoring" is not.
3. Negative proof: "we are not a fit under 10 engineers" tells the reader you know the market and costs you nothing.

Banned: leading, innovative, game changing, trusted by hundreds, 10x, and any percentage without a base. Every number must have a before and an after, or a source you can paste when the prospect asks.

7. The ask

The ask is a question that can be answered by typing one line with a thumb. Ranked from least to most friction:

1. "Is this owned by someone at {{companyName}} today, or is it still on the list?"
2. "Worth a look?"
3. "Want the two minute version?" (interest first, you send after they say yes)
4. "Open to 15 minutes next week?" (step 3 at the earliest)

Never in a first touch: a calendar link, two questions, "let me know your availability", or a proposed slot. One ask per email, one question mark per email.

8. Follow-up rhythm, and what each one adds

Every follow-up brings one new thing, or it does not exist. New means a new angle, a new proof, a new format, or a new ask. "Just bumping this up" brings nothing and teaches the reader to ignore the thread.

Step	Day	Thread	What it adds	Length
1	0	new	The angle and the ask	220 to 300 characters
2	3 to 4	same thread, empty subject	New proof, same angle. The shortest email of the sequence	30 to 60 words
3	7 to 9	new thread	New angle on the same problem, or a format switch (one bare question)	40 to 80 words
4	14 to 16	same thread as 3	The break-up	30 to 50 words

Leave the subject of a follow-up empty when you want it in the same thread. Emelia then reuses the last subject it sent to that contact, prefixes it with Re: , and quotes the earlier emails underneath. So never paste the previous email into a follow-up: it is already there, and pasting it doubles it.

Keep it to four email steps. Steps 5 and beyond mostly buy unsubscribes and spam complaints, and a spam complaint costs the domain, not the campaign. If the deal size really justifies more touches, add a LinkedIn step or a call task in outreach-sequence rather than a fifth email.

9. The break-up

It closes the loop without guilt. It says you are stopping, gives one easy out, and does not ask for a meeting. "Should I close the file, or check back after the new year?" gets replies because a no is cheap to send.

Never: "I will assume you are not interested" followed by another email, "this is my last attempt" when it is not, or invented scarcity.

10. How the email is assembled in Emelia

Everything above is the text. This is what actually goes in the editor, and getting it wrong is how a good sequence ships broken.

This whole section is about email steps. A LinkedIn step body is the message and nothing else: no signature variable, no opt out link, no HTML. See "Mode A on LinkedIn" in section 1.

The reference, taken from a real running campaign. Every step, the same shape, only the number changes:

subject: {{email1subject}}
body:    <p>{{email1message}}</p><p></p><p>{{signature}}</p>

and from step 2 onwards, with the opt out:

body:    <p>{{email2message}}</p><p></p><p>{{signature}}</p><p></p><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="{{unsubscribe_link}}">Se désabonner</a></p>

One pair of variables per step, emailNsubject and emailNmessage, matching the column names in your CSV. The names are yours to choose, email_subject_2 works as well as email2subject, as long as the column and the variable agree exactly.

Four rules, each of which has already broken a real campaign:

The body is HTML, not text. A paragraph is <p>...</p>, a blank line between two paragraphs is <p></p>. A newline character does nothing: write \n in the body and the whole email renders as one run-on block. This is the most common way a well written sequence arrives looking careless.

Only double braces. {{firstName}}. Nothing else. Not {# firstName #}, not {{ firstName | default: "" }}, not a Liquid tag, not a filter.

There is no fallback. You cannot supply a default value for a variable, so do not write anything that pretends you can. An unresolved variable renders as nothing, silently. That is precisely why a sentence must still read correctly when the variable comes back empty, and why "Hi {{firstName}}," on a row with no first name ships as "Hi ,". Check the column is filled on every row instead of reaching for a default that does not exist.

The greeting lives in the message, not in the editor. In Mode A the step body is the carrier variable and nothing else, so "Bonjour Marie," has to be inside the generated value of emailNmessage. A step that renders straight into the first sentence with no greeting reads as a machine. In Mode B, where you write the text in the editor, the greeting is the first paragraph of that text.

In Mode A, do not paste the written message into the editor and sprinkle variables through it. The message lives in the contact's custom field, and the step only renders it. One variable, one message, no editing in the app.

The opt out link, and why it must be a link

{{unsubscribe_link}} renders a URL, not a link. Pasted bare it puts a long tracking URL in the middle of an otherwise plain email, which is about the loudest "this is bulk" signal you can add to a cold message. Wrap it in an anchor whose text is a word or a short phrase. English:

<p><a href="{{unsubscribe_link}}">Unsubscribe</a></p>
<p><a href="{{unsubscribe_link}}">Unsubscribe from these emails</a></p>

French:

<p><a href="{{unsubscribe_link}}">Se désabonner</a></p>
<p><a href="{{unsubscribe_link}}">Ne plus recevoir mes emails</a></p>

In the Emelia editor you do not have to type HTML. Select the word, use the link button, and put {{unsubscribe_link}} in the URL field. The editor prefixes a URL it does not recognise with its own domain, and the sending engine detects and repairs exactly that case, so a variable in the URL field is a supported way to do it. Write the HTML into outreach/sequence.md anyway, because that is what the checker reads.

Four facts about that variable, verified against the Emelia sending pipeline on 9 September 2026:

• The name is case insensitive. {{unsubscribe_link}} and {{UNSUBSCRIBE_LINK}} are the same variable: the V3 editor inserts the lowercase form, the legacy editor the uppercase one, and both resolve.
• The opt out link is never rewritten by link tracking. Every other href becomes a redirect when trackLinks is on. This one keeps its own URL, so it does not count against the one link per step rule and it does not look like a redirect to a filter.
• It is what sets the List-Unsubscribe header. The header is added only when the variable is present in that step's body. A step without the variable goes out without the header.
• Wording rules. No question mark, because the one question in the email is the ask. No URL as the anchor text. Not "click here", which is on the spam list in section 11.

The opt out does not go in step 1

The default rule in this repository, applied by this skill and enforced by the checker: no opt out link in step 1, one from step 2 on.

Why that is defensible. The first contact is the one that has to be shortest, and a footer is the first thing that turns a one to one email into a mailing. Nobody unsubscribes from an email they have not yet decided about, so the link buys nothing on day 0 and costs the impression the whole message depends on. By step 2, three days later, the reader has seen you twice, which is exactly when an exit becomes useful, and it is there. Between the two, every ordinary reply still works: an answer saying no stops the sequence through eventToStop, faster for the recipient than any form.

What it costs, plainly: step 1 goes out without a List-Unsubscribe header, because that header comes from the variable. If you send at bulk volume from one domain, or your market expects one click opt out on every message, that is a real reason to override.

To override it, write Opt-out: every step in the header of outreach/sequence.md. The checker then requires the link on every email step instead of forbidding it on step 1. A single step sequence is treated as "every step" automatically, since there is no step 2 to carry the link.

11. Run the checks

Write the file first, then run the checker over it. Report every line it prints.

python3 scripts/check-copy.py outreach/sequence.md outreach/leads.csv

The script ships with this repository. Installed as a plugin, it sits next to the skills instead, so try check-copy.py from the plugin directory too. It exits 1 when something blocking is found, and a blocking finding is not a suggestion: fix the copy and run it again. If the script is nowhere to be found, apply this table by hand, in this order, and say that you checked by hand.

Check	Threshold	Level
Subject length	30 to 45 characters, hard stop at 60	WARN then FAIL
Subject on mobile	first 35 characters must stand alone	WARN
Subject case	more than half the words capitalised, or any shouted word	WARN then FAIL
Step 1 length	220 to 300 characters, 380 hard cap	FAIL
Follow-up length	90 words maximum	FAIL
Whole sequence	400 words maximum	WARN
Links	0 or 1 in step 1, 1 per step after	FAIL
Images	none, the open pixel is already one	FAIL
Variables	every {{name}} is a column of leads.csv or an Emelia contact field	FAIL
Variable in subject	must carry a fallback	WARN
Spam trigger words	one is a smell, three in one email is a stack	WARN then FAIL
Questions	one question mark per email	FAIL
Exclamation marks	none	WARN
Numbers	a figure with no base	WARN
Repetition	a follow-up sharing more than 40% of its content words with the step before	FAIL
Signature	{{signature}} in every email step, lowercase	FAIL
Opt-out placement	absent from step 1, present from step 2 on, unless the header says Opt-out: every step	FAIL
Opt-out shape	inside an <a href="{{unsubscribe_link}}"> with a short text, never pasted bare	FAIL
Opt-out wording	anchor text that is a URL, or longer than six words	FAIL then WARN
Step count	more than 5	WARN

The spam word list the checker uses, grouped so you can see the logic:

• Money and urgency: free, 100% free, risk free, no cost, guarantee, guaranteed, act now, urgent, limited time, last chance, expires, order now, buy now, cheap, discount, cash, earn, make money, prize, winner, congratulations, exclusive offer, special promotion, double your.
• Hype: revolutionary, game changing, breakthrough, amazing, incredible, best in class, world class, cutting edge, supercharge, skyrocket, 10x, unleash, no brainer.
• Sales cliche: dear sir, dear friend, to whom it may concern, this is not spam, click here, click below, apply now, call now, increase sales, boost your, quick win.
• Formatting: shouted words, more than one exclamation mark, coloured or oversized text, several punctuation marks in a row.

Be honest with the user about what this list is. Gmail and Outlook weigh sender reputation, authentication and engagement far more than vocabulary, so no single word sends you to spam. These words matter because they correlate with the copy that gets deleted, and deletion without a reply is what actually kills your reputation. The checker flags a stack, not a word.

The variable check is the one that silently ruins a send. Emelia resolves {{name}} against the contact fields first, then the contact custom fields, then the linked company record, and renders an empty string when nothing matches. You do not get an error and you do not get the raw token: you get a hole in the sentence. See outreach-personalize for the fallback syntax.

In Mode A the body is one variable, so the checker cannot measure the length, the spam words or the questions from sequence.md: there is nothing to measure yet. It says so and skips those rows. The copy checks still have to be run, on the rendered sample of 20 that outreach-personalize produces. Never report a Mode A sequence as checked when only the carrier was checked.

12. Show the user, then stop

Print the whole sequence in the conversation, with the checker output under it, and ask for a yes before anything else happens. This step ends with the user's approval, not with a launch.

In Mode A, print the carrier and three rendered examples, not a thousand. The user approves the prompt and the shape, then outreach-personalize runs the sample of 20 that approves the generation itself.

Output

outreach/sequence.md. The header carries the decisions so the file can be re-read six months later, and the step headings are what the checker parses, so keep the format exactly. Mode: and Opt-out: are read by the checker, so spell them as below.

# Sequence: French SaaS CTOs, response level monitoring

Segment: CTO or VP Engineering, French SaaS, 20 to 200 employees, ships a public API
Angle: they learn about a broken API response from a customer, not from their monitor
Mode: B, two variants, no per contact message
Opt-out: from step 2
Proof: Kestrel Pay, named with the account manager's permission on 2026-09-02
Ask: a question about ownership, no meeting before step 3
Variables used: firstName, companyNameClean, icebreaker
Written: 2026-09-09 by outreach-write
Checks: passed, 0 blocking, 0 warnings

## Step 1 | email | day 0 | new thread

**Subject:** status page vs reality

**Body:**

```text
Hi {# firstName | default: "there" #},

{{icebreaker}}

Most teams that ship a public API hear about a broken response from a customer
first. The uptime check returns 200, the payload changed underneath it, and the
support ticket arrives before the alert does.

Kestrel Pay caught a schema regression 40 minutes before their first ticket last
quarter. That gap is the only reason they still pay us.

Is response level monitoring owned by someone at {{companyNameClean}} today, or
is it still on the list?

{{signature}}
```

No opt out link on step 1, on purpose. See section 10.

## Step 2 | email | day 3 | same thread

**Subject:**

**Body:**

```text
One detail I left out: we assert on the body, not the status code. You write the
shape you expect once, and you get paged when a field disappears.

About ten minutes for a first endpoint.

Worth a look?

{{signature}}

<p><a href="{{unsubscribe_link}}">Unsubscribe from these emails</a></p>
```

## Step 3 | email | day 8 | new thread

**Subject:** who gets paged

**Body:**

```text
Hi {# firstName | default: "there" #},

Different question. When a customer reports a bad response, who finds out first
on your side, and how long does that take?

I ask because the answer is usually support, about two hours, and that is the
number we move.

Happy to send the two minute version if it is useful.

{{signature}}

<p><a href="{{unsubscribe_link}}">Unsubscribe from these emails</a></p>
```

## Step 4 | email | day 15 | same thread

**Subject:**

**Body:**

```text
No answer, so I will take it that response level monitoring is handled or not a
priority this quarter. Both are fine.

Should I close the file, or check back after the new year?

{{signature}}

<p><a href="{{unsubscribe_link}}">Unsubscribe from these emails</a></p>
```

The example above uses a fictional customer. Replace it with one the user confirmed they may name, and write the confirmation date into the header.

In Mode A the same file holds the carrier instead of the copy, because the copy lives in the CSV, one message per row:

# Sequence: French SaaS CTOs, response level monitoring

Mode: A, one message per person, variables `message` and `message_2`
Opt-out: from step 2
Variables used: subject_line, message, message_2
Generation: 2,360 messages for 1,180 contacts, Anthropic API key, claude-sonnet-5,
  run on 2026-09-09
Checks: carriers checked here, copy checked on the sample of 20 in outreach/leads.csv

## Step 1 | email | day 0 | new thread

**Subject:** {{subject_line}}

**Body:**

```text
{{message}}

{{signature}}
```

## Step 2 | email | day 3 | same thread

**Subject:**

**Body:**

```text
{{message_2}}

{{signature}}

<p><a href="{{unsubscribe_link}}">Unsubscribe from these emails</a></p>
```

The checker prints carrier step on both, and one warning about the subject variable having no fallback. That warning is the point: give subject_line, message and message_2 full coverage before the launch, because a carrier has nothing to fall back on and an empty message sends an empty email. Coverage is counted in outreach-personalize, not here.

The LinkedIn steps of the same file are carriers too, and they are shorter, because there is no subject, no signature and no opt out link to carry:

## Step 1 | linkedin invitation | day 0

**Body:**

```text
{{li_note}}
```

## Step 2 | linkedin message | day 1 | after acceptance

**Body:**

```text
{{li_message}}
```

One variable, alone on its line, and nothing under it. A {{signature}} added here renders as nothing, and an unsubscribe anchor added here renders as visible HTML tags in the middle of a chat message.

Checks before finishing

• python3 scripts/check-copy.py outreach/sequence.md outreach/leads.csv exits 0.
• The header carries Mode: and Opt-out:, and the mode matches what was actually done.
• In Mode A, the four questions were asked and answered before the generation started, and the answers are in the header as Language:, Address: and Signer:. The form of address was not asked in English, and the signer's gender was never inferred from a first name.
• In Mode A, the prompt in references/per-contact-prompt.md was used unchanged: three placeholders filled, rules appended to its block 2, nothing else touched.
• In Mode A, python3 scripts/audit-emails.py outreach/sample-rendered.md was run over the rendered sample of 20, and no step is over its hard cap.
• For LinkedIn steps, the prompt in references/linkedin-message-prompt.md was used rather than the email prompt, and the sample check in its section 7 was run: every message ends on a question, no message carries a closing formula or a signature, no invitation note is over 300 characters, and no value contains a variable or a tag.
• No LinkedIn step body carries {{signature}} or {{unsubscribe_link}}. Neither resolves there, and the second one arrives as visible markup.
• On a multichannel campaign, both prompts were run with the same answers to the four questions, and the LinkedIn columns are the li_ ones, not the email columns reused.
• No generated message value contains a variable, a signature, a sign off or an unsubscribe link. Those belong to the step, not to the value.
• Every variable used appears in the leads.csv header, or is an Emelia contact field, and any variable that is empty on some rows carries a fallback.
• Every factual claim in the copy has a source the user gave you, written in the header.
• Every email step ends with {{signature}}, lowercase, on its own line, and the sending identity has a signature configured that names the sender and the company.
• Step 1 has no opt out link, every later email step has one, and each one is an anchor with a short text rather than a bare variable. Unless the header says Opt-out: every step, in which case every step has one.
• Each follow-up brings something the previous step did not say.
• If more than 200 messages were generated, the user was told what that costs and where it would run, and chose, before the run started.
• The user has read the sequence and said yes.

Failure modes

The angle is really the ICP. If the four angle questions have no answers, more copy will not help. Say it and go back to targeting.

The user wants a longer email. Longer emails do not convert better in cold outreach; they convert differently in warm follow-up. Offer to move the detail into step 2 or into a page you link from step 3.

The user wants their metric in the subject. It reads as an ad. Offer to put it in the proof line instead.

Variables look fine and render empty. The row has the column but the cell is blank. The checker only sees column names, so check coverage per column in outreach-personalize before deciding a variable is safe.

The copy passes and still gets no replies. After 300 sends with a verified list, a good open rate and under 1% replies, the problem is the offer or the segment, not the sentences. Say that plainly rather than producing a fourth variant.

Spam words are not the reason you land in spam. If the user's real problem is placement, do not rewrite the copy. Send them to outreach-deliverability, which looks at SPF, DKIM, DMARC, warmup and volume.

A long URL appears at the bottom of the received email. The opt out variable was pasted bare instead of being wrapped in an anchor. Fix the copy, not the tracking settings.

The signature is missing from the received email. Either the variable was written with a capital letter, which does not resolve, or the sending identity has no signature configured. Check both, in that order.

The messages come back at 500 characters. "3 to 4 short paragraphs" was read as generous. It is a ceiling on the count, not a licence on the total: three paragraphs inside 300 characters. Add the length line to the block 2 injection and regenerate the sample rather than trimming a thousand messages by hand.

Every French email says "je serais ravi" and a woman signs them. Question 3 was skipped, or the answer never made it into the injected block. Regenerate: this is one wrong letter in the first person singular and French readers see it immediately.

The model wrote "Cher Monsieur" or "Sehr geehrter Herr Leroy". It guessed the recipient's gender, which the list does not carry. Add the no gendered salutation line for that language and regenerate, do not patch the rows.

The LinkedIn message is signed. The email prompt was used on a LinkedIn step, or the "don't sign" line never made it into the run. A name at the bottom of a LinkedIn message is the tell that it came out of a machine, because the name is already at the top of the thread. Regenerate with the LinkedIn prompt rather than trimming the last two lines off a thousand rows.

Every LinkedIn message ends on "Bien à vous" or "Best regards". Same cause. The closing formula rule is in block 2 of references/linkedin-message-prompt.md and in the appended language lines, and it has to be in both when the language has its own formulas.

The first LinkedIn message opens by explaining who the sender is. The model wrote an email. The profile is one click away and that paragraph is the two lines the reader actually spends. Add the no self introduction line to the appended block and regenerate.

The invitation note is rejected or truncated. It is over 300 characters. The Emelia editor flags it, LinkedIn does not accept it, and the fix is at the prompt: the note is the shortest piece of the five, and it is often better empty.

A LinkedIn message arrives with <p> visible in it. HTML was pasted into a LinkedIn step. The body is escaped before it is rendered, so tags show up as characters. Strip them, and never carry the email footer across.

The A and B variants are the same email in different words. That is not a test, it is two sends. Go back to the table in section 1, pick one thing to vary, and rewrite B around it.

The generation stops halfway through the list. A per contact run above a couple of hundred messages hit the subscription limit. Do not restart it and hope: finish the run on an Anthropic API key with Claude Sonnet, or cut the list. This is what the question in section 1 exists to avoid.

Limits

This skill does not send anything and does not create the campaign. The per contact prompts in references/per-contact-prompt.md and references/linkedin-message-prompt.md are two prompts, not a style engine: they write creative, pattern breaking cold outreach, and a segment that wants a dry, technical register is a segment where you write Mode B or hand it your own prompt. The LinkedIn one covers the invitation note, the messages and the InMail, and nothing else on the platform: it does not write posts, comments, voice notes or replies to a conversation that has started, and it has no way to check whether the sending account can carry the volume, which is outreach-deliverability and outreach-sequence section 5. It cannot check a Mode A message it has not rendered, so a carrier that passes the checker is not a campaign that passed the checker. It does not know your reply rate: the benchmarks it uses are rules of thumb, not measurements from your account, and outreach-audit is what gives you your own numbers. It cannot verify a claim the user makes about their own product, so it writes claims down with their source and leaves the responsibility where it belongs. It does not write in a language it cannot check: the table in references/per-contact-prompt.md section 6 lists the languages it has something true to say about, and for anything outside it, say so and offer English or a native reader on the sample of 20, because a cold email with one wrong agreement in it is worse than one in English.