Agentic Email Skill

Purpose

Create practical email copy for selling agentic development services end to end: prospecting, qualification, discovery, proposal, contract, closing, kickoff, delivery updates, retention, referrals, and win-back.

System Boundary

This skill owns email copy and sequences. It may reference artifacts from the other skills, but it does not replace them: use agentic-discovery-skill for discovery artifacts, agentic-proposal-skill for proposal/SOW content, agentic-contract-skill for agreement packages, agentic-invoice-skill for invoice documents, agentic-delivery-skill for delivery records, agentic-customer-success-skill for account state, and agentic-case-study-skill for approved proof. Treat every email as a draft unless the user explicitly asks to send and the recipient/routing facts are verified.

Core Workflow

1. Identify the stage: cold outreach, warm intro, follow-up, booked meeting, discovery recap, proposal, close, post-sale, retention, referral, or reactivation.
2. Gather only the facts needed for the stage:
   • buyer name, company, role, industry
   • observed trigger or business pain
   • agentic workflow being pitched
   • proof, constraints, offer, CTA, and timing
3. Use the positioning in references/positioning.md for the service promise, risk controls, and language to avoid.
4. Use references/email-catalog.md when the user asks for a near-exhaustive library, a multi-step sequence, or a specific stage template.
5. Use references/sequence-blueprints.md when designing an outreach or sales cadence.
6. Draft in the requested voice, or default to concise, plain, consultative, and specific.
7. Include subject lines when useful. Do not fabricate case studies, client names, metrics, legal claims, or regulated-use assurances.

Email Selection Guide

Choose the email by the job the message must do:

• New cold prospect, no prior context: use cold-problem-pilot unless a more specific buyer fit applies.
• Operations leader with manual queue, triage, routing, or handoff pain: use cold-operations-bottleneck.
• CTO, engineering, IT, data, or AI owner: use cold-technical-evaluation.
• Executive worried about AI risk or governance: use cold-executive-risk.
• Sales leader or revenue operations: use cold-revenue-team.
• Support, customer success, or service desk leader: use cold-support-team.
• Knowledge management, internal ops, or scattered documentation pain: use cold-ops-knowledge.
• Founder or small team: use cold-founders.
• First follow-up after cold email: use followup-workflow-map.
• Follow-up when risk, approvals, or control are the likely concern: use followup-risk-controls.
• Follow-up that needs a concrete example: use followup-example.
• Follow-up when the prospect may think the project is too large: use followup-proofless-value.
• Follow-up when you need a short diagnostic reply: use followup-breakthrough-question.
• Last cold follow-up: use breakup-close-loop.
• Referred prospect: use warm-intro-context, then warm-intro-workflow.
• Inbound lead: use inbound-fast-response, then inbound-qualification, then inbound-booking.
• Before discovery: use discovery-confirm-agenda.
• After discovery: use post-discovery-recap.
• Before a formal proposal: use proposal-preview.
• Sending a proposal: use proposal-sent.
• Proposal follow-up: use proposal-followup-questions.
• Budget objection: use close-objection-budget.
• Risk, compliance, or autonomy objection: use close-objection-risk.
• Timing objection: use close-objection-timing.
• "We may build internally" objection: use close-objection-internal-team.
• Summarizing the close: use close-decision-summary.
• Final decision nudge: use close-final-nudge.
• Sending contract: use contract-sent.
• Contract questions: use contract-clarifications.
• Invoice or deposit: use deposit-invoice.
• Waiting on signature: use signature-reminder.
• After signature: use kickoff-after-signature.
• Kickoff logistics: use kickoff-agenda.
• Need docs, access, sandbox, or examples: use access-request.
• During delivery: use weekly-update.
• Prototype ready: use review-ready.
• Acceptance review: use acceptance-request.
• Handoff complete: use handoff-complete.
• Expanding to another workflow: use expansion-next-workflow.
• Asking for referral: use referral-request.
• Asking for testimonial: use testimonial-request.
• Post-project check-in: use quarterly-checkin.
• Lost or stale opportunity with new reason to reconnect: use winback-new-trigger.
• Hiring trigger: use trigger-hiring.
• New tool, platform, migration, or integration trigger: use trigger-new-tool.
• Growth, funding, new location, new team, or volume spike trigger: use trigger-growth.
• Educational nurture with no immediate ask: use nurture-educational.
• Smaller advisory offer: use nurture-one-page-offer.
• Old opportunity without a specific new trigger: use reengage-old-opportunity.

When multiple templates fit, choose the one closest to the buyer's current decision point. For example, do not send a closing email to a prospect who has not agreed there is a workflow worth scoping; use a mapping or discovery email first.

Quality Rules

• Keep cold emails under 120 words unless the user asks for long-form.
• Lead with a concrete operational problem, not generic AI excitement.
• Pitch agentic development as workflow design, implementation, evaluation, monitoring, and human approval gates.
• Use one clear CTA per email.
• Make follow-ups additive: new angle, artifact, risk reducer, example workflow, or decision prompt.
• Include a polite opt-out line for cold outbound when appropriate.
• For regulated or high-risk sectors, emphasize review, approvals, logs, and scoped pilots. Do not imply autonomous production decisions.

Resource Guide

• references/positioning.md: load for offer framing, buyer pains, differentiators, proof rules, and compliance guardrails.
• references/use-case-decision-table.md: load when deciding which template fits a specific use case.
• references/sequence-blueprints.md: load for recommended cadences across cold outbound, warm outbound, inbound, proposal, closing, and post-sale.
• references/email-catalog.md: load for the near-exhaustive template library by stage.
• references/template-index.json: machine-readable template metadata used by the renderer.
• scripts/render_email.py: list templates or render a draft with placeholders.

Runtime Permissions

This skill is a local email-draft and document-rendering workflow. It reads bundled templates, references, examples, assets/logo.png, and user-provided Markdown or email variables. It writes only the user-selected --out, --png, --markdown-out, or default output/ artifact paths. It runs local Python entry points for scripts/render_email.py and scripts/render_pdf.py.

It does not send email, contact prospects, call mail-provider APIs, require network access, read credentials, create persistence, escalate privileges, perform destructive file operations, or run background services.

Renderer

Use the renderer for repeatable output or quick template discovery:

python3 scripts/render_email.py --list
python3 scripts/render_email.py --template cold-problem-pilot --var prospect_name=Alex --var company=Acme --var workflow="support triage"

If a user needs polished, context-aware copy, use the references and rewrite the rendered draft rather than returning raw placeholders.

Rendering to a Branded PDF

Artifacts from this skill are delivered as branded CompleteTech LLC PDF documents, not raw Markdown. The renderer emits the PDF (and prints the Markdown) in one command, using the same reportlab branding engine as the contract skill:

pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 scripts/render_email.py --template cold-operations-bottleneck \
  --out artifact.pdf --png artifact.png \
  --title "Outbound Email Sequence" --doc-type "EMAIL DRAFTS — VERIFY BEFORE SENDING" \
  --subtitle "Prospect: \x3Cb>Northwind Trading Co.\x3C/b>" --meta "SEQUENCE=PRO-OUT-014" --meta "STAGE=Cold outreach" \
  --var client_name="Client Name" --var workflow="support triage"

• --no-pdf emits Markdown only (the original behavior); --no-cover drops the cover page.
• Already drafted the Markdown yourself? Render it directly: python3 scripts/render_pdf.py --markdown artifact.md --out artifact.pdf --logo assets/logo.png --title "...".
• The PDF supports a Markdown subset: #/##/### headings, paragraphs, - bullets, tables, > callouts, **bold**, and [PAGE_BREAK]. PDF requires reportlab==4.5.1; the optional --png preview requires pypdfium2==5.8.0 and pillow==12.2.0. See assets/examples/ for a rendered example.

Network Boundary

This skill is local-only. It does not include outbound network helpers, callbacks, mail-provider integrations, tracking pixels, or any helper that posts email run metadata to an external service.