Autonomous Cold Email

Own your sending infrastructure instead of renting it.

Smartlead and Instantly charge you monthly for inboxes you already pay for.
Bring the whole stack in-house — your mailboxes, your data, your sequences —
and let an agent run it while you sleep.

_{Claude Code skill + playbook · SMTP/IMAP setup · lead sourcing & segmentation · warmup ramps · deliverability caps · reply classification · monitoring}

This is a Claude Code skill + a complete playbook (with runnable templates) for building
an in-house cold-email / outbound system: connect your own SMTP/IMAP inboxes, source and
segment leads, write sequences, send at scale with deliverability-safe caps + warmup ramp,
auto-classify replies, and run it all autonomously with monitoring.

You don't rent a SaaS. You own the stack, the data lives in your own mailboxes, and an AI
agent operates it for you.

What's inside

SKILL.md                     ← the master guide (start here)
references/                  ← deep-dives
  architecture.md  deliverability.md  engine-setup.md  lead-sourcing.md
  sequences.md     orchestration.md   monitoring.md    deployment.md
templates/
  accounts.example.json              orchestrator.config.example.json
  sequence.example.json
  scripts/  accounts.ts  tls.ts  extract-leads.py  enroll.mjs
            create-campaign.mjs  orchestrator.mjs  report.mjs
            test-connections.mjs  bootstrap-folders.mjs  cron-tick.sh  _shared.mjs
PRESENTATION.md              ← ready-to-record video script

The stack

Quickstart

1. Infra — buy secondary domains + inboxes, set SPF/DKIM/DMARC, warm up. → references/deliverability.md
2. Engine — clone outbound-tools, decouple it from the paid broker (one file). → references/engine-setup.md
3. Connect — accounts.json + node test-connections.mjs (all inboxes ✅).
4. Leads — python3 extract-leads.py ./leads ./out/leads.csv → segmented send-list. → references/lead-sourcing.md
5. Sequence — adapt templates/sequence.example.json. → references/sequences.md
6. Go autonomous — enroll → create-campaign → flip active:true → cron. → references/orchestration.md
7. Monitor — dashboard + daily Telegram report + bounce alerts. → references/monitoring.md
8. Deploy — €5/mo VPS + two cron lines. → references/deployment.md

Install as a Claude Code skill

Drop this folder into your skills directory (e.g. ~/.claude/skills/outbound-strategy/) and
ask your agent to "build my outbound infrastructure." It will follow SKILL.md step by step.

Responsible use

Cold email is regulated (CAN-SPAM, GDPR, etc.). Only email people you may lawfully contact,
always offer an opt-out, honor it instantly, and follow the laws of your and your
recipients' jurisdictions. This project is for legitimate B2B outreach — not spam.

Credits & license

Engine: the open-source outbound-tools MCP
server. This skill adds the decoupling, lead segmentation, autonomous orchestration,
monitoring, and deployment layers. Not affiliated with Smartlead, Instantly, Lemlist, or
Apollo. MIT licensed — see LICENSE.