Outreach Prep

Run the Personalized Outreach team and produce an outreach kit — one panel per prospect, ready to edit and send. You orchestrate the agents; they do the work.

The job this replaces is the one nobody has time for: researching one prospect properly takes longer than writing to them, so most outreach ships generic. This run does the reading — up to four people at once, sourced — and hands back drafts that could only have been written by someone who did it.

What it replaces: researching prospects one at a time before writing to them, and writing the message generically when the research doesn't happen. Time saved: about 1 hour by hand, estimated and not yet timed. The timed baseline (E6-26) replaces this figure when it lands.

This tool never sends anything. It researches and drafts. Every message in the kit is a draft waiting for the builder to read it, change it, and send it from their own account. There is no send step, no sequence, and no CRM write — say so plainly if asked, and see § Honesty rules.

First — anchor to the project

The kit, its working folder, and the voice.md / objectives.md the run reads all live in the builder's project. Two generations exist: the project ships inside the workspace image (usually the folder my-workspace); projects made before 2026-08 were cloned and carry whatever name the builder chose. Assume neither — identify it by its signature. In an SSH/cloud container the chat may start in the project itself or in the home folder with the project one level down — both are normal. Identify it by signature, not name: run ls; see CLAUDE.md and design/ side by side? You're in the project. If not, find it: ls */CLAUDE.md, then ls ~/*/CLAUDE.md, else find ~ -maxdepth 3 -path '*/design/dashboard.html'. cd in, capture the absolute path with pwd, and use that full path throughout. Can't find it? Ask the builder which folder their project is in.

Before the questions — read what the builder already has

Check, without asking: objectives.md and voice.md at the project root, whether writing-samples/ holds anything, and the latest doc under my-work/messaging-doc/ if one exists. These sharpen the run — they are never required for it.

• If they're real, use them to pre-fill the intake below (propose, confirm, don't re-ask cold).
• voice.md matters more here than on any other use case, because this run writes something the builder puts their name on. If it's a placeholder or absent, say so once, plainly, and keep moving: "Your voice.md is still the placeholder template, so these drafts will be neutral rather than yours — you'll be rewriting them more than you'd like. Happy to run anyway; /bluerock:onboard fixes it for every future run." Never make setup homework the price of the first kit.
• If the builder has their own positioning, a one-pager, or a pitch doc, they can name or paste it at any step — it feeds the same slot as what they're selling.

Intake — one question per step, short, then confirm

Ask these one at a time. Keep each ask to a line or two; don't stack questions or explain the whole flow up front.

Skip what they already gave you. If the opening request named the people or the company, don't re-ask — say what you're taking as given (Prospects: Dana Okafor, Priya Raman · Company: Acme) so a wrong reading gets corrected early, then pick up at the first step that's actually missing. A returning builder never re-answers a question they already answered; a prior run's inputs.md pre-fills the same way (propose, confirm, don't re-ask cold).

Which prompt shape for which step: use the question picker (AskUserQuestion) only where the answer is genuinely a choice between a few options — steps 2a and 3. Everywhere else the answer is free text in the builder's own words, and a four-option picker is the wrong shape for it: ask in the message and let them type. Where the picker isn't available in this client, ask in the message.

1. Who you're writing to. "Who are we reaching? Names plus their company — a LinkedIn URL is better if you have one, because it removes the guessing on common names. Cap is 4 per run." Four is deliberate: the reading is the expensive part, and a run that researches twelve people shallowly is the generic outreach this replaces.
2. What you're selling. "What are you offering them? A couple of real sentences in your own words beat a polished paragraph." (Pre-fill from the messaging doc or objectives.md when they exist and confirm instead.) The angle is built only from here — never fabricate an offer.
   • 2a — if they have nothing written down, offer the route rather than leaving them stuck: "Want me to pull it out with three questions?" (options: yes, ask me the three · I'll write it myself · skip it — the panels will say the angle was built without it). If they take the three, ask one at a time:
     1. What problem do you solve, in the words a customer uses for it?
     2. Who has that problem worst, and how would I recognize them?
     3. What happens to them if they do nothing? Then read their answers back as a short offer description and let them correct it before moving on.
3. The channel. Ask it as a picker, because the draft's whole shape depends on it and there are four real answers: email · LinkedIn message · LinkedIn connection note · call opener. One channel per run — a message written for an inbox is not a message written for a connection request, and a kit that hedges across both is a kit the builder rewrites.
4. Anything shaping this. "Anything else I should know? A warm intro or a mutual contact, an event you both attended, a past conversation, a claim you're not allowed to make, a phrase to avoid, a competitor already in there. Optional — say 'nothing' if there isn't anything." A warm intro is the highest-value thing in this box and most builders won't think to mention it, so name it first in the ask.
5. Confirm before we run. Play back the prospects, what they're selling, the channel, and the notes as a short bullet list, then: "Good to go, or anything to edit?" Carry all four inputs forward verbatim from here — what they sell and their notes are the builder's own words, and paraphrasing either is how a draft ends up claiming something they never said.

The moment the builder approves, set the expectation for the wait in one message of its own, then go quiet until the report: the scans run concurrently and take several minutes, so say so plainly — this is a good moment to grab a coffee or switch tasks, and the kit will be ready when they check back. No further chatter between this and the report.

Set up the run

6. Make the working folder: my-work/outreach-prep/<YYYY-MM-DD>-<slug>/, where the slug names the account or the lead prospect. Dated on purpose — runs accumulate and are never overwritten; the history is what stops a second kit reusing an opener the builder already sent. my-work/ is builder-owned and never overwritten.
7. Check for a previous run: list my-work/outreach-prep/. If a prior dated folder holds an outreach-kit.md, note its path and date — the writer will report what changed and will not repeat an opener already used on the same person.
8. Write inputs.md into the working folder: the confirmed intake (prospects, what they're selling, the channel, notes) and which project files were real enough to read. This is the record of what shaped the kit, and the seed the next run pre-fills from.

Run the agents

Dispatch these as ordinary subagents. Do not use agent-teams tooling; this runs identically in every client.

9. Dispatch one prospect-scanner per prospect — all in a single message so they run concurrently. Each gets: its one prospect (name, LinkedIn URL if given, their company), what the builder sells (so it can spend its fetches where the relevance is), and the working folder's absolute path in the dispatch prompt itself (a subagent starts wherever the session started; the path you pass is the handoff). Each writes a sourced scan-<prospect-slug>.md, bounded to 6 to 8 fetches, public professional footprint only. Wait for all of them.
   • If the builder's notes mention a specific person — a warm intro, a past conversation, something they heard — pass it to that prospect's scanner as context the builder supplied. A warm intro is a fact from the builder and stands as one; anything they merely heard comes back sourced or comes back [not found]. Never laundered into the scan as established.
10. Dispatch outreach-writer with the working folder path and, when step 7 found one, the previous outreach-kit.md path. It reads inputs.md, every scan, voice.md, and a specimen from writing-samples/ — no web tools, no new research — and writes outreach-kit.md: one panel per prospect; on a multi-prospect run the Who to write first synthesis; and what changed since the previous kit. What the builder sells and their notes reach it through inputs.md verbatim — that file carries their words, never a paraphrase.

Publish the artifact — you, not the agents

11. When outreach-writer finishes, read outreach-kit.md and publish it as a Claude Artifact yourself, in this conversation, following the design contract below. The agents write markdown only; the finished, shareable view is yours to render. If artifact publishing isn't available in my environment, don't block — the markdown is saved; say so and give the path.

The artifact — design contract (follow it exactly)

The artifact is a tool the builder operates while they send, not a report they scroll (product decision, 2026-08-31). One prospect on screen at a time, reachable in one click; sections scannable by color before they are read. This contract is skills/competitive-intel/SKILL.md § the artifact with this use case's lanes substituted — same palette values, same type system, same structure rules. Copy it; don't re-derive it.

Read-only is absolute, and it bites hardest here. No CTAs, no dead controls, nothing that pretends to fetch, save, or send. Specifically: no copy-to-clipboard button on the drafts, and no send control of any kind. The draft is selectable text in a bordered block — that is enough, and a send-shaped button on a kit whose whole promise is "nothing is sent" is the worst possible control to ship. Interactivity is navigation, never chrome.

A single self-contained HTML page. CSP rules: exactly one external request, the Google Fonts stylesheet below. All CSS in one <style> block, all JS inline (one small tab script), no CDN scripts, no remote images. Print-friendly: under @media print the tab strip hides, .panel[hidden] { display: block } renders every prospect in sequence, with a page break between prospects — a printed kit is a call-prep sheet.

Fonts — one Google Fonts link, every face with a real fallback: DM Sans (display + body; fallback system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif), Source Serif 4 (the read block, the angle, the drafts, the first question; fallback Georgia, serif), JetBrains Mono (labels, meta, dates, chips; fallback ui-monospace, Menlo, monospace).

Theme — ship both, token-structured. Bare :root carries the complete light palette; @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) guarded as :root:not([data-theme="light"]) redefines only the tokens; :root[data-theme="dark"] duplicates them. Every component rule uses var() — no literal color outside the three token blocks. body background is var(--paper).

Tokens (light / dark) — the Builders palette, with the lane families named for this use case's four lanes:

Structure (max width 1000px):

1. Sticky masthead — uppercase display title (<account or campaign> · Outreach kit shape), mono meta line (<date> · SELLING: <offer in four words> · CHANNEL: <channel> · <first run or run N> · <N> source domains), then the tab strip: one role="tab" button per prospect, aria-selected on the active one, 3px accent underline; panels are <section role="tabpanel"> toggled via the hidden attribute by the inline script (first panel visible on load, others carry hidden in markup).
2. Legend row naming the four lanes with color dots: sourced, dated · the angle (yours, aimed) · drafts — not sent · what we couldn't find. Four lanes carry three kinds of statement: the gap lane is the sourced lane's honest other half (what the record does not say), which is why it gets its own color rather than hiding inside the first. The legend is where the separation becomes visible before a word is read, so it is not optional.
3. "Since your last kit" strip — only when a previous run existed: an accent-soft callout, dated, listing the writer's "Since" items (or its "no material change" line), and any opener it deliberately avoided reusing. Omit the block entirely on a first run.
4. On a multi-prospect run, one synthesis view reachable from the tab strip alongside the prospects: Who to write first — the writer's table (prospect × why-now × strength × angle) inside a bordered overflow-x: auto container, the strength column rendered as a lane-colored chip (strong fact, fair neutral, cold — fit only gap), and the two-line order read beneath it carrying its [my read] tag.
5. One panel per prospect, sections in this order:
   • Name (display, 28–40px, weight 800) + mono scope subline carried from the scan: <role> · <company> · footprint: <substantial|moderate|thin>.
   • Who they are — bordered block with a dark bar header (background: var(--ink), color: var(--paper)), labeled grid rows (128px + 1fr; mono uppercase labels, serif values): what they own, tenure, the company. Then a highlighted THE READ row on accent-soft: the one sentence that frames this approach.
   • Why now — fact-colored chip + note Sourced. Dated.; numbered item-cards (mono number, fact-colored 4px left stripe) each carrying the signal as the bold lead, its date as a mono chip, and its source chip scan-<slug>.md · <section>. Carry every [their claim] / [unverified] / [my read] marker as a small gap-colored mono tag — never silently drop one. When the writer found no dated signal, render its honest line as a single full-width fact-lane card, not an empty section and not a hidden one.
   • The angle — accent chip + note Yours, aimed. Not a finding about them.; the angle sentence in serif italic behind an accent-colored 3px left rule, with the one line beneath naming what it rests on. [my read] markers stay visible.
   • The draft — draft-colored chip reading DRAFT · <channel> · not sent; the message in a card on --draft-soft with a 3px draft-colored left border, body face at a comfortable measure, white-space: pre-wrap so the writer's line breaks survive. Where the channel has a subject line, it sits above the body as a mono uppercase SUBJECT label row. Beneath the card, the why this opener line in small mono with its source chip. Selectable text only — no copy button, per the read-only rule above.
   • Follow-up beats — draft-colored chip + note Also drafts. You decide if they go.; WHEN/WHAT rows (mono uppercase WHEN label carrying the trigger, the line in ink, the pre-written text in the draft card treatment where the writer supplied one).
   • The gap — gap-colored chip + note What we couldn't find.; one card, hairline- separated list, then the first question in serif italic inside a gap-soft callout with a 3px gap left border. Required — never omitted. On a thin prospect this section renders full-width and directly under Who they are, because it is the most useful thing on the panel; it reads as the finding it is, never as an apology.
   • Panel sources — mono chips of the domains that prospect's scan actually used.
6. Footer — the three-lane separation note (sourced lines carry a scan citation; the angle is yours to say, never dressed up as a finding; drafts are drafts), the line Drafts only — nothing here has been sent, and this tool cannot send, the line Public professional information only, and Built with BlueRock · Personalized Outreach · prospect-scanner + outreach-writer.

The scan test: someone opening this between two calls has about eight seconds — the lane colors, the name, the why-now dates, and the draft block must carry the panel before a single sentence is read.

Finish

12. The outreach kit artifact is the payoff. The outreach-kit.md is the source of record the builder keeps and can push to their repo, and inputs.md beside it is what the next run pre-fills from.
13. Report: the folder path, the one line that matters (the sharpest sourced why-now, or — when a prospect came back thin — the first question that gap became), and the artifact (or the fallback note). Say once that the drafts are drafts and nothing has been sent. Don't reprint the kit.
14. Offer the depth, after the run — never before it. One beat, two doors, then stop: "Want to see how this worked? Two agents ran it — a scanner that read each person's public record and a writer that aimed your offer and drafted in your voice. The anatomy-of-an-agent and give-your-agent-memory sessions explain the pattern — say 'teach me how this works'. And if these drafts didn't sound like you, that's voice.md: run /bluerock:onboard and the next kit writes the way you write."

Honesty rules this skill carries

• The tool never sends anything, ever. No send, no sequence, no scheduling, no CRM write. If a builder asks for it, say plainly that this run stops at drafts by design and that sending stays theirs — don't improvise a workaround with another tool.
• Three lanes, never blurred. Facts about a person trace to a scan and carry sources; the angle is the builder's own claim, aimed but labeled theirs; drafts are labeled drafts. The writer enforces it; the artifact preserves it.
• A thin prospect gets a short honest panel, not a padded one, and the gap becomes the first discovery question. This is the designed outcome, not a degraded one — a builder who opens with a genuine question does better than one who opens with a press release they mistook for insight.
• Public professional footprint only. No contact details found, guessed, or inferred; nothing behind a login; nothing personal. The scanner carries the hard version of this rule and it is not negotiable at this layer either.
• Would this survive the prospect reading it? Panels get forwarded and drafts get screenshotted. Nothing in a kit should embarrass the builder if it happens.
• Refresh, don't rot. A why-now goes stale in weeks, not quarters — a funding round is news for about a month. Every run is dated; when the previous run in my-work/outreach-prep/ is more than a month old, say so in the report rather than treating the diff as a refresh.
• The time-saved line above ships only with a timed figure and its provenance.

Who depends on this skill's wording

Not part of a run. Read this before rewording anything a builder sees.

• agents/outreach-writer.md owns the panel section names (Who they are, Why now, The angle, The draft, Follow-up beats, The gap) and the synthesis name on multi-prospect runs (Who to write first); this skill's artifact contract renders all of them by name and order. Reword them in either file and the artifact loses sections silently. The draft's two-part shape (the message, then the why this opener line with its source) is likewise shared between the writer's panel spec and the artifact's draft rendering.
• agents/prospect-scanner.md owns the scan section names; the writer reads scans by section, and the artifact's subline carries the scan's Footprint: rating verbatim (substantial / moderate / thin) — the three words are matched, not paraphrased. The scan filename shape scan-<prospect-slug>.md is matched by the writer's Glob.
• The four channel shapes (email, LinkedIn message, LinkedIn connection note, call opener) are named identically in this skill's intake step 3 and the writer's § Channel shapes; the artifact prints the chosen one in the masthead meta and the draft chip. Adding or renaming a channel is a change in three places.
• skills/onboard/SKILL.md owns voice.md and writing-samples/, which the writer reads and this skill's close names as the fix for drafts that don't sound like the builder. Renaming either strands both.
• curriculum/manifest.json carries this skill's one_liner, artifact, time_saved, and team — the menu and the site read them; keep them in step with the opening lines here.
• README.md § Personalized Outreach quotes the intake shape and the panel sections.
• The working folder shape my-work/outreach-prep/<YYYY-MM-DD>-<slug>/ is what makes run history findable, and the history is what stops a rerun reusing a sent opener; /bluerock:wrap-up logs runs against the agent-team label Personalized Outreach with members prospect-scanner + outreach-writer (the Account Research roll-up shape).
• The flow doc mirrors this skill (content repo, private: 09-product/use-case-flows/personalized-outreach-flow.md) — any change to the intake, dispatch, artifact, or close updates it in the same pass.