Cadence Rules

Cadence Rules

The Cadence skill uses this to decide:

1. When to fire the next step (timing in timing.md)
2. What content to send (templates in templates/)
3. When to stop bothering a prospect (stop-conditions.md)

Files in this skill

• timing.md — business-hour windows, timezone rules, business-day math
• templates/ — pre-approved cadence step templates, each in its own file with a stable ID. Changes to a template are versioned via filename (outbound-email-v2.md).
• stop-conditions.md — the rules that move a lead to dormant

The contract with the Composer

The Composer authors first-touch and reply drafts that require human approval. The Cadence skill only queues content from templates/. That's the "pre-approved at design time" promise: each template was reviewed when added; the queueing is acceptable because the wording already passed review.

If a template needs a tweak for a specific prospect, Cadence does not tweak. It saves the rendered version to Outlook Drafts (via CreateDraftMessage or CreateReplyDraft) with state: draft_pending_approval and a hold_reason: needs personalization so the Composer (or a human) can handle it.

In v1, the human still clicks Send for every templated step. Auto-send is a future flag.

Template format

Each file in templates/ describes one complete cadence (a series of steps under a single campaign), not a single step. The frontmatter identifies the cadence and enumerates its steps:

---
id: outbound-email-v1            # stable cadence ID — referenced by
                                  # prospect frontmatter as
                                  # cadence_template_id
campaign: outbound-email-v1      # campaign tag (usually equals id)
description: Default outbound cadence for cold prospects.
steps:
  - id: outbound-email-v1-step-2 # stable per-step ID
    days_after_previous: 3
    channel: email
  - id: outbound-email-v1-step-3
    days_after_previous: 4
    channel: email
  - id: outbound-email-v1-step-4
    days_after_previous: 7
    channel: email
variables:                       # variables any step in this cadence
  - first_name                   # may reference
  - hook_summary
---

Below the frontmatter, the body has one ## Step N section per step in steps, containing the templated copy for that step. Variables are referenced as {first_name} etc. Cadence fills variables from the prospect's MD file frontmatter and dossier sections.

When a prospect's frontmatter says cadence_template_id: outbound-email-v1, Cadence looks up templates/outbound-email-v1.md, finds the next step (per steps[] and the lead's touch_count), and renders the corresponding ## Step N body section.

Adding a new template

1. Create a new file under templates/ (e.g. outbound-email-v2.md).
2. Run the copy through the shared no-ai-slop skill (cowork/no-ai-slop/) in detect mode and fix anything it names. Templates are written once and reused across every lead on that cadence, so a slop pattern here ships hundreds of times. This is a design-time check on the template author, not a per-send step (Cadence never rewrites a template at send time).
3. The voice owner reviews; another rep reviews.
4. After review, the template ID is available for new campaigns. Existing in-flight leads keep using the template version they started on (immutable cadence — changing mid-stream changes the experiment).