# Follow Up Mails Out Of Office

> Find partner out-of-office replies, identify people who are back, and draft or send a natural follow-up. Use for link-building outreach or partnership emails when contacts are away, on PTO, traveling, or on leave.

- Skill: `khanhvo2172-dotcom/follow-up-mails-out-of-office` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add khanhvo2172-dotcom/follow-up-mails-out-of-office`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/khanhvo2172-dotcom/follow-up-mails-out-of-office/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: khanhvo2172-dotcom (https://skillmd.com/u/khanhvo2172-dotcom)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/khanhvo2172-dotcom/follow-up-mails-out-of-office

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# Follow-up mails for out-of-office replies

Use Gmail to handle out-of-office (OOO) replies to outreach or partner emails. The goal is to follow up once at an appropriate time without contacting people who are still away or duplicating a prior follow-up.

## Find and assess OOO replies

- Search unread inbox mail for relevant terms such as `"out of office"`, `OOO`, `PTO`, `vacation`, `traveling`, `away`, and `returning`.
- Read the full reply and its surrounding thread before deciding. Snippets may omit a return date, reason, or an existing reply.
- Ignore messages that are not OOO replies, even if they appear in the same search.
- Deduplicate by person, not by Gmail thread. A partner may have several auto-replies from repeated outreach. Send at most one new follow-up per partner unless the user explicitly asks for one per thread.

Classify each partner:

- **Eligible:** their stated return date has passed.
- **Needs direction:** their OOO has no return date. Report them separately; draft or send only if the user explicitly includes them after review.
- **Do not contact yet:** a future return date, parental leave, or another clearly ongoing absence.

Before drafting, search the partner's recent mail to see whether a follow-up was already sent. Do not create another one if it has.

## Write the follow-up

Use the partner's first name and adapt the opening to the stated reason:

```text
Hi [First name],

Hope [your vacation / your time away / the conference or offsite] went well.

Just following up on my previous email. How do you feel about it?

Best,
Khanh
```

### Writing tone (required)

- Keep the note conversational, brief, and human. Avoid stiff or generic phrasing.
- Never use an em dash () anywhere in the email. Use a period or comma instead.
- Before saving or sending, scan the subject and body for  and rewrite any sentence that contains one.
- For personal reasons, use a neutral line such as "Hope everything is going well."
- Preserve the existing conversation subject and reply context.

## Draft, send, and clean up

- Create a draft unless the user explicitly asks to send. Before sending, verify the draft's recipient, subject, and body; send only with the user's confirmation.
- When the user explicitly asks to send, send the confirmed draft in the existing thread.
- Mark OOO emails as read only when the user asks. Once a follow-up has been sent, mark all matching OOO duplicates for that partner as read. Do not mark messages read for people who are still away and have not received a follow-up.
- Report the partners contacted, those skipped with their return dates, and any partners needing a decision. Do not expose raw Gmail identifiers.