Cold Outbound Skills

Open-source Claude Code skills for cold email infrastructure, lead sourcing, copywriting, and operations. Built by GrowthEngineX from patterns across 1,000+ real B2B campaigns.

31 skills that work together. Clone the repo, bring your API keys, point Claude Code at it, go from zero to a running campaign.

New here? Invoke /cold-email-kickoff — it's the guided entry point that orchestrates ICP + lead magnet + strategy + plan in one flow.

What's in here

32 skills organized in 5 tracks, plus 19 signal playbooks in Track 6 — each shipping three ways (a Claude skill, a Clay table build, and a Clay CLI workflow).

New to cold email? Start with /cold-email-kickoff. It orchestrates ICP → lead magnet → campaign strategy → plan in one guided flow.

Track 1 — Strategy (before you send anything)

• cold-email-kickoff — single "start here" orchestrator (recommended entry point)
• icp-onboarding — conversational intake that produces a client-profile.yaml (scrapes website first)
• lead-magnet-brainstorm — figure out what to offer for free in your cold emails
• campaign-strategy — generates 15-25 campaign ideas with AI strategies + value props
• campaign-copywriting — stepwise copy writer (direction → subject → body → final YAML)

Track 2 — Infrastructure

• zapmail-domain-setup-public — buy .com/.co domains on Dynadot, provision inboxes on Zapmail
• smartlead-inbox-manager — warmup settings, signatures (name/title/company/address), active/insurance tagging
• email-deliverability-audit — diagnostic tool (SPF/DKIM/DMARC, spam placement, the 1% rule)
• deliverability-incident-response — triage playbook for spam, bounces, blacklists, warmup blocks
• inbox-lifecycle-manager — the weekly keep/cancel/promote/buy loop: which domains are burned, what replaces them, how many to buy

Track 3 — List Building

• list-builder — the meta skill for any list request: one-command lanes that sweep every source, AI-qualify every company, snowball until the market is dry, then pull uncapped contacts and find emails
• perfect-company-list — the SCULPT 2026 method: learn the industries your customers actually use, pull all of them, judge every row with a cheap model (Jev), then a Claygent lookalike loop until it runs dry. Includes real coverage numbers against the FDIC, SEC and NJ school registries
• list-expander — turn ~10 known-good seed companies into a full qualified TAM (fingerprint → lookalikes → mined filters → wide pull → AI qualification → live-site verify)
• prospeo-full-export — title-first lead search (paginated, 25K+)
• prospeo-search-api — Prospeo filter reference
• blitz-list-builder — domain-first contact discovery
• google-maps-list-builder — scrape Google Maps for local SMB lists
• disco-like — lookalike company discovery (seed domains or NL ICP text)
• competitor-engagers — find people engaging with competitor LinkedIn posts
• icp-prompt-builder — required qualification step invoked by every list-building skill
• list-quality-scorecard — grade a lead CSV across 8 dimensions before uploading

Common Outbound Lists (bundled CSVs)

Ready-to-filter company dumps in Common Outbound Lists/. These are companies, not people — feed them to /list-builder as extra_candidates, then run /icp-prompt-builder before contact pull.

Track 4 — Copy & Send

• cold-email-starter-kit — the 14-step end-to-end tutorial (alternative to /cold-email-kickoff)
• spam-word-checker — scan copy for deliverability-killing phrases
• smartlead-spintax — add spintax variations to emails
• smartlead-api — Smartlead API reference
• smartlead-campaign-upload-public — DRAFT-upload leads.csv + variants.yaml to Smartlead (always DRAFT, you hit Start manually)

Track 5 — Iterate & Automate

• positive-reply-scoring — the metric that matters (positive replies / total sent)
• experiment-design — single-variable experiment framework
• auto-research-public — autonomous campaign launcher (scrape → ICP → leads → personalize → upload)
• personalization-subagent-pattern — reusable pattern for per-lead Claude sub-agent personalization
• deliverability-test-public — compare reply/bounce by inbox type
• cold-email-weekly-rhythm — Monday/Wednesday/Friday operational playbook — what separates hobbyist from top-1%

Track 6 — Signal Playbooks

Nineteen playbooks, each turning one buying signal into one copy-ready sentence. They live together in skills/playbooks/ — start at clay-playbooks for the index and the two build harnesses.

Every playbook ships the same three files:

Tables are browser-driven and workflows are CLI-driven because of a real constraint: the clay CLI is read-only for tables, but can create, edit and publish workflows.

• Person signals — new-in-role · linkedin-engagement · social-posts · warm-intros
• Company signals — fundraising · hiring-surge · job-posting-language · ad-library
• Website signals — pricing-page · case-study-page · tech-on-website · google-site-search
• List shaping — company-name-cleaning · first-name-cleaning · social-link-finding · lookalikes · name-to-other-prospects
• Copy generation — ai-specificity · creative-ideas

⚠️ Each SKILL.md carries a verification line saying what was actually run and on how many rows. The clay-table.md and clay-workflow.md files are documented recipes that have not been built and run in a live Clay workspace — written against the real Clay action catalog and CLI surface, but treat them as specifications: build one, run 5 rows, read the output, fix the file.

Getting started

1. Install Claude Code

This repo is designed for Claude Code. Install from https://claude.com/claude-code.

2. Clone and configure

git clone  ~/cold-email-ai-skills
cd ~/cold-email-ai-skills
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your API keys (you don't need all of them — only the skills you'll use)

3. Install dependencies

npm install -g tsx
cd skills/cold-email-starter-kit
npm install

4. Verify credentials

npx tsx skills/cold-email-starter-kit/scripts/verify-credentials.ts

5. Start with the kickoff orchestrator

If you've never run cold email before, invoke the kickoff skill from Claude Code:

/cold-email-kickoff

It asks whether you have infrastructure already, then orchestrates ICP + lead magnet + campaign strategy + plan in a single guided flow. Produces a campaign-plan.md and hands you off to the right next skill based on your current state.

Alternative: /cold-email-starter-kit — the longer manual 14-step tutorial. Use this if you want to learn each piece deeply rather than move fast.

API keys required (bring your own)

The minimum viable setup for your first campaign is: Dynadot + Zapmail + Prospeo + Smartlead. Start there, add more as you need them.

Recommended path

If you've never run cold email:

1. /cold-email-kickoff — one guided flow: ICP → lead magnet → strategy → plan → next-skill menu
2. Follow the menu's recommended next skill (infra setup OR list building, depending on your current state)
3. After campaign launch, wait 21 days, then /positive-reply-scoring
4. Add /cold-email-weekly-rhythm to your calendar for ongoing ops

If you have experience but no automation:

1. /icp-onboarding — lock down your ICP
2. /smartlead-inbox-manager — configure your existing inboxes properly
3. /email-deliverability-audit — fix any domain/inbox issues before scaling
4. /auto-research-public — daily automated campaign launches

If you're debugging a broken campaign:

1. /email-deliverability-audit — find the infrastructure issue
2. /positive-reply-scoring — see if replies are positive or hostile
3. /deliverability-test-public — compare across inbox types
4. /spam-word-checker — scan copy for banned phrases
5. /inbox-lifecycle-manager — if a domain is confirmed burned, cancel and replace it safely

If your inbox bill is too high, or you're under your send goal:

1. /inbox-lifecycle-manager — the plan: what's burned, what to promote, what to buy (read-only)
2. /email-deliverability-audit — confirm why before cancelling anything
3. /smartlead-inbox-manager — execute the approved tag changes
4. /zapmail-domain-setup-public — buy the replacements (a month before you need the sends)

Directory layout

cold-email-ai-skills/
  README.md                    # this file
  .env.example                 # template for your API keys
  Common Outbound Lists/       # pre-built company CSVs (Shopify, Maps, SaaS)
  skills/
    /
      SKILL.md                 # the skill definition (required)
      scripts/                 # runnable code
      references/              # deeper docs
  profiles/                    # YOUR client profiles + experiment logs (gitignored)
    /
      client-profile.yaml
      experiments/
      scores/

Cost expectations

First campaign (2,000 leads, 20 domains, 40 inboxes):

• Domains: ~$240 one-time (20 × ~$12 .com). Fall back to .co (~$8-30) if .com is taken.
• Zapmail: ~$60/mo for 40 inboxes
• Prospeo: ~$20 for 2,000-lead export
• Smartlead: ~$39/mo starter plan
• MillionVerifier: ~$5 for 2,000 validations
• Month 1 total: ~$360. Recurring: ~$130/mo.

See skills/cold-email-starter-kit/references/00-getting-started.md for full breakdown.

A note on ethics

Cold email is legal when done right, but it's a privilege. Don't spam. Don't email consumers. Honor unsubscribes instantly. Include a real physical address. Be the kind of sender you'd want to receive email from.

The best cold emails are the ones the recipient is glad they got.

Contributing

This repo is a collection of patterns refined over thousands of real campaigns. Improvements welcome — PRs should include:

• Real-world test results (not theoretical changes)
• Generalizable insight (not hyper-specific to one industry)
• Keep beginner-friendliness as the north star

License

MIT — use it, fork it, profit from it. Attribution appreciated but not required.