pre-ingest-email

name

pre-ingest-email

description

Workflow for generating and sending DPLA monthly pre-ingest emails to hub partners via AWS SES. Use this skill whenever someone asks to: send the monthly ingest email, prepare the DPLA pre-ingest notice, generate the hub email for a given month, preview the pre-ingest email, or do anything involving the pre-ingest email pipeline. Trigger even if the user just says something like "time to send the ingest email" or "it's email day" — context from the project makes the intent clear.

DPLA Pre-Ingest Email Skill

This skill walks through the full pipeline: gathering hub data from i3.conf, generating a structured .txt draft, previewing the rendered HTML, and sending via AWS SES. Everything lives in pre-emails/ inside the Claude Scripts folder.

---

File layout

pre-emails/
├── get_info.py          — generates the .txt draft from i3.conf
├── send_email.py        — renders HTML + sends via SES (or dry-runs)
├── txt_emails/          — generated .txt files land here
├── images/              — downloaded cover images land here
└── standard_images/
    └── image.png        — DPLA logo (embedded in every email)

i3.conf lives separately at ~/Documents/Repos/ingestion3-conf/i3.conf (or wherever INGESTION3_CONF_REPO points in the .env file).

---

Workflow — step by step

1. Confirm the details with the user

Before running anything, check you have:

Info	How to get it
Month & year	Ask if not mentioned — default to current month
Cover image URL	Optional — a representative image from one of the hub collections. If the user has one, grab it; if not, skip it.
Custom intro text	Optional — the default intro is fine for most months.
Custom subject line	Optional — default is DPLA Ingests for <Month> <Year>.

If all you know is "send the May email", that's enough to proceed with defaults.

2. Generate the .txt draft

Run get_info.py from the pre-emails/ directory:

cd "/path/to/pre-emails"
python3 get_info.py --month <M> --year <YYYY>

With optional flags:

python3 get_info.py \
  --month 5 --year 2026 \
  --image-url "https://example.com/cover.jpg" \
  --image-caption "Harvest Time, Illinois Digital Heritage Hub" \
  --subject "DPLA Ingests for May 2026"   # only if overriding

get_info.py will:

• Read i3.conf to find hubs scheduled for that month
• Calculate the last full work week of the month (the ingest week)
• Download the cover image (if a URL was given) to images/
• Write a .txt file to txt_emails/pre-ingest-<YYYY>-<MM>_<timestamp>.txt

Tell the user the output filename and the ingest week it calculated, so they can confirm it looks right before proceeding.

3. Preview the email (dry-run)

Show the user what the email will look like before sending:

python3 send_email.py --dry-run

This prints the raw HTML to stdout. You don't need to show all of it — just confirm the key parts look right: subject line, hub list, ingest week date, cover image (if any). If the user spots anything wrong, re-run get_info.py with corrected flags rather than editing the .txt file by hand.

4. Send the email

Once the user confirms everything looks good:

python3 send_email.py

TEST_MODE (default True in send_email.py):

• Sends only to [e-mail]
• Safe to run at any time
• Tell the user to check their inbox and confirm it looks right

Production send (TEST_MODE = False):

• Sends To: [e-mail], BCC: all hub contact emails from i3.conf
• Only flip this when Zoe explicitly says "send for real" or "production send"
• The toggle is on line 29 of send_email.py: TEST_MODE = True/False

Always confirm with the user before flipping to production.

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Useful flags reference

get_info.py

Flag	Default	Notes
--month	current month	1–12
--year	current year
--subject	DPLA Ingests for <Month> <Year>
--intro	standard harvest intro	multi-sentence string
--image-url	(none)	downloads to images/
--image-caption	(none)	credit line shown under cover image
--dry-run	off	prints to stdout, no file written
--i3-conf	from .env or ~/Documents/Repos/ingestion3-conf/i3.conf

send_email.py

Flag	Default	Notes
--dry-run	off	renders HTML to stdout, no send
--file	latest .txt in txt_emails/	specify a filename to use a different one
--aws-profile	dpla	AWS credentials profile
--i3-conf	from .env	used for BCC list in production mode

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Troubleshooting

AccessDenied on send: The [user] IAM user needs ses:SendRawEmail on arn:aws:ses:us-east-1:283408157088:identity/dp.la. This is an IAM permission — ask Dominic to add it if it's missing.

Logo not found: standard_images/image.png must exist. It's the DPLA logo. If it's missing, the email still sends but without the logo image.

Wrong ingest week: get_info.py calculates the last full Monday–Friday of the month. If the auto-detected week looks wrong, pass a corrected --intro with the right date or let the user know they may need to adjust.

i3.conf not found: Set INGESTION3_CONF_REPO in the .env file at the root of the Claude Scripts folder, or pass --i3-conf /path/to/i3.conf directly.

No hubs listed: The hub may be on hold (schedule.status = "on-hold" in i3.conf) or not scheduled for that month. Check i3.conf directly if a hub seems missing.