// Operational playbook for running cold email continuously. Prescribes what to do on Monday / Wednesday / Friday / biweekly / monthly / quarterly. Use this as your ongoing cadence once your first campaign is live. What separates hobbyist from top 1% operators isn't tooling — it's consistency. This skill is the schedule.
| name | cold-email-weekly-rhythm |
| description | Operational playbook for running cold email continuously. Prescribes what to do on Monday / Wednesday / Friday / biweekly / monthly / quarterly. Use this as your ongoing cadence once your first campaign is live. What separates hobbyist from top 1% operators isn't tooling — it's consistency. This skill is the schedule. |
Having 29 cold email skills doesn't help if you don't run them on a schedule. This is that schedule.
This is a pure playbook. No scripts, no automatic reminders. You put the rhythm on your own calendar (Step 1 below) and run the prescribed skill at the prescribed time. That's the entire system.
Open Google Calendar / Outlook / Apple Reminders / whatever you actually look at every day. Create these as recurring events. Copy the titles and cadences exactly.
| Event title | Cadence |
|---|---|
| Cold email: Monday deliverability audit | Every Monday, 9:00 am |
| Cold email: Wednesday positive-reply sweep | Every Wednesday, 10:00 am |
| Cold email: Friday campaign retrospectives | Every Friday, 3:00 pm |
| Cold email: Inbox rotation | Every other Monday, 11:00 am |
| Cold email: Monthly spam placement test | 1st of each month, 10:00 am |
| Cold email: Quarterly experiment review | First Monday of each quarter, 1:00 pm |
Do not skip Step 1. The difference between hobbyist and top-1% cold email operators is that the top-1% operators actually run these tasks on their declared cadence, week after week. Your calendar is the accountability system. This skill doesn't have a built-in reminder — intentionally — because if it did and it broke, your ops would silently fail.
Run:
/email-deliverability-audit --days=7
(If using the scoped version: audit-performance.ts --campaign-ids=<active campaign ids> --days=7)
Review:
flag_low_reply = TRUE)flag_high_bounce = TRUE)Action:
/deliverability-incident-response → triage decision treeRun:
/positive-reply-scoring # on all campaigns active in the last 7 days
Review:
positive_interested or positive_soft replies — these are leads wanting to engagepositive_referral replies — these are people saying "talk to Jane instead"negative_hostile replies — red flag, investigateAction:
positive_interested reply within 30 seconds of seeing it. Do not batch these — a reply feeling like it took minutes to return converts 3× better than one that took hours.Time management: if you have >50 positive replies per week, you're at the scale where you should hand off to a dedicated closer/AE. Do that handoff Wednesday morning so they can work replies by Wednesday afternoon.
Identify campaigns hitting their 21-day mark this week. (21 days is the minimum for reply-rate signal to stabilize.)
For each one:
Run /positive-reply-scoring --campaign-id=<id>
Compare to previous campaigns' positive reply rate baselines
Decide:
/experiment-design Monday to plan the next variantLog the result in profiles/<slug>/experiments/<YYYY-MM-DD>-<campaign>.json:
positive_reply_rate, reply_rate, bounce_rateCritical: do not skip the log. Over a quarter, these logs become the input for /experiment-design quarterly reviews. Without the history, you can't learn across campaigns.
Run:
# Within /smartlead-inbox-manager skill:
npx tsx scripts/list-health.ts --all --out=health-$(date +%Y-%m-%d).csv
Review the CSV:
is_warmup_blocked: true?Action:
# Retire failing inboxes
npx tsx scripts/tag-inboxes.ts --ids=X,Y,Z --add-tag=retired --remove-tag=active
npx tsx scripts/set-warmup.ts --mode=disable --ids=X,Y,Z
# Promote insurance inboxes to active
npx tsx scripts/tag-inboxes.ts --ids=A,B,C --add-tag=active --remove-tag=insurance
npx tsx scripts/set-warmup.ts --mode=disable --ids=A,B,C
If insurance pool is getting thin (<5 inboxes available to rotate in): kick off a new domain purchase cycle via /zapmail-domain-setup-public. It takes ~2 weeks from purchase to sendable, so you need to start early.
Run: the Smart Delivery spam placement test from /email-deliverability-audit:
npx tsx scripts/run-spam-test.ts --campaign-id=<highest volume active campaign> --senders=100
(Will use G Suite + Office365 provider pools. 100 senders is a sweet spot — large enough for statistical signal, small enough to avoid API stalls.)
Review:
Action:
/deliverability-incident-response, fix before sending more.Read all experiments/*.json from the last quarter. Identify patterns:
Output: a 1-page Q retrospective saved to profiles/<slug>/retrospectives/<YYYY>-Q<N>.md with:
client-profile.yaml if the data suggests a different segment performs betterUse the retrospective as input to design next quarter's experiments via /experiment-design.
You do NOT need to:
Daily pokes at your cold email stack are a procrastination pattern, not a performance pattern.
This skill IS the loop. Your next action is the next calendar event on your list.
Or if you haven't run a campaign yet: skip this skill entirely. Come back after your first campaign hits the 7-day mark.
/email-deliverability-audit — the Monday and Monthly tasks/positive-reply-scoring — the Wednesday and Friday tasks/smartlead-inbox-manager — the biweekly inbox rotation/deliverability-incident-response — when the Monday audit flags something/experiment-design — the quarterly retrospective feeds into this/zapmail-domain-setup-public — when insurance pool runs lowComplete beginner-friendly cold email toolkit. Walks from zero to launched campaign — domain purchase, inbox setup, list building, copywriting, enrichment, and sending via Smartlead or Instantly. Use when setting up cold email for the first time, launching a new campaign, teaching someone cold email, or when you need an end-to-end guide that bundles strategy, copy, infrastructure, and API references in one place.
Programmatic inbox management for Smartlead. Enable/disable warmup with correct ramp settings, set signatures in bulk, tag inboxes (active vs insurance), and pull inbox health dashboards. Use after creating a new batch of inboxes via /zapmail-domain-setup-public, or when managing an existing Smartlead account at scale. Triggers on "turn on warmup", "set signatures", "tag inboxes", "inbox health", "set up new inboxes".
Autonomous cold email campaign launcher. Takes one target company domain, scrapes their website, generates an ICP with Claude, pulls matching leads via Prospeo, enriches emails + company descriptions, personalizes each lead with parallel Claude Code Task sub-agents (A/B/C variants), and uploads as a live Smartlead campaign. Uses local JSON files for state (no database required). Use for automated daily campaign launches after you have an initial `client-profile.yaml` from /icp-onboarding. Triggers on "auto-research", "launch an automated campaign", "daily campaign", "run the research loop".
Use the Blitz API to find decision-makers at specific companies when you already have a list of company domains. Best for SMB owner-finding, domain-to-people lookup, or supplementing Prospeo results. Outputs a CSV you can feed to the email-waterfall or directly to /cold-email-starter-kit for Smartlead upload. Use when your targeting is company-first (not title-first).
Creates cold email copy through a stepwise confirmation process. Use when writing email campaigns, given a campaign strategy document, website, or client context. Confirms direction at each step before outputting final copy.
Generates 15-25+ cold outbound campaign ideas with targeting strategies, AI personalization approaches, and value propositions. Use when planning campaign experiments for a client, given their website or business context.