agentsclimarketplace

Recipient research

Skill kalyvask/winning-writing/skills/recipient-research

Agentic writting toolkit built from Glenn Kramon's Winning Writing at Stanford GSB and Rachel Konrad's cold-outreach guest lectures. 31 Claude skills, a browser Coach with span-level inline critic and refinement chat, plus a Chrome MV3 extension that runs the same critic in the Gmail side panel.

Install
npx -y skills add kalyvask/winning-writing --skill recipient-research

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

  • 9 stars9 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Builds a research dossier on a cold-outreach target before drafting. Pulls LinkedIn, podcasts, blog posts, news, portfolio (if VC), and any specific personal details that would let an email feel hand-written rather than templated. Use when the user says "I want to email X" or "research Y before I write to them" or "build a dossier on Z." Triggers on "research," "dossier," "before I email," "background on," "find out about."

SKILL.md

4.7 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Recipient research

Source: points/cold-email-rules.md (rule 1 — know something about the person and exploit it).

Why this exists

Konrad's first rule of cold outreach: research is non-negotiable. People drop personal details in 20-minute podcast interviews. Recent blog posts. Portfolio company pages. Conference talks. The specificity is what separates a real email from a template.

You have 15 seconds when the recipient opens your email. Three concrete personal details earn those 15 seconds. A LinkedIn summary doesn't.

What to find

For every cold-email target, build a dossier with these sections:

1. Public role and trajectory

  • Current title and company
  • Last 2–3 roles and how long they stayed (signals: founder vs. operator, builder vs. acquirer)
  • The pivot points — what made them leave each role, what made them join the next
  • Anything they've publicly said about why they're at the current job

2. Public writing and speaking

  • Substack, Medium, personal blog, company blog
  • Podcasts they've appeared on (especially long-form — 60+ minutes)
  • Conference talks on YouTube
  • Twitter/X — pinned tweets, recent threads
  • LinkedIn posts (ignore the corporate ones; surface the personal ones)
  • Books they've recommended or written

3. Distinctive personal details

This is the gold. Pull anything that is:

  • A specific anecdote they've told publicly (the year, the place, the name)
  • An unusual hobby (Ironman, jiu-jitsu, beekeeping, jazz piano)
  • A geographic origin or move (immigrated from X, grew up in Y)
  • A formative experience (military service, an early failure, a mentor)
  • A strong opinion (especially one that's contrarian or unexpected)
  • A specific number they've cited about their work

4. Their current focus / what they're hunting for

  • If a VC: their portfolio, their public thesis, what they've said they want to fund
  • If a CEO: hiring posts, their company's strategic moves, recent product launches
  • If a hiring manager: open roles on their team, public posts about culture or hiring bar
  • If a journalist: their last 5 stories, what they're sourcing for next

5. Mutual contacts and "wing-people"

  • LinkedIn 2nd-degree connections — flag the ones you've actually engaged with
  • Anyone in the user's network who has worked with the target
  • Anyone who's interviewed them, written about them, or been quoted alongside them

6. Recent news (Google News non-negotiable)

  • Last 30 days of their name in the press
  • Last 90 days of their company in the press
  • Anything they've publicly reacted to on social

What to skip

  • Generic résumé items (the LinkedIn header is in their LinkedIn header — don't repeat it back to them)
  • Anything that would make them think "yeah, I know"
  • Anything that requires a paid Rocket Reach / Apollo lookup unless the user explicitly authorizes it

Output format

# Dossier: <Name>

## Headline
<One-sentence positioning — what's interesting and current about this person>

## Trajectory
<2–3 bullet career arc, signaling read>

## Three things they've said publicly
1. <Specific quote or anecdote, with source link>
2. <…>
3. <…>

## What they seem to want right now
<Read of their current focus, with citation>

## Hooks for "like you" lines
- <Specific, genuine, NOT generic>
- <…>

## Mutual contacts
- <Name — the user's actual relationship to them>

## Recent news (last 30 days)
- <Date · headline · why it matters>

## Three subject-line candidates
- "<Personal, timely, unusual>"
- "<…>"
- "<…>"

## Flags / risks
- <Anything potentially sensitive — recent firing, public controversy, job change in flight>

How to use

  1. User gives you a target name + (optional) company + (optional) link to LinkedIn or website.
  2. Run the WebSearch and WebFetch tools to pull from the sources listed above.
  3. Build the dossier. Cite every claim with a link.
  4. If you find a thin profile (very limited public footprint), say so explicitly — don't pad. Recommend asking for a warm intro instead.
  5. Hand the dossier to cold-email-coach (or use it directly to draft).

Companion skills

  • connection-finder — turns the dossier into specific "like you" hooks
  • fun-angle — finds the humor / unusual detail you can lead with
  • cold-email-coach — drafts the email

Keep looking

Skills are one crate of 328,083. Ordering is by how many stacks a row turns up in, so the top of any crate is what has actually been picked rather than what has the most stars.