agentsclimarketplace

Cold email

Skill protosphinx/sphinxstack/skills/cold-email

A stack of skills for your AI agent, made for people starting from zero. 103 skills and 149 project briefs — load one into Codex, Claude Code, Copilot, Gemini, or Cursor and do the thing.

Install
npx -y skills add protosphinx/sphinxstack --skill cold-email

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

2 things to look at

  • 18 days oldThe repository was created 18 days ago. New is not bad, but a brand new repository carrying a familiar-sounding name is the shape a typosquat arrives in, and there has been no time for anyone else to find a problem with it.
  • 0 stars0 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

Write one short honest email to a stranger, and send it. Use when they say "how do I email this person", "help me reach out to", or are stuck on a message to someone they don't know.

SKILL.md

3.3 KB, 751 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

cold-email

Help someone email a stranger they want something from. The email that works is short, specific, honest about who they are, and easy to say yes to. They write it; you research with them, ask the questions that sharpen the ask, and react to drafts. It gets reviewed and sent from their own account during the session.

Before writing: research and the ask

  • Who exactly, and why them? Have them find something real the person made or said — a post, a talk, a project, a decision — and read it. Not for flattery ammunition: to check this is actually the right person to ask.
  • What is the ask, in one sentence? "Can I pick your brain" is not an ask. "Would you look at my 2-minute demo and tell me if the pricing page makes sense" is. Small, concrete, answerable in under five minutes of the recipient's time.
  • What do they honestly bring? Usually: they are young, they built or did a specific thing, and they did their homework. That is enough. Never let them inflate it.

The email

Have them draft it, then workshop line by line. Shape that works:

  1. One line on why this person specifically — referencing the real thing they read, in their own words. If it could be pasted into an email to anyone, it fails.
  2. One or two lines on who they are and what they made. Facts with links, no adjectives: "I'm a student, I built X, it's live at Y."
  3. The ask, unmissable and small.
  4. Sign-off with their real name. No "I know you're busy" apology paragraph — it adds length, not politeness.

Under 120 words. Subject line states the content plainly: "Question about your X post from a student who built Y" beats anything cute. No attachment on a first email; links only.

Then the honesty check: is every sentence true, and would they say it to this person's face? Anything that reads like a template — "I hope this email finds you well", "I'm a huge fan of your work" — gets rewritten as what they actually mean or cut.

Send it

  • From a sensible address (firstname.lastname beats xX_gamer_Xx; set one up now if needed — five minutes).
  • Find the real address: personal site, GitHub profile, "contact" page. Use public professional contact details only. Do not use paid lookup tools or collect personal addresses.
  • They press send while you are still in the session. This is the step people dodge. Do not let them "polish it tomorrow."

After

  • No reply in a week: one follow-up, two lines, no guilt-tripping. Then let it go — silence is a normal outcome, not a verdict.
  • A reply, even a no, is a win: answer it fast and politely, and say thanks either way.
  • Save the final email as their template skeleton — structure, not wording. Every future one gets rewritten fresh for the person.

Done

  • One specific, truthful message reviewed and sent from their own account
  • Public professional contact source and one follow-up date recorded
  • No exact age, private contact data, account credential, or unnecessary attachment disclosed

If this is about a job or internship, the cold-outreach-for-work skill covers that variant.

What ships with it: 1 file

197 B alongside SKILL.md

agents/

Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most sales crm skills give in 751 tokens

Counted across 361 of the 361 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-08-07

  • Read product marketing context before writing if it existsin 22 of 361, across 15 files
  • Keep the ask low-frictionin 16 of 361, across 7 files
  • Call RUBE_SEARCH_TOOLS firstin 15 of 361, across 5 files
  • Use a single, low-friction call to actionin 14 of 361, across 6 files
  • Personalize every outbound messagein 13 of 361, across 4 files
  • Confirm connection status is activein 13 of 361, across 4 files
  • Keep forwardable blurbs under 100 wordsin 13 of 361, across 4 files
  • Cut any sentence that does not drive a replyin 13 of 361, across 4 files
  • State if personalization context is missingin 13 of 361, across 4 files
  • Calibrate tone to the specific audiencein 12 of 361, across 3 files
  • Make each follow-up email add new valuein 12 of 361, across 6 files
  • Use proof instead of adjectivesin 12 of 361, across 3 files

Said here and by no other author read

  • make the subject line plain
  • make the ask small and concrete
  • send from a sensible address
  • use public professional contact details only
  • press send during the session
  • send one short follow-up after a week

Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once. Length counted with cl100k_base; the agent that loads this file may tokenize it differently.

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.