draft-emails

Imported from forwardimpact/monorepo (products/outpost/templates/.claude/skills/draft-emails/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add forwardimpact/monorepo --skill draft-emails. Copyright stays with the author.

Draft Emails

Write tier: 0-Draft Frontmatter: none

Draft and send email responses. Use the knowledge base and calendar for full context on every person and conversation. Every draft needs explicit user approval before you send it.

Trigger

The user asks to draft, reply to, respond to, or send an email.

Prerequisites

• Knowledge base populated (from extract-entities).
• Synced email data in ~/.cache/fit/outpost/apple_mail/.

Data locations

handled and ignored both exclude threads from scan-emails.mjs. Use handled for resolved threads (sent here, replied manually, resolved through a DM). Use ignored for threads that need no response (newsletters, spam, outbound with no reply). The ledgers are agent state, not knowledge. They live in the cache drafts/ directory, never in state/ (a daemon-owned trust root).

<do_confirm_checklist goal="Verify a draft is safe and ready before sending">

• You looked up the sender and the organization in 3-Team/ before you drafted.
• The draft is a single email (not multiple variants). It matches the incoming tone.
• The body has no sign-off, name, or "Best". The Apple Mail signature handles it.
• In a recruitment thread, the candidate is excluded from internal recipients. Any direct-to-candidate draft carries ⚠️ RECRUITER ONLY.
• The draft includes no sensitive personal data (health, politics, etc.).
• The user explicitly approved the draft before any send.
• Send used --draft <path> so cleanup and the handled ledger happen automatically.

</do_confirm_checklist>

Procedure

1. Scan for new emails

node scripts/scan-emails.mjs

The script outputs email_id<TAB>subject for unprocessed emails (those not in the handled or ignored ledger).

2. Classify

Ignore (append the ID to ~/.cache/fit/outpost/drafts/ignored): newsletters, marketing, automated notifications, spam, outbound with no reply.

Draft a response: meeting requests, personal mail from known contacts, business inquiries or follow-ups, requests for information or action.

Be conservative with ignore. When in doubt, draft.

3. Gather context

Before you draft, look up the sender and the organization in the graph:

rg -l "sender_name" [0-9]-*/
cat "3-Team/People/Sender Name.md"
cat "3-Team/Organizations/Company Name.md"

For an email that arranges a meeting time, also read the relevant calendar event:

ls ~/.cache/fit/outpost/apple_calendar/ 2>/dev/null
cat "$HOME/.cache/fit/outpost/apple_calendar/event123.json"

Extract role, organization, relationship history, and open items. If the intent is unclear or the person has multiple contexts, ask rather than guess.

4. Write the draft

Save to 0-Draft/{email_id}_draft.md with the template in references/template.md. Reference past interactions naturally. To arrange a meeting, propose specific times from the calendar availability.

5. Recruitment & staffing emails

You must never copy candidates on internal threads about them.

• Identify the candidate from the thread and 2-Confidential/Candidates/.
• Strip the candidate from To/CC. Draft to internal stakeholders only.
• Direct-to-candidate emails carry the warning header ⚠️ RECRUITER ONLY — This email goes directly to the candidate.

If a thread mentions a candidate and includes multiple internal recipients, treat it as internal. Exclude the candidate.

6. Present and approve

Show the draft to the user. Wait for explicit approval before you send. Apply edits. Present the draft again as needed.

7. Send

After the user approves, send the email through Apple Mail:

node scripts/send-email.mjs \
  --to "recipient@example.com" \
  --cc "other@example.com" \
  --subject "Re: Subject" \
  --body "Plain text body" \
  --draft "0-Draft/12345_draft.md"

Required: --to, --subject, --body (plain text). Optional: --cc, --bcc, --draft. With --draft, the script deletes the draft file. It also appends the email ID to the handled ledger automatically.

8. Mark handled and do not send

When other channels resolve a thread:

mkdir -p ~/.cache/fit/outpost/drafts
echo "$EMAIL_ID" >> ~/.cache/fit/outpost/drafts/handled
rm -f "0-Draft/${EMAIL_ID}_draft.md"