cold-email-coach

cold-email-coach is a skill for Claude Code from kalyvask/winning-writing. It costs 106 tokens per session (927 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A writing coach for unsolicited messages, such as cold emails or LinkedIn direct messages. It helps shape a short message around the recipient, one useful idea, and a specific request.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for drafting or reviewing messages to investors, customers, hiring managers, or other people who do not already know you.
Why use it?
It reduces the chance that outreach reads like a long résumé or a vague request for help.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the winning-writing plugin — 32 skills shipped together

Good fit It is for drafting or reviewing messages to investors, customers, hiring managers, or other people who do not already know you.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/cold-email-coach
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add kalyvask/winning-writing --skill cold-email-coach
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kalyvask/winning-writing

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install winning-writing, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 32 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for cold-email-coach

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/cold-email-coach/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/cold-email-coach)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/cold-email-coach"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/cold-email-coach/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for cold-email-coach

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/cold-email-coach"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/cold-email-coach.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 106 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 927 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00106 $0.00927
Opus 5 $0.00053 $0.00464
Sonnet 5 $0.00021 $0.00185
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00093

Measured 12d ago against content hash 1c390848a666, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cold-email-coach scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 12d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/cold-email-coach/SKILL.md · 76 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 76 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Cold-email coach

Source: points/cold-email-rules.md and points/banned-jargon.md. Read those first.

What this skill does

Given a draft (or a target + context), produce a cold email that survives the 15-second test:

  1. Subject line that cannot be ignored
  2. First sentence that tells them something they don't know
  3. One specific story or "like you" hook
  4. Picks one lane — does not dump a resume
  5. Ends with a small, specific ask + an offer

The philosophy in one line

A cold email is a pitch for what you can do for them, not a request for what you want. "Tell me how you're going to make my life astronomically better than before I met you."

Mode 1 — Draft from scratch

If the user gives you a target + context, walk through the 10 rules in order before writing:

  1. What do you know about this person? (LinkedIn, podcasts, recent news — name 3 specific facts)
  2. What do they not know that you can tell them? (one-sentence thesis about their industry's future)
  3. Subject line options — three candidates, all personal/timely/unusual
  4. Mutual contacts — who can you name?
  5. "Like you" — one specific, genuine comparison
  6. Story — one scene with date, place, sensory detail
  7. The lane — one example of how you help them (not your whole resume)
  8. Confidence calibration — confident but not boastful
  9. The ask — small, specific, with door open for no, under 200 words total
  10. The offer — what are you giving them?

Then write. Always under 200 words.

Mode 2 — Critique an existing draft

Mark the draft against the pre-send checklist item by item. Quote the specific lines that fail and rewrite them.

Specific things to flag:

  • "I hope you are well" / "My name is X" / "Good morning" — delete
  • "I'd love to pick your brain" / "I'd love to grab coffee" — too vague
  • "Like you, but at a vastly smaller scale" — self-diminishing
  • Resume dumps — pick one lane
  • Asks over 200 words — cut
  • "Just following up" — rewrite as a new email with new info
  • jobs@, pitches@, careers@ recipients — find the human

Read the full file on GitHub · 76 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 12d ago First seen · 76 lines · 106 tokens per session scan A 1c390848a666

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cold-email-coach is a skill published in the GitHub repository kalyvask/winning-writing (14 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 106 tokens to every session and 927 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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