connection-finder

connection-finder is a skill for Claude Code from kalyvask/winning-writing. It costs 92 tokens per session (1,346 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A tool that finds specific shared experiences between a writer and a person receiving a cold message. It compares the recipient's background with the writer's profile and ranks possible personal connections.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it after researching a recipient and before writing a cold email, when you need a credible shared connection or “like you” opening.
Why use it?
Generic statements about having similar interests sound like they could be sent to anyone. A genuine shared detail can make an outreach message feel relevant and personal.

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 Use it after researching a recipient and before writing a cold email, when you need a credible shared connection or “like you” opening.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/connection-finder
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 connection-finder
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 connection-finder

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/connection-finder/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/connection-finder)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/connection-finder"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/connection-finder/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 connection-finder

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/connection-finder"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/connection-finder.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 92 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,346 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00092 $0.01346
Opus 5 $0.00046 $0.00673
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00269
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00135

Measured 11d ago against content hash bd95f004dd2f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

connection-finder 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 11d 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/connection-finder/SKILL.md · 110 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 110 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Connection finder

Source: points/cold-email-rules.md rule 5 — "Compare yourself to the recipient — the 'like you' move."

Why this exists

Rachel Konrad's rule 5 is the most-failed rule in the playbook. Most "like you" lines are either:

  • Generic"Like you, I believe AI will transform the future." (Everyone believes that. Cut.)
  • Self-diminishing"Like you, but at a vastly smaller scale." (They already know that. Cut.)
  • Boastful"Like you, I'm super smart and super successful." (Backfires. Cut.)

What works: specific, genuine, slightly unexpected. A "like you" line should reference a sensory detail from your shared origin that cannot be sent to anyone else — a specific cuisine you both grew up with, a specific city you both lived in for a specific year, a specific job you both did before the one you're emailing about. That's the whole point.

What you need

This skill takes two inputs:

  1. Recipient dossier (from recipient-research)
  2. Writer's profile (context/about-me.md or equivalent)

If either is missing, run recipient-research first or ask the user to point you at their about-me file.

What to look for

Cross-reference the two profiles for overlap in these eight categories. The further down the list, the higher the leverage.

1. Career parallel (medium — common)

Worked at the same company, in the same industry, in similar roles. Use only if there's a specific overlap — same product, same team, same era.

2. Educational parallel (low — overused)

Same school. Useful only with a specific shared experience (same professor, same class, same dorm). "Stanford MBA" alone is too generic.

3. Geographic / origin parallel (medium — strong if specific)

Same hometown. Same immigration story. Lived in the same unusual place. Visited the same specific spot.

4. Formative experience parallel (high)

Both military veterans. Both first-generation immigrants. Both built something from zero. Both worked a manual-labor job before a desk job. Specific date or place beats abstract category.

Read the full file on GitHub · 110 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. 11d ago First seen · 110 lines · 92 tokens per session scan A bd95f004dd2f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

connection-finder is a skill published in the GitHub repository kalyvask/winning-writing (13 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 92 tokens to every session and 1,346 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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