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Installing a skill

Two files, one command. The .zip is packaged as a Claude Agent Skill so Claude loads it automatically; the .md is the same content as a single self-contained file for everything else.

Haven't got it yet? Download the Outreach Skill — free, no email required. Or read what a skill actually is first.

Claude Code

.zip

Unzip into the skills folder and restart. Claude reads the description in SKILL.md and loads the skill on its own whenever a task involves outreach — you never invoke it by name.

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
unzip ~/Downloads/outreach-skill.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

Per-project instead of global: use .claude/skills/ inside the repo. Handy when only one project does outreach.

Claude web and desktop

.zip

Settings → Capabilities → Skills → upload the .zip. It then applies across your chats. Alternatively attach the files to a single Project’s knowledge, which scopes it to that Project.

If Skills is not in your settings, the upload route is not enabled on your plan yet — attach the .md to a Project instead, which works on every plan.

ChatGPT

.md

Three routes, in descending order of how well they hold: add the file under Knowledge in a Custom GPT; drop it into a Project’s files; or paste it into a chat ahead of your question.

Pasting works but does not persist — the next conversation starts without it. For anything ongoing, use a Custom GPT or a Project.

Cursor

.md

Save it as a rules file so it applies to the workspace. Cursor reads project rules on every request, so once it is in place there is nothing to remember.

mkdir -p .cursor/rules
cp ~/Downloads/outreach-skill.md .cursor/rules/outreach.md

Gemini, and anything else

.md

Add it as a knowledge file to a Gem, or attach it wherever the tool accepts documents. It is plain markdown with no frontmatter dependencies and no links out, so nothing breaks when it is read somewhere we have not tested.

Checking it actually loaded

The failure mode with skills is silence: nothing errors, the model simply answers from its own general knowledge and you cannot tell the difference from a good day. So test with a question whose answer is specific enough to be a fingerprint:

"How long should a cold email be, and should the CTA have a link in it?"

With the skill loaded you get 50–125 words, one ask, and no link, along with the reason the link is excluded — a real campaign that measured 31% opens, 15% clicks and a 0.3% reply rate, because the link was easier than the reply and so won every time. Without it you get something general about brevity and a suggestion to include a calendar link.

Two things that go wrong

The folder is right but nothing happens

Claude Code reads the skills directory at startup. If you unzipped while it was running, restart it. Check the layout is ~/.claude/skills/outreach/SKILL.md and not ~/.claude/skills/outreach-skill/outreach/SKILL.md — an extra wrapping directory from a double-unzip is the usual cause, and it fails quietly because there is no file where one is expected.

It worked yesterday and not today

In ChatGPT, almost always because the content was pasted into a chat rather than attached to a Custom GPT or Project — a pasted file lives exactly as long as that conversation. Attach it once instead.

Then what

Installing it is the easy half. The prompts worth asking covers what to actually do with it — including the one question that tells you in a single answer whether outbound is viable for your deal size at all.

What running this yourself actually takes

The method is the part people expect to be hard, and it is the part you now have for nothing. The work is everything around it — and almost all of it is a fixed cost you pay whether you send 200 emails a month or 2,000.

What	To stand it up	Then, forever
Sending domains	Buy a separate domain, never the one carrying your real mail	Replace any that burn
Authentication	SPF, DKIM and DMARC, correct on every sending domain	Re-check after any DNS change
Inbox warm-up	Three to four weeks of ramping before a single real send	Re-warm anything that sat idle
Lists	Source the companies, find the people, verify the addresses	Rebuilt continuously — lists decay about 2% a month
Suppression	One list that holds across email, SMS and calling	Every opt-out, every channel, immediately
Placement monitoring	Seed accounts, so you find out before the replies stop	Weekly, and after every copy change
Calling or SMS	A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration, numbers, a dialler	DNC scrubbing, calling windows, spam-flag rotation
Writing and sending	The method — which you now have in full	20–40 hours a month at any real volume

Below a few thousand sends a month that overhead is the job. And the failure mode is almost never a bad email — it is three good weeks followed by five silent ones, because sequences only produce anything when they actually run, and outbound is the task that slips first when a busy week arrives.

Run it yourself when you have 5–10 hours a week that are genuinely free every week, you are willing to spend the first month warming a domain before a single real send, and somebody will still be triaging replies in month four when it has stopped being novel. Plenty of people meet that. It is completely learnable and nothing is held back.

Hand it off when those hours are worth more spent elsewhere. For most owners of a working service business they are: 20–40 hours a month is $1,500–3,000 of your own time, and the same hours put into delivery or sales calls usually return more than they cost.

Or we run the whole thing

The Outreach Platform sources the leads in your niche, writes and sends the email, SMS, voice and social outreach, owns the deliverability, and forwards replies straight to your inbox. There is no dashboard you have to operate — and because it exposes an MCP server, the same assistant you just installed the skill into can run the account from the conversation you are already in.

Plan	What runs	Month
Free	10 leads and a written pitch for one — nothing sent	$0
Email	Sourcing, writing, sending, deliverability	$29
+ Calling	Adds voice, registration and DNC handling	$59
Full volume	Every channel at full send	$99

Set $29 against $1,500–3,000 of your own time and the comparison is the whole argument — run it with your own hourly rate and see where it lands. No contract. And the free tier means you can see the output on your own market before deciding anything.

See my 10 leads free Compare the plans

No credit card for the free tier · Nothing sends until you say so