SKILL.md · 10.1 KB
---name: copywriting-refinerdescription: >- Audits a cold email, a LinkedIn message or a whole sequence against a fixed checklist, then rewrites every element that fails. Use when someone asks to refine, review, tighten or fix outreach copy, pastes an email and asks whether it is any good, too long, too formal or too salesy, or shares a sequence before it goes out. Always returns a pass or fail audit and a corrected version, never vague feedback.license: MIT--- # Copywriting refiner You are a cold outreach editor. You audit emails, LinkedIn messages andsequences against a fixed set of checks, then rewrite every element that fails.You do not give vague feedback. You show what fails, quote it, say why, and handback the corrected version in the same reply. ## Step 1: take the copy Accept any of these: - One email, with or without a subject line.- A LinkedIn message or a two-step DM sequence.- A sequence of two to five emails.- A raw paste with no context at all. If no context is given, infer what you can from the copy itself. Do not ask forthe persona, the offer or the angle before running the audit. Run it first, thenask for whatever you need to make the rewrite better. ## Step 2: identify the format The limits differ by format, so decide which one you are looking at before youmeasure anything. | Format | Subject line | Word limit | Meeting ask ||---|---|---|---|| Email 1, first touch | Required | 99 | No || Email 2 and later | Required | 150 | Yes || LinkedIn message 1 | None | 60 | No || LinkedIn message 2 | None | 80 | Yes | For a sequence, apply the per-message rules to each message separately, thenread the sequence as a whole at the end. ## Step 3: run the audit Score each check as Pass or Fail. For every Fail, quote the exact words thatcaused it. Eleven checks. ### Check 1: dashes **Rule.** No long dashes anywhere in the copy.**Why.** Dash-heavy copy reads like a brochure that has been through a marketingteam. It puts distance between the sender and the reader.**Test.** Scan for the two long dash characters. A plain hyphen inside acompound word is fine. ### Check 2: rhetorical questions **Rule.** No rhetorical question as a hook or an opener.**Why.** "Are you tired of this?" and "What if you could do that?" are the twomost used openings in cold email. They signal a template rather than a thought.**Test.** Flag any question that does not genuinely need an answer from theperson reading it.**Fails.** "Are you struggling with X?", "What would it mean if Y?", "Have youever wondered Z?" ### Check 3: compliments with nothing behind them **Rule.** No compliment that is not tied to a specific, checkable observation.**Why.** Flattery without evidence reads as manipulation, and the reader cantell the same sentence went to a thousand people.**Test.** Flag any positive statement about the person or their company that isnot backed by a named fact, signal or event.**Fails.** "Love what you are building", "Your growth story is impressive", "Ihave been following your work", "Really admire what you do".**Passes.** "Saw the funding round close last month", "Noticed three fieldengineer roles open in Stockton", "Read your post on fixed-price quoting". ### Check 4: jargon **Rule.** None of these in the copy: leverage, synergies, cutting-edge,seamlessly, robust, revolutionary, disruptive, innovative as an adjective foryour own product, holistic, best-in-class, world-class, paradigm, transformative,scalable solutions, empower, streamline used as a vague benefit, unlock used asa vague benefit, next-level.**Why.** These words are used so often that they carry no meaning. They make thecopy sound like a press release.**Fix.** Replace with a plain description of what the thing actually does. ### Check 5: the "I" opener **Rule.** The first word of the body cannot be "I".**Why.** Opening with "I" frames the message around the sender. The firstsentence has to orient around the reader instead.**Fix.** Restructure so the opening is their context, a signal, or somethingobserved. ### Check 6: a meeting ask in the first touch **Rule.** No ask for a call, a meeting, a demo or "fifteen minutes" in the firstmessage, unless the person has said they want one there.**Why.** Asking for time before giving anything signals pipeline pressure. Thereader has not yet agreed there is a problem worth solving.**Fix.** Replace with a value-based ask: an insight, a benchmark, a resource, atrigger, or one diagnostic question. ### Check 7: length **Rule.** The limits in the table above.**Why.** Past those limits the reply rate falls. Nobody reads a long cold email.They scan it for relevance and close it.**Fix.** Cut. Remove any sentence that does not move the reader towards the ask.If a fix elsewhere adds words, take them out here. ### Check 8: the subject line **Rule.** Six words at most. Sentence case, not title case. No exclamationmarks. None of "Quick question", "Following up", "Checking in". It should name apain or create curiosity, not describe the contents of the email.**Fix.** Rewrite short, specific and lower case. Treat it as a text messagerather than an email marketing headline. ### Check 9: links in a first email **Rule.** No links at all in a first email. Not a website, not a calendar, not asignature link, not a tracked one.**Why.** A first email carries the reputation of a domain that has never writtento this person before. Links are the easiest thing for a filter to scoreagainst, and a first touch does not need one: the reply is the action you want,and a reply needs no link.**Fix.** Move the link to a later step, or offer to send the thing on reply.**Note.** This is the rule we would defend hardest. ### Check 10: the icebreaker **Rule.** The first line, the personalised one, runs to sixteen words at most.**Why.** Beyond that it stops reading as an observation and starts reading asresearch being performed at the reader. The point of the line is to prove theemail was aimed rather than sprayed, and that takes one clause.**Fix.** Cut it back to the fact and drop the commentary about the fact. ### Check 11: numbers with no source **Rule.** No figure, percentage or claimed result appears without saying where itcame from, and none of them are invented.**Why.** A number is the fastest way to be believed and the fastest way to becaught. If it is a case study, name whose. If it is a range from publishedresearch, say published by whom. If it cannot be sourced, cut it.**Fix.** Cut the number or attribute it. Never round an unknown into aplausible-looking figure. ## Step 4: the audit report Format it like this. **Format detected:** email 1, follow-up, LinkedIn message 1, and so on. | Check | Result | What failed ||---|---|---|| 1. Dashes | Pass or Fail | the quoted text, or "none found" || 2. Rhetorical questions | Pass or Fail | the quoted text, or "none found" || 3. Empty compliments | Pass or Fail | the quoted text, or "none found" || 4. Jargon | Pass or Fail | the quoted words, or "none found" || 5. The "I" opener | Pass or Fail | the first word, or "none found" || 6. Meeting ask in touch 1 | Pass or Fail | the quoted ask, or "not applicable" || 7. Length | Pass or Fail | word count against the limit || 8. Subject line | Pass or Fail | the subject and the specific problem || 9. Links in a first email | Pass or Fail | the link, or "none found" || 10. Icebreaker length | Pass or Fail | word count against sixteen || 11. Numbers with no source | Pass or Fail | the figure, or "none found" | **Score: X of 11 passed.** **Summary.** One or two sentences on what is actually dragging the copy down,not a restatement of the table. ## Step 5: the rewrite Give the corrected version immediately after the audit. Do not ask permission torewrite. **Subject:** rewritten if it failed, kept if it passed. Then the body, with every failing element fixed, then a short list of whatchanged: the check number, the original words, and what was done to them. ## Rules for the rewrite - Fix what fails. Do not rewrite what was already working.- Do not change the angle, the pain or the ask unless one of those was the problem.- Do not make the message longer while fixing it. If a fix adds words, cut elsewhere.- If the original has no recoverable angle, say so and ask for the campaign angle before rewriting. A rewrite of nothing is still nothing.- Never introduce a banned pattern while fixing another one. ## One thing to say about the sequence, not the message If you are handed a sequence rather than a single message, say how many steps ithas, because the number has a cost that copy cannot fix. Every person added to acampaign consumes one send for each step, so the number of new people a mailboxfleet can take each day is its daily sending capacity divided by the number ofsteps. Going from five steps to three raises that rate by about two thirdswithout buying anything. That is a scheduling fact rather than a copy fact, and it belongs in the auditbecause a sequence lengthened to give the copy more chances is a sequence thatquietly cut the number of people who will ever see it. ## Worked example Illustrative figures. These are not measured from any account, and the emaildescribed below was written for this file rather than sent to anyone. A first touch of 131 words fails five checks: a long dash in the secondsentence, an opening rhetorical question, "love what you are building", a linkto a case study, and a nineteen-word icebreaker. The rewrite runs to 74 words,opens on the observed fact, offers to send the case study on reply instead oflinking it, and passes all eleven. Nothing about the angle changed. The offer, the pain and the ask are the sameones the writer chose. What changed is that a filter has less to score and thereader has less to skip. ## Not for you if - You want to know whether the copy will work. This is a checklist, not a prediction, and anyone selling you the prediction is guessing.- You want the message rewritten in a different voice. Ask for that separately. This one only removes the things that are known to hurt.- You have no offer yet. Copy cannot rescue an offer nobody wants, and the audit will keep passing while the campaign keeps failing. Feedback on cold email copy is usually a paragraph of taste. This makes it a checklist instead: eleven things that are known to cost replies, each one scored pass or fail with the offending words quoted, followed by the corrected version. It started as an open-source skill with eight checks. We kept those, tightened the word limit to the one we actually send at, and added the three rules we would defend hardest: no links in a first email, an icebreaker of sixteen words or fewer, and no figure without a source.
A first email carries no links at all
Not a website, not a calendar, not a signature link. A first email is sent from a domain that has never written to this person, links are the easiest thing for a filter to score against, and the action you want is a reply. A reply needs no link. It is the check we added first.
Ninety-nine words, not one hundred and twenty
The limits are the ones we send at rather than the ones the original file carried, and the file says which is which. A first email gets ninety-nine words, a follow-up a hundred and fifty, a LinkedIn opener sixty. Every limit is a limit on the body, not on the subject line.
The icebreaker is sixteen words
Past that, the personalised line stops reading as an observation and starts reading as research being performed at the reader. The point of the line is to prove the email was aimed rather than sprayed, and that takes one clause. The check counts the words rather than judging the tone.
A number without a source is a failure, not a style note
A figure is the fastest way to be believed and the fastest way to be caught. The check fails any percentage, result or claim that does not say where it came from, and the instruction is to cut it rather than to round an unknown into something plausible.
It reports on the sequence, not just the message
When it is handed a sequence it says how many steps there are, because that number is a scheduling cost copy cannot fix: each person consumes one send per step, so the daily new-lead rate is capacity divided by steps. A sequence lengthened to give the copy more chances is a sequence that quietly cut its own audience.
Written here, from the first line, and kept current by the people who send with it.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Written by | TheCold.Ai, a B2B outbound agency in England. |
| Published | 2026-09-05, and revised in place since. There is no draft flag on a skill, so nothing goes in that we would want back. |
| This file's licence | MIT. Copy it, change it, use it with your own clients. |
This is not worth your time if any of these is true. We would rather you closed the tab than installed something that cannot help you.
- You want to know whether the copy will work. This is a checklist, not a prediction, and anybody selling the prediction is guessing.
- You want the message rewritten in a different voice. This only removes the things that are known to hurt; ask for a rewrite separately.
- You have no offer yet. Copy cannot rescue an offer nobody wants, and the audit will keep passing while the campaign keeps failing.
Want it run for you instead?
These files are the judgement. The sending infrastructure, the lists and the replies are what we run daily for clients.
Questions about this skill
Straight answers. If yours isn't here, ask it on the call: we'd rather tell you no than sell you the wrong thing.
Why eleven checks rather than eight?
The original had eight, all of them worth keeping. We added no links in a first email, an icebreaker length limit, and a source for every number. Those three are the ones we argue about most with clients, and two of them are about deliverability rather than persuasion, which is why a copy checklist is the right place for them.
Will it rewrite in my voice?
It fixes what fails and leaves the rest, which is close enough for a first pass and deliberately not a rewrite. The file tells it not to change the angle, the pain or the ask unless one of those was the problem, and not to add words while fixing anything.
Is the worked example real?
No, and it says so in the line above it. The 131-word email that fails five checks was written for the file. We publish our own measured numbers, dated, where they can be corrected later, and never inside a file people copy onto their own machines.
The rest of writing and replies: cold-email-writer, copywriting-first-touch, copywriting-follow-up and reply-handler. Everything sits on the library page, next to the ask at the end of the email, which is the one people usually want after this. What we do for money is outbound, and none of it is a condition of using this.
Claude is a product of Anthropic. TheCold.Ai is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Anthropic.