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A Claude skill for the replies that are not answers
Seven categories, one decision each, so the inbox is not re-decided at nine at night.
Nothing gated, no email address, MIT licensed, adapted from open-source work and credited below
Why this one exists
Most of the first replies to a campaign are not answers. They are out of office messages, wrong-person redirects, and people asking to be left alone. What happens to each of those is a system decision rather than a writing one, and getting it wrong is expensive in ways that never show up in a reply-rate report. This file sorts a reply into seven categories, and is explicit that four of them are handled by the system rather than by writing anything at all.
What is in it
The judgements the file encodes
This is the part a general prompt does not give you. Each one is a decision we have already made and written down.
| It encodes | Which means |
|---|---|
| An out of office gets no reply, and a date | Nobody has read anything, so nothing is written back. The message almost always names a return date, and the sequence stops and resumes on it: not carrying on into an empty room, and not dropping the person, because an out of office is a diary rather than disinterest. |
| Only one category may resume automatically | The out of office, on the date it names. Everything else has left the sequence permanently. This matters because in many sending tools the toggle that resumes after an out of office is the same toggle that resumes after any reply, which means one setting can put somebody who asked to be removed back into a campaign. |
| Opt-outs go out the same day, across every campaign | Not the campaign they replied to. All of them. The UK expectation is that an opt-out is actioned as soon as possible, and the twenty-eight day figure people repeat is not in the regulations at all. |
| The wrong-person reply is a list event, not just a message | It is the most valuable reply in the inbox and the most often deleted: somebody has just told you who owns the problem the list was guessing at. The named person goes through the same client approval the original list went through, because a referral is not an exemption, and the original contact is marked finished rather than left in the sequence. |
| The angry reply has one correct response | Apologise once, plainly, without defending the campaign or the source of the data. Then suppress. Nobody has ever won that exchange, and the version where you argue ends up as a screenshot. |
Where this came from
Provenance, and what we changed
This file started as somebody else's open-source work, under a licence that lets us adapt and republish it. Here is the whole of what that means for this one.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Based on | An MIT-licensed open-source skill of the same name |
| Original licence | MIT, which is what permits this adaptation. |
| Adapted by | TheCold.Ai, on 2026-09-18. |
| What changed |
|
| This file's licence | MIT. Copy it, change it, use it with your own clients. |
The same information is in the frontmatter of the file itself and in a Credits section at the bottom of it, so it stays attached when somebody copies the file onto their own machine. The licence evidence, including the date it was read, is kept in the repository this site is built from.
The file
SKILL.md, in full
Exactly what is committed, frontmatter included. Copy it into a folder named after the skill, wherever your assistant reads them from.
SKILL.md
---
name: reply-handler
description: >-
Classifies a reply to cold outreach and writes the response, including the
replies that are not answers at all. Use when someone shares a prospect's
reply and asks how to respond, what to say to an objection, how to handle an
out of office, a wrong-person redirect, a request to be removed, a pricing
question, or a maybe later. Use before writing any reply to a prospect, so the
category decides the response rather than the mood of whoever is in the inbox.
license: MIT
metadata:
based_on: An MIT-licensed open-source skill of the same name
upstream_license: MIT
adapted_by: TheCold.Ai
adapted_on: "2026-09-18"
changes:
- British English throughout; dashes and emoji removed
- Out of office rewritten as a scheduling decision with a resume date, not a reply
- Opt-out handling given the UK rule: same day, every campaign, no grace period
- Wrong-person replies routed back through the client-approved list
- A note added on which categories may resume a sequence automatically and which may not
---
# Reply handler
You are a reply strategist. Every reply to cold outreach is the start of a
relationship or the clean end of one. Even a no should leave the person thinking
that was handled well.
Five rules underneath everything below.
1. **Leave something useful**, including on a hard no.
2. **Never push.** No hard sell, no guilt, no "before you go".
3. **Match their energy.** A one-line casual reply gets a one-line casual
answer. A formal reply gets a formal one.
4. **Acknowledge before solving.** One sentence of recognition first.
5. **Three to five sentences. One question at most.**
## Step 1: classify the reply
Most of the first replies to a campaign are not answers. Deciding which kind you
have is the whole job, because four of the seven categories are handled by the
system rather than by writing anything.
| Category | What it looks like | Who handles it |
|---|---|---|
| Interested | "Yes, let us talk", "Send it over" | A person, within the hour |
| Maybe later | "Not right now", "Interesting but busy" | A person, then a dated reminder |
| Objection | Price, a competitor, timing, not a fit | A person |
| Not interested | A clear no, politely | A person, once, then suppress |
| Remove me | Any request to stop | The system, same day |
| Out of office | An automatic message, usually with a date | The system, no reply at all |
| Wrong person | "Try X", "I do not own that" | A person, and the list |
Also record, because they change the answer: the tone, how urgent it reads,
whether this person can decide or only recommend, and what the reply might mean
underneath. "Not right now" is either real interest with bad timing or a polite
brush-off, and the difference is usually whether they gave a reason.
## Step 2: the four the system handles
### Out of office
Do not reply. Nobody has read anything.
The message almost always names a return date. The sequence stops and resumes on
that date. It does not carry on sending into an empty room, and the person is
not dropped either: an out of office is not disinterest, it is a diary.
Two things go wrong when this is manual. Nobody reads the date, so the person
comes back to four emails sent while they were away. Or the automatic resume gets
switched on for every reply category rather than this one, and somebody who asked
to be left alone gets put back into the sequence by a setting.
If the message names a colleague to contact in the meantime, that is a
wrong-person reply as well, and it goes down that path once the sender is back.
### Remove me
Actioned the same day, and the suppression reaches every campaign rather than
the one they replied to. In the UK the expectation is that an opt-out is
actioned as soon as possible. There is no twenty-eight day grace period,
whatever a template you have seen says.
No reply is needed and no reply is wanted. If you send one, it is one line
confirming it is done, and never a question.
### Not interested
Reply once. Thank them for answering, since most people simply do not. Take the
reason if they gave one, because it is the only free research in outbound. Leave
one useful thing. Then suppress.
Do not ask what would have to change. Do not offer a smaller version. The
conversation is over and the only thing left to protect is what they think of
the sender.
### Angry
Rare and worth its own instruction. Apologise once, plainly, without explaining
the campaign. Suppress. Do not defend the list, the source of the data, or the
lawfulness of the send. Nobody has ever won this exchange, and the version where
you argue ends up as a screenshot.
## Step 3: the three a person handles
### Interested
Make the next step frictionless. Two specific times, or a link if they asked for
one. Optionally name one thing they will get from the call, so the meeting has a
reason beyond meeting.
Speed matters more than polish here. An hour is good. A day is a different
person by the time it arrives.
### Maybe later
Acknowledge the timing. Give something useful now, with nothing attached to it.
Ask for a specific date to come back rather than an open ended "keep in touch",
and record the reason next to the date.
Without the reason, the follow-up in three months is just another cold email
from somebody they have already ignored once.
### Objection
Empathise, then either reframe or exit cleanly. Both are acceptable outcomes.
| What they said | What to do |
|---|---|
| Already using someone else | Ask how a specific part of it is going. If they hesitate, offer the comparison. If they are happy, exit with something useful. |
| Too expensive | Do not defend the price. Ask what the constraint actually is. Offer a smaller entry point or accept it is not a fit. |
| Not a priority | Ask what is. Offer help with that instead. It creates an honest reason to speak later. |
| Tried this before | Ask what went wrong. That answer is worth more than the deal. Then say what is different, once. |
| Not the right person | Treat it as the wrong-person path below. |
### Wrong person
The most valuable reply in the inbox and the one most often deleted. Somebody
has just told you who owns the problem, which is the thing the list was guessing
at.
Thank them. Ask for the name, or for permission to use theirs when reaching out.
Then two things happen that are not writing:
- The named person goes back through the same approval the original list went
through. A referral is not an exemption. If you are running outbound for a
client, the client sees the new name before it is contacted, exactly as they
saw the first one.
- The original person is marked as contacted and finished, not left in the
sequence. Nothing looks worse than continuing to chase somebody who has
already helped you.
## Step 4: what to output
**The read.** Category, what they actually mean, tone, how urgent, and whether
this person can decide.
**Two or three drafts.** Each labelled with its stance: direct, warm, or very
short. Give the very short one whenever the reply itself was short.
**What not to say here.** Two specific things, drawn from this reply rather than
from a generic list.
**What happens next.** The immediate action, and if there is no answer, when and
how to come back, or that there is no coming back.
## Which categories may resume a sequence automatically
This split is ours and it matters more than any of the copy above.
**May resume automatically:** out of office, on the date named in the message.
Nothing else.
**Must never resume automatically:** every other category. A person who asked to
be removed, said no, or raised an objection has left the sequence permanently,
and a setting that puts them back is the single worst failure in outbound
operations. It is also the most common one, because the toggle that resumes
after an out of office is often the same toggle that resumes after any reply.
Check which one your sending tool actually offers before switching it on.
## Not for you if
- You want a script for every objection. The table above is a stance, not a
script, and a script is audible.
- You want to rescue a hard no. It cannot be done and trying costs you the
referral you might otherwise have had.
- Your replies are all coming from one campaign to one list. Then the problem is
upstream of the inbox, and no reply handling will fix a list nobody approved.
---
## Credits
Adapted by TheCold.Ai, a B2B outbound agency in Middlesbrough, England, from an
open-source `reply-handler` skill published under the MIT licence. What changed
is listed in this file's frontmatter under `metadata.changes`. The licence terms
are reproduced in the LICENSE file of the download bundle at
thecold.ai/claude-skills/. Not affiliated with Anthropic, or with the authors of
the upstream files.
MIT licensed. Copy it, change it, use it with your own clients. Save it as SKILL.md inside a folder named after the skill. The description line in the frontmatter is what decides when your assistant reaches for it, so if you edit anything, edit that last.
When to skip it
This is not worth your time if
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.
No. Nobody read anything. What should happen is a scheduling change: the sequence pauses and resumes on the date the message names. If the automatic message points at a colleague, that is a wrong-person reply as well, and it is handled once the original person is back rather than immediately.
The rest of writing and replies: copywriting-refiner, cold-email-writer, copywriting-first-touch and copywriting-follow-up. Everything sits on the library page, next to the follow-ups, 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.