cold-outreach

When a founder needs to write cold emails or LinkedIn messages to prospects, partners, or investors. Activate when the user mentions cold email, outbound, prospecting, LinkedIn outreach, or needs help getting replies from people who don't know them.

Quality

83%

Does it follow best practices?

Impact

—

No eval scenarios have been run

Securityby

Advisory

Suggest reviewing before use

Quality

Content

77%

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

This is a strong, highly actionable skill with excellent workflow clarity and concrete examples. The tiered personalization system and self-critique validation step are particularly well-designed. The main weakness is that the content is somewhat lengthy with some philosophical/explanatory content that could be trimmed, and the extensive inline reference material could benefit from being split into a separate file.

Suggestions

Consider moving the 'Frameworks & Best Practices' section (email frameworks, writing principles, what-to-avoid list) into a separate OUTREACH-REFERENCE.md file to reduce the main skill's token footprint.

Trim philosophical statements like 'The word cold is the problem' and 'Research is what makes that possible' — Claude doesn't need motivational framing to execute the skill.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The skill is fairly comprehensive but includes some unnecessary explanatory content Claude already knows (e.g., 'The word cold is the problem' philosophy, general advice about contractions). The frameworks and best practices section could be tightened, though most content is actionable rather than explanatory.	2 / 3
Actionability	Highly actionable with concrete examples of actual email output, LinkedIn connection requests, follow-ups, specific word counts/character limits, named frameworks (Observation-Problem-Proof-Ask), tiered personalization system, and explicit anti-patterns. The examples are copy-paste ready and demonstrate exactly what good output looks like.	3 / 3
Workflow Clarity	Clear 6-step workflow with explicit sequencing, a self-critique validation step (step 6), tiered decision logic for personalization and mode selection, and a well-defined follow-up cadence with specific timing (Day 7, 14, 21). The self-critique pass serves as a feedback loop to catch weak personalization.	3 / 3
Progressive Disclosure	The skill references related skills (lead-scoring, sales-script) and startup-context, which is good. However, the content is quite long and monolithic — the frameworks, writing principles, and what-to-avoid sections could potentially be split into a reference file. The structure within the file is well-organized with clear headers, but it's a lot of inline content.	2 / 3
	Total	10 / 12 Passed

Description

89%

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

This is a solid description with excellent trigger terms and completeness, clearly answering both what the skill does and when to activate it. The main weakness is that the specificity of capabilities could be stronger — it describes the general task (writing cold emails/messages) but doesn't enumerate specific sub-actions or techniques. The description also uses second-person framing ('When a founder needs') which borders on addressing the user rather than describing the skill in third person.

Suggestions

Add more specific concrete actions, e.g., 'Crafts personalized cold emails, LinkedIn connection requests, follow-up sequences, and subject lines for outreach to prospects, partners, or investors.'

Rewrite in third person voice describing the skill's capabilities, e.g., 'Generates cold emails and LinkedIn messages for founders reaching out to prospects, partners, or investors.'

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	The description names the domain (cold emails, LinkedIn messages) and mentions target audiences (prospects, partners, investors), but doesn't list specific concrete actions like 'write subject lines, craft follow-up sequences, personalize opening lines.' The actions are somewhat general — 'write cold emails or LinkedIn messages' is a broad action rather than multiple specific capabilities.	2 / 3
Completeness	Clearly answers both 'what' (write cold emails or LinkedIn messages to prospects, partners, or investors) and 'when' (explicit 'Activate when...' clause with specific trigger scenarios including cold email, outbound, prospecting, LinkedIn outreach, and getting replies from strangers).	3 / 3
Trigger Term Quality	Includes strong natural trigger terms that users would actually say: 'cold email', 'outbound', 'prospecting', 'LinkedIn outreach', 'getting replies.' These cover common variations of how a user would phrase this need.	3 / 3
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	The niche is clearly defined — cold outreach messaging to strangers — which is distinct from general email writing, marketing copy, or networking skills. The trigger terms like 'cold email', 'outbound', 'prospecting' are specific enough to avoid conflicts with other communication skills.	3 / 3
	Total	11 / 12 Passed

Validation

90%

Warnings & errors only

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation — 10 / 11 Passed

Validation for skill structure

Criteria	Description	Result
frontmatter_unknown_keys	Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata	Warning

	Total	10 / 11 Passed

Repository: shawnpang/startup-founder-skills
Commit: 4ad31b4

Reviewed: 3 months ago

Table of Contents

Discovery Implementation Validation

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