# 07 · FlowOut (research before outreach)

Research and dossiers for personal outreach. Feeds build the list: podcast guests, searches, and links you paste
in. Each person gets a dossier from their own website and appearances. The tool scores them for fit and drafts
the emails. You review, edit and press send yourself.

**For your AI:** walk me through building this one step at a time. Ask who my ideal client is and how I reach
out today first. Don't move on until the current step works.

## First, check

- Do you pay for Apollo, Clay or a researcher, or spend hours reading websites before you write to someone?
- Do you reach out to new people every week? If it's a few a month, research them by hand.
- Is cold email allowed where you and they live? Check the rules (in Europe, GDPR applies) before you build.

## What you need

- A clear description of who fits and who doesn't, in your words.
- An AI API key (Claude or OpenAI) and a budget per person you research.
- A way to read web pages (a plain fetch first, a reader service when a site blocks it).
- Your email account's API (Gmail or Outlook) for drafts only.
- A small local database (SQLite) and Claude Code or another AI that can run commands on your computer.

## Where it runs

On your computer. The list and the dossiers stay with you.

## The steps

1. **The feeds.** Three ways in: podcast guest lists, searches, links you paste. Each name lands in one list,
   without duplicates.
2. **A cheap screen first.** Read the home page only and drop the obvious misfits before spending more.
3. **The dossier.** For the ones left: their own site, their offers and prices, their appearances. Every fact
   with its source link.
4. **The score.** Fit against your description, with the reason written out. You read the reasons, not only the number.
5. **The board.** A page with everyone by stage: to research, ready, reached out, replied.
6. **Drafts, never sends.** Emails go into your drafts folder. You review, edit and press send.
7. **Replies.** Check the mailbox so the board knows who answered.

## Checklist before you rely on it

- [ ] Spend caps per run and per day, and a run stops when the cost per person climbs.
- [ ] Every claim in a dossier links to where it came from. Nothing invented.
- [ ] The tool can only create drafts. Your finger is the send button.
- [ ] Try it on 10 people and read every dossier before you run 300.
- [ ] People who say no, or ask to be removed, never come back into the list.