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Skills: teach your agent how your brand does email

The EmailShepherd Team

The EmailShepherd Team

EmailShepherd

Skills: teach your agent how your brand does email

Today, we’re launching Skills.

Skills let you teach your EmailShepherd agent how your brand does email: your voice, your processes, your workflows. It’s the difference between bland, generic AI output and an agent that works like an experienced colleague who knows your brand inside out.

What are Skills?

If you’ve spent time working in Claude or ChatGPT, you have probably already used Skills.

Skills are a set of instructions and resources that an agent loads when it needs them, so it can handle a particular kind of task in a consistent, repeatable way.

They’re an open standard, originally developed by Anthropic. You might already have Skills in your Claude or ChatGPT account, like a copywriting guidelines Skill or something similar. The good news is, these can be imported straight into EmailShepherd.

Teach the agent how your team works

You don’t need Skills to teach EmailShepherd agents how to build an email, or how your Email Design System works. The EmailShepherd agent harness already does that.

Anything your team has learned about how you do email can live in a Skill. For example:

  • apply brand voice to emails
  • subject line and preheader best practices
  • a recipe or procedure to follow when building a particular type or types of email
  • reach for the right components for a given email
  • adapt tone for a specific audience or segment
  • how your team does dynamic content

Without Skills, a good prompt gets you most of the way there. With Skills, it comes back right the first time.

Skills also mean your team doesn’t have to remember and type long, detailed prompts every time. That knowledge lives in the Skill, so anyone can get expert output from a short, simple request. They are a good place to write down team tribal knowledge, or granular/technical details that nobody can be expected to prompt for every time.

Skills aren’t only instructions. You can attach your existing emails to them, so you can show, not just tell your agent what good output looks like. Point a Skill at a campaign you’ve already sent and the agent has a real example to work from, whether that’s the next send in a series, a recurring email, or just something that needs to match the voice and structure.

Not just for building

Skills aren’t only for building emails. You can give your Review Agents access to the very same set of Skills that your Build Agents use. In practice, this means a Build Agent can build emails from your copywriting guidelines - and a Review Agent can check them against those same guidelines, catching any inconsistencies before the email goes out.

Composing good skills

Writing good Skills takes experimentation. Tweak them, iterate on them, and improve them over time to get better output. Change a line, see how the result shifts, and keep refining until it produces what you want.

Example Skills

Here are a few to get you thinking. None of these are right for your team as-is. They’re meant to show the shape of a good Skill and spark ideas for your own.

brand-voice

At minimum, if you’re using the agent to write copy, most teams should have a brand voice / guidelines Skill of some kind. This skill teaches the agent how you actually sound: the tone you take, the words you reach for, and the ones you never use. It’s the difference between copy that’s technically correct and copy that reads like your team wrote it.

brand-voice

Brand Voice

This skill defines how EmailShepherd sounds. Read it before writing any customer-facing copy, then write to these principles rather than copying the examples verbatim.

The brand has a light shepherd/sheep motif (EmailShepherd, Sheppy, herding emails safely to where they need to go). An occasional, light nod to it — keeping every email in the flock, on-brand — can give the warm register a signature. Use it sparingly; never tip into pun overload.

The voice in one line

Talk like a smart, generous colleague explaining something they're excited about — clear enough for a stranger, warm enough for a friend, never trying to impress.

Core principles

Clarity beats cleverness. If a plain word works, use it. The reader should never reread a sentence to decode it. Wit is welcome, but only when it survives the plain-language test first. A clever line that obscures the point fails.

Be concrete. Name real things — the actual tabs, tasks, tools, and moments in someone's day. Specifics are more persuasive and more human than abstractions. "Fifteen tabs open before your first coffee" lands; "fragmented workflows" doesn't.

Confident, not loud. State what the product does as plain fact. Skip the hype stack ("revolutionary," "game-changing," "world-class"). Confidence shows up in short, certain sentences — not in adjectives doing the work the product should do.

Warm and human. Address the reader as "you," and speak as "we." Sound like a person wrote it for a person. A little delight — an aside, an honest admission, the occasional exclamation in longer copy — is a feature, not a risk.

Optimistic about the reader. The reader is capable and busy, not confused. The product gives them leverage and time back. Frame copy around what they get to do, not what they're failing at.

Earn trust with proof, not promises. When you can, anchor a claim to something real — a number, a named capability, a concrete outcome. Let evidence carry weight so the prose doesn't have to inflate.

Two registers

Most copy lives in one of two registers. Match the register to the surface.

1. Sharp register — headlines, taglines, feature titles, buttons

Short. Declarative. Often a fragment ending in a period. This is where the voice is most compressed.

Patterns that work here:

  • Fragment-as-statement: "Simple and powerful." / "On brand, every time."
  • Contrast pairs: "Less [chore]. More [payoff]." (e.g. "Less tracking. More progress.")
  • Two-beat cause/effect: "You [do the small thing]. EmailShepherd [does the work]."
  • "One ___ for ___": "One search for everything." / "One source of truth for your whole team."
  • Concrete verb up front: capture, ship, route, sort, answer, find, automate — not "leverage," "enable," "facilitate."

2. Warm register — body copy, About pages, onboarding, longer emails

Conversational and a little narrative. First and second person. Room to breathe, ask a question, tell a small story, or admit something true.

Patterns that work here:

  • Open like a person, not a brochure: "Hi there. If you're reading this, you're probably like us —"
  • Rhetorical question triads: "Want it on brand? Built fast? Without the back-and-forth? It's all here."
  • Honest, vivid framing: call the problem what it is ("you're chasing approvals across a dozen email threads") before offering the fix.
  • Invitations, not commands: "Try it. Tell us what breaks. We build this with you."

Both registers share the same DNA: plain words, concrete nouns, human warmth, and earned confidence. The sharp register just turns the dial up on compression.

Mechanics

Sentences: Mostly short. Vary length for rhythm — a long sentence is fine if a short one follows to land the point. Read it aloud; if you run out of breath, cut it.

Punctuation: Em dashes for asides and reframes — they sound like thinking. Periods on fragments for emphasis. Ellipses sparingly, to trail off conversationally. Exclamation points are allowed in the warm register; ration them so they still mean something.

Person: "You" for the reader, "we" for the brand. Never "users," "customers," or "one" in customer-facing copy.

Voice: Active, present tense. "EmailShepherd builds your email," not "your email is built by EmailShepherd."

Formatting: Lead with the payoff, then the detail. Front-load the word that matters. Keep paragraphs to a few lines. Use a list only when the content is genuinely a list — don't bullet your way out of writing real sentences.

Lexicon

Reach for: plain verbs (build, find, ship, sort, answer, keep, bring together), everyday nouns, "your work / your day / your team," numbers and named specifics.

Avoid: corporate filler and hype — leverage, synergy, seamless, robust, cutting-edge, revolutionary, best-in-class, empower (as filler), unlock (as filler), supercharge, frictionless, solutions (as a vague catch-all), delight (as a verb you tell the reader about rather than create). Also avoid hedging that undercuts confidence — we think, sort of, kind of, might be able to.

Em-dash, en-dash, hyphen: use them correctly; they're part of sounding considered.

Before / after

Headline Before: "Leverage our cutting-edge platform to optimize team productivity." After: "Get your team's day back."

Feature title Before: "Advanced Automated Notification Configuration" After: "Tell it once. It handles the rest."

Body copy Before: "EmailShepherd is a comprehensive solution designed to streamline and enhance collaborative workflows across your organization." After: "EmailShepherd is the email platform your whole team can use. Approved components, colors, and layouts live in one Email Design System — so anyone, and any AI agent, ships on-brand emails without waiting in the queue."

Empty state Before: "No items found. Please add an item to populate this view." After: "Nothing here yet. Add your first one and watch this fill up."

Error message Before: "An unexpected error has occurred. Error code 0x004." After: "That didn't go through — give it another try. If it keeps happening, we want to know."

Announcement Before: "We are pleased to announce the release of several new enhancements to our product suite." After: "Three new things shipped this week. Here's what they do and why we built them."

Register check by surface

  • Hero headline → sharp register, one idea, payoff-first.
  • Subhead → one warm sentence that makes the headline concrete.
  • Feature section → sharp title + 1–2 warm sentences of plain benefit.
  • Onboarding / empty states → warm, encouraging, second person, never scolding.
  • Errors / system messages → plain, calm, human; say what happened and what to do next. No blame, no jargon, no fake cheer.
  • Emails / changelogs → warm register; lead with what changed for the reader.
  • About / mission → warm register at its fullest; tell the story, show the conviction.

Pre-flight checklist

Before shipping any copy, confirm:

  1. Could a smart stranger understand it on the first read?
  2. Is there a concrete noun or real moment in it, not just abstractions?
  3. Did I cut every hype word and corporate filler?
  4. Does it speak to "you" and sound like a person wrote it?
  5. Does it lead with the payoff?
  6. Read aloud — does it sound like us, or like a press release?

If any answer is no, rewrite that line.

monthly-product-update-email

Not every Skill is a set of guidelines. They can also describe a procedure; the approach that you would like the agent to take when performing a task.

Remember that your agent has access to various capabilities, such as browsing the web, generating images, and communicating with connected MCP tools.

In this example, we need to build a product updates email. These emails are monthly recurring, and always follow the same format, so they’re great candidates to be automated using a Skill.

Because the goal is to be able to build a similar email, we attach one of the previous months’ product update emails. Then we describe the steps that we want the agent to take when building the email:

  • reading the attached, reference email
  • browsing the web to find our latest releases
  • doing the build

This lets anyone build a product update email simply by prompting something like ‘Build this month’s product updates email’.

monthly-product-update-email

Monthly product update email

Follow these steps to build this month's product update. Use the attached email as your reference for structure, layout, and tone.

  1. Read the attached reference email. It's an example of how these updates should look. You'll build this month's in the same shape, with the current month's released features.

  2. Gather this month's releases. Browse to https://example.com/releases and collect every release published this calendar month. For each one, grab the title, description, link and image.

  3. Build the email. Assemble it in EmailShepherd, mirroring the reference email's layout and components, with this month's content, images, and links swapped in. You'll need to shorten the description to fit the component, in our brand voice. Make sure you use the 'Feature Card' for important featured items, and "2 Column Cards" or "3 Column Cards" for ones that don't have images.

subject-line-guidelines

Subject lines are their own craft, and most teams have hard-won rules about what works for their audience. Pull those rules into a Skill and the agent stops guessing.

subject-line-guidelines

Subject lines

  • Keep it short — five or six words, with the most important word first (mobile often cuts off around 30 characters)
  • Be clear about what's inside; the reader should know what they're getting before they open
  • Keep it relevant to the email's main message — don't bait with something the body doesn't cover
  • Don't oversell: skip inflated adjectives ("amazing", "stunning") and fake urgency ("act now", "last chance")
  • Don't promise what the email doesn't deliver, and never fake a reply or forward ("Re:", "Fwd:")
  • Personalise only when it adds something real — a first name on its own usually doesn't
  • A question works when the email genuinely answers it
  • A clear verb earns clicks ("see", "save", "join") — lead with it where it fits
  • Match our brand voice, and tailor the tone to who's receiving it

Good examples

  • "Three new ways to build faster"
  • "Your March usage summary"
  • "Your plan changes on April 1"
  • "The report you asked for is ready"

Bad examples

  • "You won't BELIEVE our amazing new features!!!"
  • "Re: your account"
  • "An important update regarding your subscription"
  • "Hi {{first_name}}, check this out"

Avoid

  • ALL CAPS, exclamation pile-ups, and rows of currency symbols
  • Spam trigger words like "free", "guaranteed", "winner"
  • Emojis unless they're relevant and render cleanly across clients

Test and learn

  • A/B test subject lines whenever volume allows
  • Track open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribes together — a high open rate means little if it spikes unsubscribes
  • Don't assume last quarter's winner still works; audiences shift

Skills don’t just make emails better. They can keep you out of trouble. A Skill can also encode the rules your legal or compliance team cares about.

There’s a base footer that always applies, and then extra disclaimers that depend on what the email actually contains: promote an investment and the capital-at-risk warning has to appear; show past performance and a different one kicks in; mention tax benefits and there’s another again.

The example below is for a fictional bank, Shep Bank PLC. In regulated industries, a missing disclaimer can mean a regulatory breach.

And because your Review Agents can read the same Skill, this doubles as a safety net: a Build Agent applies the right disclaimers, and a Review Agent catches a missing one before the email ever goes out.

footer-content-compliance

Footer content compliance

Every customer email must carry the correct legal footer. The base footer below always applies, plus conditional disclaimers that depend on what the email contains. Work through it top to bottom.

When in doubt, include the disclaimer. It is always safer to over-disclose than to ship a regulated email without a required warning.

Always include (base footer)

Every email, no exceptions:

  • Legal entity and address: Shep Bank PLC, registered in England and Wales no. 04263871. Registered office: 1 Fleece Street, London EC2R 8AH.
  • Regulatory status: Shep Bank PLC is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), firm reference number 512832.
  • Unsubscribe and preferences: a working unsubscribe link and a link to manage email preferences.
  • Reason for contact: a short line stating why the recipient is receiving the email (e.g. "You're receiving this because you hold an account with us.").

Conditional disclaimers

Add each of these whenever its condition is met. An email can trigger several at once — include all that apply.

If the email promotes or references any investment product — include the capital-at-risk warning, prominently, above the base footer:

The value of investments can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invest. Capital at risk.

If the email shows any past performance figures (returns, growth, fund performance):

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

If the email mentions tax benefits or wrappers (ISA, SIPP, pension, "tax-free"):

Tax treatment depends on your individual circumstances and may change in the future.

If the email promotes cash savings or deposit products:

Eligible deposits with Shep Bank PLC are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) up to £85,000 per eligible person.

If the email promotes a credit or borrowing product (loans, cards, buy-now-pay-later) — include a representative example and:

Representative 24.9% APR. Credit is subject to status and affordability. Shep Bank PLC acts as a credit broker, not a lender.

If the email promotes a high-risk investment (crypto, mini-bonds, unlisted securities, CFDs) — lead with the FCA-mandated high-risk warning, before the main content, not buried in the footer:

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

For CFDs specifically, also include the provider loss statistic:

74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

If the audience includes recipients outside the UK — add a territorial restriction and do not send regulated promotions to jurisdictions where the brand is not authorised:

This communication is intended for UK residents only and is not an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where it would be unlawful.

Placement and formatting rules

  • Risk warnings are not fine print. Capital-at-risk and high-risk warnings must be at least as prominent as the surrounding body copy — same minimum font size, never greyed out to the point of being unreadable, never collapsed behind a link.
  • High-risk warnings go above the main content, not only in the footer.
  • Never edit the wording of a mandated warning to make it softer or shorter. The exact text is the requirement.
  • If two disclaimers apply, show both — don't pick the milder one.

Getting started

Skills are available now, in the Skills tab under Agents. The Agent Skills docs walk through creating a skill, attaching example emails, and assigning skills to your agents.