The whole workflow, step by step.

Step-by-step detail

1. 1

   Step 1

   Sign in and connect your Gmail

   Sign in with Google, then connect the Gmail account you want to send from. Both happen on Google's own consent screens via OAuth.

   • Your password is never asked for or stored — only an OAuth token, encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM.
   • Sign-in only asks for your name and email address. Connecting Gmail separately asks for permission to send email and to read messages, which is how replies and bounces are detected.
   • You can revoke access at any time from your Google Account.
2. 2

   Step 2

   Describe your company and tune the playbook

   Describe who you are, the services you offer, results you can point to and an example email in your own style — once. Every email then follows a 5-step playbook whose instructions you can edit:

   • Step 1 — Research: build a picture of the company from public web sources.
   • Step 2 — Opportunity: pick the single strongest technology opportunity from your services.
   • Step 3 — Subjects: write 5 subject lines and choose one.
   • Step 4 — Draft: write a first email built on that opportunity.
   • Step 5 — Self-review: check the draft against a checklist and write a better final email.
3. 3

   Step 3

   Create a campaign

   A campaign ties a prompt, a Gmail account and a sending schedule together. The defaults are deliberately conservative.

   Daily limit

   18 new emails by default; 15–20 is typical.

   Pacing

   A random 1–2 minute gap between sends.

   Sending window

   The hours and weekdays you choose, in your timezone.

   Follow-ups

   Up to 5 — by default 3, 7, 12, 20 and 28 days after the first email.

   Review before send

   On by default: nothing is sent until you approve it.

   Mailbox

   The Gmail account you connected in step 1.

4. 4

   Step 4

   Upload your leads as a spreadsheet

   Upload a .csv or .xlsx file. A first name and an email column are required; last name, company name, company website, job title and notes help. Columns are matched automatically and you can correct them. A linkedin_url column is stored as a reference only.

   During import, Threadline:

   • Validates every email address.
   • Checks that the address's domain accepts mail.
   • Removes duplicates.
   • Skips anyone on your suppression list, and anyone who has replied to you before.
   • Shows a preview of every row first — with any warnings, such as a guessed greeting name — so you can fix names, exclude rows and confirm.
   • Gives you a downloadable list of rejected rows and the reason for each.
5. 5

   Step 5

   Research the company

   For each lead, the research step researches the company from public web sources: what they do, who their customers are, how they deliver and operate, and what has changed recently.

   • LinkedIn is never scraped.
   • Every source used is listed, with a link, on the lead's page.
   • When little solid information can be found, the lead is marked low confidence — nothing is guessed.
6. 6

   Step 6

   Analyse, draft and self-review

   An AI model — Anthropic's Claude — works through the rest of your playbook for every lead.

   • Opportunity analysis: the single strongest technology opportunity for that company, why it matters, and why what they have today may not solve it.
   • Five subject line options, with one chosen — you can switch to another.
   • A first draft, then a self-review step that checks it against your checklist and writes a better final email.
   • Every claim in the final email is linked to the source it came from.

   To do this, the lead's details, the research, your company profile and playbook are sent to Anthropic's API. See the Privacy Policy.

7. 7

   Step 7

   Review before anything is sent

   With review before send switched on (the default), drafts wait in a review queue until you approve them.

   • See the final email with the opportunity, the research and the sources it was built from.
   • Approve it, switch the subject line, edit it, or ask for a rewrite — or a fresh analysis or research — if it isn't right.
   • Suppress an address if you'd rather not contact that person at all.
8. 8

   Step 8

   Send from your own Gmail

   Approved emails are sent from your Gmail account, one at a time, inside your sending window and under your daily limit.

   • Plain text only — no tracking pixels and no link tracking.
   • They appear in your Gmail Sent folder like any email you'd write yourself.
   • Follow-ups are sent in the same Gmail thread as the first email.
   • Daily caps are enforced on the server, per campaign and per mailbox, and sending is built so the same email can never go to a lead twice — even after a crash.
9. 9

   Step 9

   Watch for replies, then step aside

   Replies and bounces are detected on every thread the app started. When a real person responds, automation gets out of the way.

   The exact rules are laid out below in What happens when someone replies and the Follow-up timeline.