Agent Newsletter

Status

in-flight

Tier

Tier 1 — Operating business

Owner

Ryan Colston

Started

2026-04-29

Target launch

2026-04-30

Weekly Wednesday newsletter to Listing Legends agents via Kit. Per-agent open/click tracking. Locked 7-section format (updated 2026-05-07 with Travis Ford insights). Skill at /agent-newsletter.

Why

Ry has 27 agents heading to 50+. One-to-many recurring team comms need tracking — open rates, click rates, who's reading. Gmail blasts can't do that at scale. Kit can.

The newsletter pulls signal from five sources every Wednesday morning: Orchard leadership notes, the Orchard agent newsletter, the midweek wins doc, the team set-to-booked rate from BigQuery, and meeting transcripts/Gemini notes (story mining). Filters corporate items through a 5-question test. Mines transcripts for teachable moments. Translates both into "what changes for you this week."

Current state

Issue #1 shipped 2026-04-30 at 8 AM CT. Kit broadcast 23919154, Ghost archive 69f299816d62840001b20275. Subject: "Hump Day | We're under our own line." 29 recipients (team:listing-legends). Tracking row in content_engine.calendar.

Issue #2 drafted 2026-05-07. Draft at /tmp/newsletter-2026-05-07.md. Sent to Travis Ford for feedback (Gmail 19e02909e5dd24a1). Waiting on review before Kit/Ghost creation.

Cron is session-only right now — /loop job dies when Claude session exits. Real durable scheduling not yet built.

• Status: in-flight
• Last update: 2026-05-07
• Blocked on: Travis Ford feedback on Issue #2 draft, then Kit/Ghost creation + send

Format evolution (2026-05-07)

Compared Issue #1 against Travis Ford's "Tuesday Top 5" newsletter. Key changes baked into skill:

• 7 sections (was 5+1): added THIS WEEK I LEARNED between THE NUMBER and THE PLAY
• Story mining step (1F): searches ALL meeting transcripts + Gemini notes, not just 1x1s. Extracts story candidates in Problem/Insight/Support format.
• Featured win: one deal in Wins gets a 2-3 sentence story, not just a bullet
• THE PLAY: reframed from directive to opt-in challenge
• ASKS: never name agents who are behind (accountability stays in 1x1s)
• Opener: can lead with story instead of always THE NUMBER. No meta-commentary.
• Word count: 350-500 (was 250-400) to accommodate stories section
• 4 new audit checks added

Next 3 actions

1. Get Travis Ford feedback on Issue #2 draft, resolve flags, send via Kit.
2. Build durable Wednesday scheduling. Cloud Scheduler → pos-reports route is the cleanest (~1 day, independent of laptop).
3. Diff the team:listing-legends-ramping Kit segment against pos_raw.agents_ramping every Wednesday during the agent run.

Decisions log

• Portfolio organization framework
• 2026-05-07: Travis Ford format comparison → added THIS WEEK I LEARNED section, story mining, opt-in THE PLAY, featured win in Wins

Open issues

• Durable scheduling for Wednesday cadence (currently session-only)
• Ramping segment auto-sync from pos_raw.agents_ramping
• Issue #2 source-pull dry run (completed 2026-05-07)
• Travis Ford feedback on Issue #2 format changes

References

• Memory: ~/.claude/projects/-Users-rycolston/memory/project_agent_newsletter.md
• Skill: ~/content/skills/agent-newsletter/SKILL.md
• Kit MCP rules: ~/CCPJ/projects/kit-mcp/CLAUDE.md
• Sync tracker: pos-reports /sync-newsletter-status route (CCPJ !623)
• BigQuery tables: pos_raw.agent_set_booked_current_month, pos_raw.agents_ramping
• Calendar tracker: pospj-480915.content_engine.calendar
• Newsletter Architecture: Newsletter Architecture
• Hormozi style rules: ~/.claude/projects/-Users-rycolston/memory/reference_hormozi_writing_style.md
• Kit footer formatting: ~/content/docs/reference/kit-formatting.md