The job
A journalist reached out asking about AI in your vertical. A conference wants you to speak. Another company wants to explore a partnership. Each one is a chance to set a tone. Too formal and you miss the relationship. Too casual and you seem unprepared. Too long and they never finish reading.
Right now, if you answer these, each reply gets a custom draft. It takes an hour because you have to think about who is asking, what they need, and what you want them to know. The station can do this. What it needs to learn is the tone.
The recipe
All seven ingredients still apply. The leverage on this dish is Examples (Ingredient #4). You’re teaching the station the acceptable range of response for different categories of inquiry.
Training matters too. House style runs through inbound replies. A partnership pitch should sound like your positioning. A press reply should carry your authority. But the examples do the heavy lifting. Show the station five responses you wrote to different inquiry types. The station learns the tone, the structure, the move you make with each category.
Guardrails come next. Things you never do in a reply. You never redirect to another person without context. You never ask them to fill out a form before you’ve shown interest. You never say yes without understanding what they’re asking.
How to build it
- Categorize your inbound. Press. Partnerships. Speaking. Vendor. Each category gets a different response posture. Note the categories.
- Pull examples. Find one strong reply you wrote to each category. Not perfect. Just one where you nailed the tone. If you don’t have five, write one response for each category now.
- Note what’s consistent across them. You probably make a move in the opening line. You probably address the request specifically. You probably close with a clear next step. The station will learn this from the examples.
- Define guardrails. What you never do. “Never ask them to fill out a form before we show interest.” “Never take 48 hours to reply.” “Never redirect to another person without context.” 4-5 specific rules.
- Feed examples, guardrails, and the list of inquiry categories to the station.
- When an inbound arrives, provide the category. The station drafts the reply.
- Review the draft. Does it match the tone of your examples? Does it break a guardrail? If yes, update Training or Guardrails. If no, ship it.
What breaks it
- Examples are too scattered. You pull one press reply from six months ago (formal, buttoned-up), one partnership reply from two months ago (collaborative, warm), one speaking reply from last month (matter-of-fact). The station has no idea what the range is. Output bounces between tones.
- Guardrails are missing the speed rule. You never wrote “always reply within 24 hours.” By week three, inbound sits for three days while the Chef reviews. What was fast becomes slow. The guardrail should have been written.
- Categories are too broad. Everything is “inbound.” But a journalist asking about your market takes a different tone than a startup asking for partnership. The station needs the specificity.
When it’s working
By week two, the Chef is reviewing drafted replies for fit, not writing new ones. By week four, the Chef is spot-checking, not reviewing every one. By month two, the replies are shipping with minimal human touch because the station learned the tone range and nobody is asking for things you already said no to.
The signal that the recipe is sharp: a recipient replies to the station’s draft as if the Chef wrote it. The tone is right. The gesture is clear. The relationship moved forward.
Monday Move
Pick the inbound category you handle the most. Press. Partnerships. Speaking. Whatever comes in three times a week. Find two replies you wrote in the last month. Replies where you nailed the tone. Feed those examples to the station. Add your guardrails. Ask it to draft a reply to the next inquiry in that category. Review for tone fit. If it’s 70% there, update the Training block and move to live deployment. By Thursday, the station is drafting these. By next week, the Chef is reviewing them once per day instead of writing them.
Dish 3 of 10 on the Marketing Station. Build-note leverage: Examples (Ingredient #4).