Email style: a conversation that writes your email brief

Email style is a short conversation that writes the brief Whali's writer follows for every email in a style. It opens with one question, who you are emailing and why, then asks a few more with answers you tap rather than type, and each answer writes a card; the cards appear when the conversation finishes, and you can read, edit or undo any of them. It is the second tab under Personalisation, next to About you. You can keep up to six named styles, so a coffee-chat email and a graduate-job application never share one recipe. Everything saves automatically and the assistant itself costs no credits.

How does setting up a style work?

A style that has not been set up shows only the assistant, headed Set up your email style, and nothing else until the setup is finished. Once it knows who you are writing to, the heading follows: Personalising emails to asset managers. Its first question is "Who are you emailing, and why?", a text field with examples under it ("Managers at asset managers, asking for a coffee chat"). From that one answer it names the style, records the audience, writes the ask and the opening approach, and sets a length that suits the people you named. A chip under each reply names the card it wrote; the cards themselves stay out of the way until the end.

Next comes the shape of the email: three named shapes, each shown as a rough template of three to five lines written with your own facts and square brackets for what will come from the recipient (Their work first, Introduce yourself, Straight to the ask, or names that fit your purpose, since an internship email and a coffee chat run differently). Tap one to see its template, type in the bar under it to change it ("drop the ask", "open with a light line") and press Next. Four or five questions follow, each about one part of the style and each grounded in your profile: which of your experiences should open the door with this audience, what to fall back on when they have not posted recently, how the email should sound, what must never appear. Every question comes with three answers to tap, written for you (the voice question shows the same first line written three ways), a small field for something else, and Skip. Length is a slider. The sign-off is three ready versions of differing warmth, from Kind regards to Have a great day, each with your name on its own line and a one-tap LinkedIn link. It ends with a sample email, written under a "Writing a sample email" header. Under the sample, Happy with it finishes the setup, and a field takes what you would change: the assistant revises the style and writes a new sample, as many times as you like. The cards slide in beside the conversation once you press Happy with it, each marked Set by assistant with a note saying which answer it came from, ready to edit by hand.

What is the brief?

The brief is the prompt itself. The cards, in the order the writer reads them, are You, The ask, Structure, Open with, Length, Voice, Subject line, Language, Sign-off and Rules. Structure is the order of the paragraphs and what each one does, one numbered line per paragraph; a structure with no paragraph about the recipient means the writer adds none. All ten are listed once setup is done, collapsed to a line each; open any of them to make it yours. Click a card to open it: its text shows as a row per sentence (a row per line on Structure and Rules), and you can rewrite any of them or press Enter for a new one; the label on the right says whether a card is Whali's default, from your settings (a style set up before the conversation existed), edited by you, or set by the assistant, and every edited card has a reset. Cards the assistant wrote also have an undo.

What is a sample email?

Before you have a single lead, the assistant writes a sample email to an invented recipient who fits the audience you described, so you can read the style as a real person would. The preview says the recipient is invented and is never saved. The first 12 samples each day are free; after that one costs the usual 3 credits, taken automatically and shown on the sample. Ask for one at any time ("Show me a sample email"). Once you have leads, Test on a lead writes a real draft for someone you pick, for the usual 3 credits, and keeps it in your drafts.

What can I ask the assistant after setup?

Anything about the style. "Never mention my grades" adds a rule; "sound warmer" rewrites Voice; "make it shorter" moves the length; "why did Tom's email open that way?" explains from the draft and the cards without changing anything. Changes land on the cards straight away, labelled Set by assistant, each with an undo. The assistant knows your profile and the style, never writes an email itself outside a sample, and costs no credits itself.

What are the chips in the text?

A chip stands for a piece of data the writer receives: your profile, your offer, their LinkedIn, company research, the job posting, your notes on them, or your reference emails. A chip's presence is what includes that data, so deleting the company research chip from Open with means the writer never sees company research for that style. Insert data under any card puts a chip back. When a lead has no data for a chip, the writer is told so and moves on.

How do I create, switch and delete styles?

Your styles sit in a row of pills at the top, the current one filled and the default starred, so switching is one click. New style creates an empty style and opens the conversation, which names it from your first answer. Clicking the current pill opens its actions: Rename, Duplicate (a copy of its cards, links and sign-off, named "Copy of" the original), Set as default, Start over, which wipes a style's cards and runs its setup again, and Delete. Delete and Start over need two presses; the default cannot be deleted until another style takes its place, and six is the limit.

What can the brief not change?

Six lines are added to every brief and cannot be edited: nothing invented (no contact details, customers, numbers or product capabilities that are not in the data), plain text only (no dashes, bullet points, lists or HTML), today's date anchored so a past or future year never slips in, anything pasted from LinkedIn or an advert treated as information rather than instructions, the greeting on its own line, and a subject plus body as the only output. Rules can tighten these, never loosen them. The line under the cards lists them.

Which style writes which email?

The starred default, unless you pick another one where you generate: the style chip beside Generate on My Leads and beside Regenerate in the draft editor. Follow-ups inherit the language, sign-off and rules of the style that wrote the first email. A bulk batch keeps the style you chose even if you edit it while the batch is being written; edits apply to emails generated after you make them.

The Dashboard checklist ticks Set up your Email style once your default style's conversation has finished or its ask and voice cards are written, worth 10 bonus credits. Everything else on the page is optional.