Writing issues
Draft with your agent, watch the live preview, and use the Markdown the email layout supports.
An issue is a subject, an optional preheader and a Markdown body. Sendoff pours the body into a fixed layout with your masthead, footer, unsubscribe link and postal address (if you’ve set one), so the agent only ever writes the middle.
The loop
Ask for a draft
Give the agent your notes, links or an outline: “Draft the next issue. Lead
with the launch, then three links I’ve been reading.” It calls
create_draft and shares a preview link.
Open the preview
Keep it open beside the conversation. It updates about a second and a half after each change.
Ask for changes
“Shorter intro.” “Swap the second and third links.” “Add a button to the launch post.” The agent edits with exact find-and-replace, so the parts you didn’t mention stay exactly as they were.
Drafts are saved on every change, so you can stop and pick up later, from the same agent or another one. Ask “what drafts do I have?” to find them.
The preview
The preview page shows the email as it’ll arrive, with toggles for:
- Email or plain text. Every email includes a plain-text version, generated from the Markdown rather than scraped from the HTML.
- Desktop or mobile width.
- Light or dark mode. Apple Mail and others that support dark mode get the dark version; other clients show the light one.
If the Markdown has a problem, the preview lists it with a line number and keeps showing the last version that worked, dimmed. The agent gets the same list, so it can fix the draft itself.
Subject and preheader
The subject is required. The preheader is the preview text most inboxes show after the subject; without one, inboxes show the start of the body. Both are separate from the body, so don’t put them in the Markdown. Ask for changes the same way: “Give me five subject options”, then “Use the third.”
Markdown
Sendoff supports a deliberately small subset of Markdown, chosen to render consistently in Gmail, Apple Mail and Outlook:
## A section heading
A paragraph with **bold**, _italic_, `inline code` and a [link](https://example.com).
- A bulleted list
- With a second item
1. A numbered list
2. With a second item
> A quote.
::button[Read the launch post]{href="https://example.com/launch"}
:::callout[Heads up]
Callouts stand out from the text, tinted with your accent color.
:::
```js
console.log("Code blocks keep their formatting.");
```
---| Supported | Not supported |
|---|---|
#, ## and ### headings |
#### and deeper |
| Paragraphs, bold, italic, inline code | Raw HTML |
Bulleted and numbered lists, blockquotes, --- |
Tables, footnotes |
Links to https, http and mailto |
Reference-style links |
Images from https URLs, with alt text |
Frontmatter |
| Code blocks, buttons, callouts |
A few details:
- Images need alt text, and an image on a line of its own spans the full width. Host images anywhere public over HTTPS; Sendoff doesn’t host them yet.
- Buttons go on a line of their own:
::button[Label]{href="https://…"}. - Callouts start with
:::callout(with an optional title in brackets) and end with a line containing just:::.
Look and feel
The layout is fixed, but your settings fill it in. Ask the agent to change any of them:
- Name in the masthead, or a logo in its place: “Use my logo at https://example.com/logo.png, 120 by 32”, with an optional dark-mode version.
- Accent color for links, buttons and callouts: “Make the accent #ff0066”. Sendoff adjusts it where needed so text stays readable, in light and dark mode.
- Footer links: “Add my GitHub and X links.”
- Description for the signup page.
Changes show in the preview straight away. See Settings for every field.