Drafting an email with AI

Draft with AI writes a first version of an email from a short brief. It fills in the subject and the message, and then it's yours: read it, change it, and send it the way you send anything else. It never sends on its own.

You'll find the button in three places: above the message in a one-off email (+ New → Email), in the Simple template editor, and in the template window you open from a sequence's email step. Designed templates don't get it. While a Designed template is loaded in a one-off email, the button is hidden, because that email's body can't be edited there. Remove the template and the button comes back.

What do I fill in?

Four fields:

1. Who is it for? The people you're writing to, such as "operations managers at regional trucking companies". Up to 200 characters.
2. What should it achieve? The one thing you want the reader to do, such as "book a 15-minute call". Up to 300 characters.
3. Tone. Pick one of Friendly, Professional, Direct, Warm or Casual.
4. One concrete detail (optional). A link, a number, a date or a name the email should use. Up to 600 characters.

Then click Draft it. A draft usually takes a few seconds.

What does the draft look like?

A subject line and a message of about 180 words, in plain paragraphs. It may greet the contact with a merge field such as {{contact.first_name | there}}, which fills in each contact's first name when the email goes out (or "there" when the name is blank).

Besides the standard fields (the contact's details and their company, your company's name and today's date), a draft can use the custom fields you created under Settings → Custom fields, such as {{custom.contact.region | your area}}. The AI is shown each field's key and label, for up to 40 fields (the first 40 by key, in alphabetical order, which isn't the order Settings lists them in). Fields with an older key that breaks today's key rules (lowercase letters, numbers and underscores) are left out. The AI never sees what your contacts have stored in any field. A custom field in a draft always comes with a fallback, like "your area" above, because many contacts have it blank. SEMAOS refuses a draft that uses a field your account doesn't have, one written slightly wrong, or one without a fallback.

What the AI is told to leave out, and what SEMAOS checks:

• Links you didn't give it. The AI is told to use only the links, web addresses and email addresses in your brief, and SEMAOS refuses a draft that adds a new one in most cases. A few unusual forms can still get through, such as a bare IP address or an address written as "acme dot com", and phone numbers aren't checked at all. If you want a booking link in the email, put it in the detail field. A web address starting with http:// or https:// becomes a clickable link.
• A signature. Your signature from Settings → Signature goes below every message on its own, so the AI is told to stop at the sign-off ("Best,"), and SEMAOS refuses most drafts that sign off with a merge field anyway. A plain name under the sign-off can still slip through.
• The unsubscribe link and mailing address. SEMAOS adds those to every email, as it always does; the FTC's CAN-SPAM guide explains why commercial email needs both.

Read the draft before you send it, and check every link and the sign-off in particular.

What happens to what I already wrote?

The draft replaces the subject and the message. If either one already has text, SEMAOS asks before it starts, so saying no costs you nothing. After the draft goes in, Undo AI draft puts back the subject and message you had before. If you edited the draft in the meantime, SEMAOS asks first, because those edits go too.

How many drafts can I make?

Each user gets a daily allowance:

Plan	Drafts per user per day
Free	none
Trial	10
Solo, Starter, Team, Business	50

The count resets at midnight UTC, and the screen shows how many you have left today. A draft the AI refused to write, or one that came back breaking our email rules, still counts, since the work was done. If drafting fails because the service is down, that attempt doesn't count. On the Free plan the button is greyed out, with a link to the plans.

Why can't I use it right now?

• You've used today's drafts. The button turns back on after midnight UTC.
• "The AI wouldn't draft this one." Reword the goal or the detail and try again.
• "The AI's draft didn't meet our email rules." The draft used a link that wasn't in your brief, left a blank like [Your Name], or ran too long. Trying again usually works; so does adding the missing link or name to the detail field.
• Someone from SEMAOS support is viewing your account. Drafting is off for them, so they can't use your allowance or write in your name.

What happens to my brief?

The text you type into the four fields goes to Anthropic, the AI provider, to write the draft. Anthropic doesn't use it to train its models: SEMAOS uses Anthropic's API under its Commercial Terms of Service, which say Anthropic may not train models on customer content, meaning both what is sent in and what comes back. SEMAOS doesn't keep a copy of the brief or the draft; the draft only lives in your editor until you save or send it.