Build Sequences

Build Sequences

Create, configure, and run Hunter email sequences from chat: create the sequence, write the introduction email, add follow-up steps and message templates, add recipients, launch, and read stats. Step authoring never needs the dashboard. Connecting a sending inbox still does — the API only attaches an account that is already connected, so check List-Email-Accounts before promising a fully in-chat launch.

Examples

• /hunter:build-sequences Set up a 3-step outreach sequence for my fintech leads
• "Create a sequence called Q2 Outreach with a follow-up after 3 days"
• "Add the leads from my SaaS list to the Q2 Outreach sequence"
• "Start the Q2 Outreach sequence"
• "Pause my running sequence"
• "How is the Product Launch sequence performing?"

Workflow

Step 1: Identify or create the sequence

• Existing sequence named or given by ID → call Get-Sequence to load its live status, sender, settings, and recipient count before acting (start/resume/archive/add-recipients should rely on this, not stale list rows). To browse, call List-Sequences.
• New sequence → call Create-Sequence with a descriptive name. Then configure it (Steps 2–3).

# Your Sequences
| ID | Name | Status | Recipients ||----|------|--------|------------|| 123 | Q2 Outreach | draft | 0 || 456 | Product Launch | running | 150 |

Step 2: Configure steps and templates

• Message templates — Create-Message-Template (requires a name and body; subject optional), reusable across sequences. List-Message-Templates to reuse an existing one (Get-Message-Template to inspect); Update-Message-Template to edit.
• Follow-up steps — Create-Sequence-Follow-Up to append each new step (delay + template). List-Sequence-Follow-Ups to review the cadence (Get-Sequence-Follow-Up for one step). Update-Sequence-Follow-Up rewrites an existing step in place — subject, body, wait_days, or message_format. Two side effects to surface, both Hunter-side and neither undoable from chat: a subject edit also rewrites every later step still holding the old subject verbatim (and regenerates their pending messages on a started sequence) — including steps appended with no subject of their own, which is the normal build order — so always re-read the step list afterwards and report which other steps moved; and switching a step from html to text makes Hunter convert the stored body (images dropped, links flattened, HTML stripped) even if you send no body, so confirm that before doing it. Delete-Sequence-Follow-Up removes a step, but only the last step can be deleted and never step 0, so prefer an update over delete + recreate. A sequence holds at most 6 steps total — the step-0 introduction plus up to 5 follow-ups — so longer drips aren't possible.

Use {{first_name}}-style merge fields in templates, but each merge field must carry a fallback value — both Create-Sequence-Follow-Up and Update-Sequence-Follow-Up reject bare variables, so ask for or generate fallback text for every variable. The introduction email (step 0) is created empty by Create-Sequence and cannot be targeted by Create-Sequence-Follow-Up: get its id from List-Sequence-Follow-Ups, then write its subject and body with Update-Sequence-Follow-Up. The whole sequence can be authored this way, and launched too when a sending inbox is already connected.

Step 3: Add recipients

Pull recipients from a leads list (List-Leads with leads_list_id — page through all results with offset, 100 per page, so leads past the first page aren't dropped), from specific emails/lead IDs, or from a prior search, then call Add-Sequence-Recipients with the sequence ID and the emails or lead IDs. Max 50 per call — batch larger lists automatically and report progress ("Adding batch 1 of 3…"). Use List-Sequence-Recipients to see who is already in.

Step 4: Pre-flight and start

Before calling Start-Sequence, verify the launch preconditions and surface any gap instead of letting the start fail:

• The introduction email (step 0) has a subject and body. Verify with List-Sequence-Follow-Ups (Get-Sequence only reports step counts, not their contents); if step 0 is blank, write it with Update-Sequence-Follow-Up rather than sending the user to the dashboard. Start-Sequence fails validation while step 0 is blank.
• The sequence has a sender attached — the sender is a per-sequence field set via email_account_ids on Create-Sequence / Update-Sequence, not merely "some connected account." Use List-Email-Accounts to pick one (Get-Email-Account for its details) and Update-Sequence to attach it if the sequence has none; Start-Sequence validates the sequence's own sender.

If a precondition is missing, say exactly what to fix. Once clear, call Start-Sequence.

Step 5: Run controls and stats

• Pause-Sequence / Resume-Sequence to hold or continue.
• Archive-Sequence to retire a finished sequence.
• Get-Sequence-Stats for sent / open / reply / bounce numbers.
• Update-Sequence to rename or adjust settings — but once a sequence has started, only the name (and unsubscribe-link toggle) stay editable; sender, schedule, BCC, and tracking lock on start, so set those while it's still a draft.

# Sequence: Q2 Outreach
**Status:** running | **Recipients:** 120**Sent:** 118 | **Opened:** 74 (63%) | **Replied:** 19 (16%) | **Bounced:** 2
View: https://hunter.io/sequences/{sequence_id}

Guardrails

Confirm before any destructive, irreversible, or email-sending action — state the operation, the affected count, and the target, then wait for an explicit "yes":

• Delete-Sequence — only draft sequences can be deleted; a started or archived sequence returns an error (archive/stop it instead). For a draft: "This permanently deletes the '[name]' sequence. Confirm?"
• Archive-Sequence — stops a running sequence and can't be undone through the API: "This archives '[name]' and can't be reversed. Confirm?"
• Remove-Sequence-Recipients — echo how many recipients and from which sequence; max 50 per call, so batch larger removals in groups of 50 and report progress.
• Delete-Message-Template, Delete-Sequence-Follow-Up — name what is being removed.
• Update-Message-Template — overwrites a saved template's fields with no way to recover the old version; confirm before editing a reusable team template.
• Update-Sequence-Follow-Up — overwrites a step's subject and body with no way to recover the previous copy; show the current wording and the replacement before writing. A subject change also propagates to later steps that still share the old subject, so name those steps in the confirmation, not just the one being edited. Filling in a blank step 0 overwrites nothing, so it needs no confirmation — but it still propagates: steps you appended without a subject of their own were stored empty, and authoring step 0 fills them all in. Re-read List-Sequence-Follow-Ups afterwards and report every step that changed.

Anything that can send email — confirm first. Start-Sequence, Resume-Sequence, and Add-Sequence-Recipients on an already-started sequence all schedule real outbound email (Resume and Add-Recipients need no separate start call). Always confirm the recipient count and sending account before any of them.

Credit Cost

Free — creating, configuring, and running sequences does not consume search or verification credits. (Finding and verifying the recipient emails beforehand does.)

Important Notes

• A sequence cannot start until the step-0 introduction email (subject + body, written with Update-Sequence-Follow-Up) and a connected sending account are both in place. Check before calling Start-Sequence.
• Max 50 recipients per Add-Sequence-Recipients call — batch larger lists.
• Message templates are reusable across sequences — prefer reusing over recreating.
• List-Email-Account-Sequences shows which sequences a given sending account is running.