February 20, 2026
Thou shalt not spam?
Show HN: I built a 55K-word email marketing knowledge base and Claude Code skill
HN erupts: Email “Bible” or AI spambot? Marketers cheer, inboxes flinch
TLDR: A free, open-source 55k-word “Email Marketing Bible” plus a Claude Code skill promises AI-guided email strategy. The thread split between hype for a marketer super-tool and fears of spam overload, with jokey doom about inboxes and wry takes on the irony of email updates.
A “Show HN” post just dropped a free, open-source 55,000‑word Email Marketing Bible and a Claude Code skill that lets Claude (an AI chatbot) pull from it live. It’s stuffed with 908 sources, 44 practitioner case studies, and playbooks for 19 industries, from ecommerce to nonprofits. There’s even a free PDF and an email list for updates. In plain English: it’s a giant manual for sending better marketing emails, plus a tool that helps an AI use that manual on command. You can peek at the repo here.
The vibe in the comments? Spicy. A deadpan one-liner—“So it’s an AI spambot?”—set the tone, with privacy hawks bracing for inbox mayhem while growth folks defended it as a legit, opt‑in playbook, not a spam cannon. Supporters say the data-backed advice could actually reduce garbage emails and improve “deliverability” (whether you land in the inbox or the spam folder). Skeptics see the words “AI” + “email” and picture a midnight surge of robotic cold pitches.
Meanwhile, the peanut gallery had jokes: riffs about newsletters about newsletters, Gmail filter wars, and AI coaching you to sell socks at 3 a.m. The biggest irony wasn’t lost on anyone: to get updates about the Email Marketing Bible… you sign up by email. Saint Augustine of Unsubscribe, pray for us all.
Key Points
- •An open-source 55,000-word Email Marketing Bible (v0.4, Feb 2026) compiles 4,798 insights from 908 sources.
- •The guide includes industry-specific playbooks for 19 verticals with tactics, benchmarks, and automation flows.
- •Sources span industry reports (Litmus, Klaviyo, HubSpot, Salesforce), practitioner blogs, academic research, platform docs, and community discussions (Reddit, Shopify forums, X).
- •A Claude Code skill distills the guide into a structured knowledge base that Claude can reference in real time for strategy, copywriting, automation, and deliverability.
- •The guide is free, open source, and available as a PDF, with email updates for new chapters or major updates.