The pilot-operator letter

The fifth letter in the stack, and the only one that goes to a friend. It recruits the ONE hand-picked pilot from the franchise sketch: a skilled engineer Brad already trusts, in another metro, who proves the machine transfers to a different human, a different territory, and a different Claude.

Before sending: Brad's checklist

• Pick the person, not the metro. The sketch says franchisee selection is the whole game. The pilot should be someone whose "human signs" layer you would vouch for unseen, because their ledger will vouch for yours.
• Timing is a dial, not a gate. The sketch sequences the pilot after Gate 0 (first wins at the flagship). Sending earlier is allowed because this letter is honest about the zero; expect a fair "come back when it has won something."
• Platform access is unresolved. The harvest rides Campaign Brain workspaces. A pilot needs their own workspace or a pluggable harvest seam; settle which with Nominate before the pilot's day one, not after.
• No money, no signatures, no shared trademark. The pilot terms live in the letter itself: a handshake memo. The moment a fee, a licensed mark, and operating control travel together, US franchise law wakes up (the sketch maps that cliff). The free pilot is not generosity; it is design.

The letter

Subject: I built a machine that hunts for consulting work in public. Want the second one?

{NAME},

{ONE_LINE_OF_SHARED_HISTORY}

For the last stretch I have been building something strange enough that I want you to look at it before I explain it:

housecalls.bradley.io

It is my business development, run by an AI, entirely in the open. The AI harvests prospects, maps them county by county, qualifies them against a rubric, and drafts every letter; I read and sign everything before it goes anywhere. The rules are published on the page: one email, no means no forever, full AI disclosure in every message, prices readable from the street. The scoreboard is honest to a fault, which today means it is honest about being early.

Here is the ask. I think this machine is a kit, not a website, and I want to prove it transfers. You are the person I trust to run the second one, in {METRO}.

What you would get, free:

• The whole machine: the site kit, the hunt page, the territory map for {STATE}, the harvest pipeline with its self-tests, the qualification rubric, the reply playbook, the letter templates.
• The part I am proudest of: the operating manual is executable. Your AI runs the same doctrine files mine does. Setup is largely handing your Claude the playbook.
• Me, on call, for the stand-up: hardware sizing, DNS, the county boundaries for your state, the first harvest.

What it costs: nothing, for two honest reasons. First, my scoreboard still says zero engagements won, so there is nothing proven to charge for; you would be the experiment, and experiments do not pay to be experimented on. Second, the moment money and a shared brand and operating rules travel together, this legally becomes a franchise, with disclosure documents and lawyers, and neither of us wants that conversation yet. Free keeps it a collaboration between friends.

What I ask back:

• Run it honest. The rules are not knobs: the one-email rule, the no forever, the disclosure line, the privacy of correspondence. They are the brand, and your ledger and mine will vouch for each other.
• Feed back what breaks. Everything you hit goes into the kit for whoever is third.
• When it works, let me say you were first.

What this is not: not a contract, not a franchise, not an exclusivity deal beyond the plain fact that you would be first in {METRO}. Either of us can walk away at any time and keep what we built. If it grows into something with money in it, we design that together, on paper, with counsel, later.

What you would need: a machine you own (the anti-cloud stance is part of the product), a domain, {THEIR_AI_NOTE}, and a weekend.

If the answer is "not now," that is a fine answer and I will still show you the machine over a beer. If it is "show me," reply and I will send the stand-up list.

{SIGNATURE}

P.S. This letter was drafted by the AI I operate and reviewed and signed by me, which is exactly how every letter the machine sends works. The pitch is the demo.

Slots

• {NAME}, {METRO}, {STATE}: the person and territory.
• {ONE_LINE_OF_SHARED_HISTORY}: one real sentence, Brad's own words. The letter must open human; a template opening to a friend reads as neither.
• {THEIR_AI_NOTE}: their own Claude relationship, phrased for what Brad knows of their setup ("your own Claude subscription" for most).
• {SIGNATURE}: Brad's, as ever.

Terms memo (the handshake, written down)

If they say yes, the terms are the letter's own paragraphs, restated in one place and kept in the repo: free; honest rules non-negotiable; learnings flow back; either side walks anytime; first-in-metro acknowledged; money, marks, and exclusivity deferred to a future design session with counsel. Nothing else. A pilot that needs more paper than that is not a pilot.