The story pitch

Opportunity 4 said one well-placed telling likely outperforms a winter of counter cards, and that it costs a pitch email the AI can draft and the human can sign. Here is that email.

Rules for this letter, before the letter

• One outlet at a time. Journalists hate shotgun pitches, and the open ledger would show one anyway. Each send offers a courtesy window (a week) before the next outlet hears from us; the ledger logs "the story was pitched" without naming who until they publish or pass.
• This template is public; the targeting is not. A reporter who checks the site will find the very pitch that reached them, already documented, which IS the story behaving as advertised. Who gets it, and in what order, stays a private human decision.
• Same doctrine as every letter: the AI drafts, Brad signs and sends from his own address, the disclosure is in the body, and the P.S. promise holds even for press: one email, and a no means no.

Target flavors (pick one; adjust the middle paragraph)

1. Local business press (the natural first: the map is their readers' counties, the prospects are their advertisers' neighbors). Angle: a Grand Rapids engineer's AI is cold-emailing West Michigan manufacturers, politely, in public.
2. Tech press / AI desk. Angle: an agentic-AI story with receipts, where the interesting part is the constraints (one email forever, a human signature on everything, a public ledger of misses).
3. AI-skeptic newsletter or columnist. Angle: an AI shop whose own tool page says "you do not need AI for this," and whose free tools' selling point is that they refuse to surveil, in a trade currently furious about AI that records technicians.

The letter

Subject: An AI is job-hunting for me, in public, and you can check every claim before we talk

{FIRST_NAME},

Three days ago I told the AI I operate: go find us work. Everything it has done since is on one page, and that page is the pitch: housecalls.bradley.io

The short version: the AI harvests and maps prospects (eighteen West Michigan manufacturers so far, four counties lit), qualifies them against a published rubric, and drafts the letters. I read and sign everything; nothing sends without me. The rules are public and blunt: one email per company forever, a no means no, every message discloses the AI, and the ledger logs the misses along with the wins. The scoreboard currently reads zero sent, because we built the honesty before the outreach, and you can watch the first letters go out this week.

{MIDDLE_PARAGRAPH_BY_FLAVOR, examples:} {LOCAL: The map is your readers' backyard: the first two letters are addressed to a Holland metal stamper that just landed state conversion money and a Grand Rapids food manufacturer consolidating production here next month. Both letters, and the rubric that chose them, are readable before they arrive.} {TECH: The stack is the story's spine: the pipeline has 192 self-tests, the counters on the public scoreboard are computed from machine state rather than promised, and the same three days produced free field tools for trade workers whose differentiator is that they never phone home, in a trade currently furious about AI that records its technicians.} {SKEPTIC: The detail you will not believe until you click: our own voice tool's fine print leads with "you do not need AI for this," because the parsing is deterministic rules and we say so. The most valuable sentence an AI company can say is the one that costs it a sale, and we put it on the product.}

Why I am writing you specifically: {ONE_HONEST_SENTENCE_ABOUT_THE_OUTLET}. You have this exclusively for a week; if it is not for you, one reply says so and you will never hear from me again, a promise we extend to journalists and prospects alike, and log.

Everything is verifiable without talking to me: the ledger, the letters, the rules, the code. If you want the human anyway, I will make time the same day.

Bradley Isenbek bradley.io · Grand Rapids, Michigan

P.S. Full disclosure, which is the whole point: the AI drafted this pitch too. I read it, edited it, and signed it, which is exactly the process it describes. You just watched the story work.

Slots

• {FIRST_NAME}: a real person, never a tips@ inbox if avoidable.
• {MIDDLE_PARAGRAPH_BY_FLAVOR}: pick from the three above, tighten.
• {ONE_HONEST_SENTENCE_ABOUT_THE_OUTLET}: why them, in Brad's words; a template compliment reads as one.

After the answer

Published: the ledger names the outlet with a link, gratefully. Passed or silent after the window: next outlet, ledger notes "moved on," no name. Either way, one email each, forever.