ethanplusai/sellbird

What it does

Sellbird is a self-hosted outreach platform that walks a sales pipeline from prospecting to reply handling. It discovers companies matching your customer profile, reads their websites for buying signals, finds the owner or manager named on those pages, learns the company email pattern, verifies a deliverable address, writes a short personalized sequence, sends from your own mailbox within limits and office hours, and drafts answers to replies while honoring opt-outs.

Every step can be run end to end or stopped independently. If you only want a prospect list, you can stop after verification and export a CSV for a sequencer. The hosted version at sellbird.ai is in early access for users who do not want to run it themselves.

The project runs through the Claude Code CLI on a Claude Pro or Max plan, or through Codex on a ChatGPT plan, so there is no model API key or per-token billing. Default discovery uses OpenStreetMap for free; paid sources show their cost before a search runs. Email verification labels addresses as verified, risky, guess or invalid, and only deliverable addresses are sent to. See the pipeline documentation for the discovery, profile, enrich and verify stages.

Quick start

Prerequisites: Python 3.11 or newer, a signed-in Claude CLI (claude login) on a Pro or Max plan, or the Codex CLI on a ChatGPT plan, and a mailbox to send from, ideally on a separate sending domain. Warmup on that mailbox is recommended before cold email.

Manual setup, from the cloned repository directory:

python3.13 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate && pip install -e .
cp .env.example .env && $EDITOR .env
sellbird train https://your-company.com
sellbird signals --confirm free
sellbird discover
sellbird dashboard   # prints a private link to http://127.0.0.1:5555
sellbird run

The README notes that macOS may ship Python 3.9, so install a newer interpreter first. sellbird train reads your website to learn your product and writes sellbird.local.yaml; sellbird signals --confirm free confirms which buying signals make a good prospect. sellbird discover finds businesses from the default free source. The dashboard starts locally, and sellbird run begins the outreach loop. Linux users can run it with Docker instead. If you prefer guided setup, clone the repository, launch claude, and ask it to set up Sellbird; the repo's CLAUDE.md acts as the setup guide.

Approval and sending

Outgoing emails wait in the Outbox for approval until you deliberately enable autopilot. A pre-send check without a model call rejects unfilled merge tags, banned phrases, overlong messages, extra links and undeliverable addresses. Autopilot still withholds mail that links to domains that are not yours or quotes Sellbird's own instructions. sellbird sending pause stops sending immediately. Details are in Approval and sending.

Constraints and configuration

Sellbird requires a Claude Pro/Max or ChatGPT subscription with the matching CLI, plus a Gmail, Microsoft 365 or SMTP mailbox. Sending is bounded by a daily limit and recipient office hours configured in the project. Configuration lives in .env, sellbird.yaml and sellbird.local.yaml; the configuration reference documents variables and commands, and Microsoft 365 and Codex have separate setup guides.

The project is licensed under AGPL-3.0; releases up to 0.3.x under the Harvey name were MIT and retain that notice. The README also notes that TrulyInbox recommendation links are affiliate links, a revenue relationship worth knowing when evaluating the warmup suggestion. Cold outreach has legal and deliverability obligations; the deliverability guide covers the rules and warmup context. Users upgrading from Harvey should follow the migration notes, which describe renaming config and database files and what still works under old HARVEY_* variables.

HotRepo's take

Sellbird appeared in HotRepo's Python weekly list for the week of 2026-11-07 at position 12, with 1,163 stars gained and 4,618 total stars. That is a single weekly record, not a daily all-language rank, so it supports the fact of a strong week but not a longer trend. The interesting technical choice is running the pipeline on a consumer Claude or ChatGPT subscription rather than a metered API, combined with a free default discovery source and no required prospecting subscriptions. For a sales tool, the approval-first Outbox and the model-free pre-send checks give a practical default before anyone turns on autopilot.