Everything you'd want to ask before trying it

What is Bob?

A tool that finds every introduction sitting in your mailbox, shows you who has actually connected you to people over the years, and helps you write back to them.

There is no data entry. You don't add contacts, tag anyone, or import a spreadsheet. The introductions are already in your email — Bob just reads them out.

Who is it for?

People whose network is part of their work and who make or receive a lot of introductions. Investors, recruiters, community builders, anyone who has spent years connecting people and has never once seen the shape of it.

What does it cost?

Bob itself is free and open source. You need a paid Claude plan that includes Claude Code, which is how Bob is installed and run. There is no Bob subscription, no account to make, and nothing to pay its author.

How do I get it?

Two lines in Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add rkroft/bob
/plugin install bob@bob

Then /bob-setup, which asks two questions. You will also need the Gmail connector switched on for the mailbox you want read — that is how Bob reads your mail. The source is at github.com/rkroft/bob — MIT licensed, and worth a look before you give any tool access to your mail.

Bob is early. The install works and the scan runs; the follow-up loop and the impact view are still being built.

Where does Bob run?

On your own computer, inside Claude Code. Two doors:

Do I need to be technical?

No terminal, and no developer work. Setup asks two questions: which mailbox to read, and which folder to write to.

Bob reads your mail through the Gmail connector on your own Claude account. There is no credential to create, no package to install, and no shared application in the middle — Bob's author has no way to reach your mail.

Can I try it without connecting my mail at all?

Yes. Export your mail from Google Takeout and point Bob at the file. Nothing is connected and nothing is granted — Bob reads a file sitting on your disk. The tradeoff is that a full export takes a while to arrive and is a large download.

How long does the first run take?

About twenty minutes for six years of mail, and most of that is waiting. You get the whole thing in one go: Bob reads, builds the table, draws the page, and opens it.

What do I see first?

A page of your own network: every introduction Bob found, who made it, when, and a link back to the original thread for each one so you can check any row rather than take its word.

Usually there's a surprise in it. Most people are wrong about who their top connectors are.

Does it cover introductions I made, or only ones made for me?

Both. Bob knows which seat you were sitting in, so an introduction you made is kept apart from one made for you, and it can tell you whether each one took hold — whether both people replied, whether anyone booked time.

What are the chains?

The thing you can't see from an inbox. Someone introduces you to one person, and that person goes on to introduce you to nine more. Bob follows that, so an introduction is measured by what it produced rather than by the fact it happened.

It reads the other way too. You know Terry because Jen introduced you to Levi, Levi introduced you to Eve, and Eve introduced you to Terry.

Does it write the thank-yous?

It asks what came of the introductions that took hold, a sentence each or skip, and then drafts the emails. Your sentence is the copy — Bob isn't paraphrasing a form field, it's using what you said.

It also finds the introductions that never landed, which is often the more useful list. A warm introduction going to waste is a door still open.

Will it send anything on my behalf?

No. Drafts land in your Gmail drafts and stay there, and nothing leaves without you sending it.

Worth being exact: the Gmail connector Bob reads through can send. Bob does not, and no Bob command sends anything. That is a rule Bob keeps rather than something the connector makes impossible.

Does it work with Airtable?

Yes, if you want it to. Bob can mirror what it found into your own Airtable base — one table of introductions, one of people. It's one-way and additive: re-running never duplicates rows and it never deletes anything. Bob doesn't hold your Airtable login; it goes through the connection already on your account.

Can it tell me what came of an introduction I made?

No, and this is the real limit. Once you hand two people off to each other, they talk to each other and not to you. Your mailbox stops being evidence at that moment.

Knowing what became of it would mean going and asking them, which is a different feature with its own questions attached. It isn't built.

It only sees one channel.

Bob reads email. An introduction can land perfectly well over text, LinkedIn, or a phone call, and Bob will never know. So it says "I don't see a reply — did it go somewhere else?" rather than telling you that you never replied. If it's wrong, correct it and it won't ask again.

It can't see introductions you weren't part of.

The chains only follow where every step touched your own mailbox. If someone you know introduced two other people to each other, that happened somewhere Bob cannot see. This is a picture of your network compounding, not a map of everyone's.

Can my whole firm use it?

Not as one shared thing. Bob is built for one person and one mailbox, so everyone would run their own. A firm-level view where partners see each other's introductions is a genuinely interesting problem and an honest amount of work. It isn't around the corner.

Does it use LinkedIn?

No, and it won't. Automated LinkedIn access risks your account, and that's not a risk worth handing to anyone's tool.

Where does everything live?

In a folder you pick, on your own machine. A couple of spreadsheet files and a web page. You can open them, edit them, back them up, or delete the folder and be done.

Can Bob's author see any of it?

No — and not as a policy you have to trust. There is no Bob server and no Bob account, and she holds no credential of yours because none exists to hold.

Your mail does pass through Anthropic's servers when Claude reads it, under the connector grant already on your account. That is between you and Anthropic, on terms you accepted before Bob existed. Bob's author is not in it.

What exactly can it read?

Your mail, through the Gmail connector on your Claude account. Bob holds no credential of its own.

That connector is not read-only — it can draft, label, send and trash. Bob reads and writes drafts, and does nothing else with it. If you use the export route instead, it reads a file and asks for nothing at all.

Does the network page phone home?

It makes no network requests of any kind. It's a file on your disk opened in your browser. There is nothing to share unless you choose to share it.

What if I put it in Airtable?

Then it leaves your laptop, and Bob will say so out loud before it does — once, at the moment you decide, rather than buried in a document you'd never read.