Allies answers one question: whose trust can this message borrow, and what do we bring to the table?
You start by choosing the offer you're growing — one built in the Studio, or one you've brought in from outside (upload a PDF/DOCX, paste the copy, or type it in). Everything after that is tuned to growing that offer, not partnership in the abstract.
1. Borrowed Trust Map (campaign level) — and you approve it
Set a growth objective — "40 registrations for the September workshop" — and Allies builds the map once per offer:
- Which pockets of people already trust someone else, and why that matters here
- The strongest credible bridge from someone else's audience into your offer
- The proof you already hold that makes a partner comfortable saying yes
- What you can genuinely give a partner back
- The one move to make this week
Alongside the written strategy it builds structured audience pockets: each pocket names where your ideal client is already gathered, why they are there, the types of person who hold the trust inside it, the observable signals that prove someone really reaches it, the plays that fit, who must be kept out, and how your offer bridges in.
A fresh map is a draft. It guides nothing until you read it and press Approve this map. Once approved, it is the authority: discovery searches those pockets and nothing else. Edit it and it drops back to draft until you approve it again, so the map on screen is always the map that ran.
This is built once and cached, so it costs one pass — not one per partner.
2. Discovery inside your pockets
Press Find partners in these pockets and Allies searches pocket by pocket for people who already hold trust and access there — network convenors, community leaders, podcast and newsletter hosts, conference organisers, ministry leaders, association heads.
Every result is classified before it is kept:
- Complementary — they hold the audience, you hold the transformation. Kept.
- Neutral — adjacent, no conflict. Kept.
- Substitute — they sell essentially the same transformation you do. For a book offer that means ghostwriters, book coaches, editors, publishing consultants and author-services agencies. Dropped, unless your approved map contains an explicit written reason to work with that kind of business.
That check is a hard rule, not a suggestion. A result that describes itself in competitor language is dropped even when the research argues it is a great fit. Every run tells you how many were left out and why.
Everything found lands in the candidate pool, which costs you nothing and has no limit.
2b. Verification is a separate check
Discovery never marks anyone verified. Press Check them on a partner and a separate pass tries to prove six things independently, each against its own source: identity, current activity, audience access, relevance to the pocket, past collaboration, and a contact route.
Someone counts as independently checked only when identity, current activity and audience access are all proven with a link. A claim with no source is never counted as confirmed. You see exactly what was proven and what was not.
Instead of a fit score out of 100 — precision we never actually had — each partner carries evidence labels: strong audience-access match, complementary relationship, current and active, contact route verified, has partnered before, substitute risk, evidence incomplete.
3. Unlimited research, capped conversations
Three different things, deliberately not one number:
- Research pool — unlimited. Candidate, shortlist and warming records can run into the hundreds or thousands. Nothing throttles research.
- Outreach capacity — yours to set. The default working rate is 50 new conversations a week; raise it to 100, 250 or higher as your sending and follow-up can carry it. You can also set an optional ceiling on how many conversations run live at once — that's your own discipline, not a product limit. Once a mailbox is connected, the weekly figure is narrowed by real sending capacity and the card says plainly which basis it is using.
- Attention queue — deliberately small. 10-25 items needing a decision at any one time (12 by default). You can have 80 contacted partners and 35 open conversations while Allies only puts the 12 that matter in front of you.
Change all three under Outreach capacity at the top of Allies.
Pipeline: Candidate → Shortlist → Warming → Contacted → Conversing → Partnered / Passed.
4. Opportunity Brief
Before you write a word, generate the brief for that partner:
- The honest case for them, tied to the evidence
- A mutual value hypothesis — what they get, what you get, what their audience gets, with a confidence rating that drops when the evidence is thin
- The recommended play
- The smallest credible ask they could say yes to this week
- The likely objection, and how to defuse it in the first message
- What not to say
5. Outreach — written by AI, sent by you
Allies never sends anything. It drafts in your Voice DNA, you edit, you send, then you log what happened: sent, followed up, they replied, still quiet. Status and follow-up dates move themselves off that log.
6. Recommended this week
A five-item list, worked out from what has actually happened — no AI call, no cost. Overdue follow-ups first, silent contacts next, then briefs to build, messages to send, and candidates worth a free slot.
7. Intent-aware partner packs
Set each partner's intent:
- Relationship (default) — friendship and reciprocity. No commercial ask, no pack.
- Collaborator — joint content, guest teaching, co-hosted workshop. Unlocks a collaboration brief: the shape of the session, who does what, and the audience promise.
- Promoter — they'll promote a specific offer for a commission. Unlocks the full pack (partner brief, short and long email, social post, talking points, affiliate link placeholder) plus a suggested commission for the price band.
Promoter packs are deliberately gated: you need the Promoter intent, a chosen offer, and a real conversation already underway.
Note: The old Envoy tool lives here as the "Promoter" intent. Anything you added in Envoy is already in Allies — filter by intent.