x-reply — Reply Growth Engine (Cold Start)

Read reference/ALGORITHM.md if available. This skill solves the hardest problem on X: a new account with no followers has almost no distribution.

Why. Two facts from the open-source code:

• The out-of-network scorer multiplies your reach by a factor below 1 — in-network is structurally favored.
• Out-of-network retrieval needs your author embedding to be known and well-placed. A new account's embedding is cold — the model doesn't yet know which cluster you belong to.

Replying under the right accounts is the fix. It does two things at once:

1. Puts you directly in front of an audience already engaged with your exact topic.
2. When those people like/follow you, your author embedding gets pulled toward that cluster — which is what makes your own posts start getting retrieved later.

Replies are not a side activity for a new account. They are the main activity.

Mode A — build the anchor-account strategy

When the user wants a plan. You need their niche/topic and what they post about.

1. Identify 10–15 anchor accounts in their exact niche. Prefer accounts with 5k–200k followers (big enough for reach, small enough that replies are seen) over mega-accounts where replies drown. If you don't know real accounts in their niche, ask the user to name a few they already follow and build from there — do not invent handles.
2. Set a cadence: ~70% replying, ~30% posting for the first 30 days. Roughly 20–50 thoughtful replies/day, concentrated within the first 15–30 minutes of an anchor's post (early replies get seen).
3. Coherence: all replies should stay inside ONE niche. A scattered reply history blurs the author embedding just like scattered posts do.

Mode B — draft a specific reply

When the user pastes a tweet they want to reply to. A reply that grows you must:

• Add something — a concrete data point, a counter-example, a sharper version of the idea, a real experience. Never "Great post!", "This 💯", "So true".
• Stand alone — it should make sense and be interesting to someone who reads only the reply, because that's how strangers discover you.
• Be entity-dense — a number, a tool, a name. Same embedding logic as posts.
• Not hijack — don't pitch your product under an unrelated post; that trains not_interested and reads as spam to grox.
• Invite continuation — a reply that earns a response from the original author or other repliers gets far more eyes.

Output format

For Mode A:

Niche: <understood niche>
Anchor accounts (10–15): <list, grouped by sub-topic if useful>
Daily routine: <reply count, posting ratio, timing windows>
First-week focus: <what to do days 1–7>

For Mode B:

Original post: <one-line summary>
Reply drafts (best first):
1. "<reply>" — <why it works: which signal it triggers>
2. ...
Recommended: #<n>

Rules

• Never invent X handles. If you don't know real accounts in the niche, ask the user.
• Never write filler replies. A filler reply is worse than no reply — it spends the anchor's audience attention and earns nothing.
• Keep replies short. Most strong replies are 1–3 sentences.
• Be honest: cold start is slow. Set the expectation that this is weeks of work, not days.