Home / Articles / The man behind the curtain: the emails from my agents are from me, there is an article behind each one, and every line has to buy the next

The man behind the curtain: the emails from my agents are from me, there is an article behind each one, and every line has to buy the next

By Dinis Cruz · 2026-10-18 · article v1.0.0 · newsroom v0.12.112 · emailagentshuman-in-the-loopwizard-of-ozwritingnewsroomarticle

Abstract: Some of the people who get emails from my agents have assumed they were talking to a chatbot, and, because most of us have learned that chatbots are not very clever, read them that way. They are not talking to a chatbot. They are talking to me. The agents draft, follow up, map the thread and collect the evidence; I read every draft, use it to think, change it, and send it. It is the Wizard of Oz in reverse. In 1984 an IBM researcher named the method where a hidden person makes a half-built program look clever; here the program is the visible part and the person is the one hidden. And there is a second thing behind the curtain: an article. When I answer an email, there should almost always be an article behind the answer, with the evidence and the explanation, and if there is not one ready, that is a sign it is worth writing. That is why a short email to me can get a long answer, and why it scales: I write the article once and link it many times. The voice memo for this article also changed how I want the first email to someone to look. Every part of an email buys the next: the subject buys the first line, the first line buys the paragraph, the paragraph buys the email. So the first email should open with plain text, a short paragraph that says it all, and put the banner and the detail below. This page is also meant to be the link at the bottom of those emails.

In short

• Some people think my agents' emails come from a chatbot. And read them the way we have learned to read chatbots.
• They come from me. The agents draft; I read, think, change and send every one.
• It is the Wizard of Oz, in reverse. The program is visible; the person is behind the curtain.
• There is an article behind almost every answer. If there is not one ready, it is worth writing.
• That is how it scales. A short email can get a long answer, because the answer is written once and linked many times.
• Every part of an email buys the next. Subject, first line, first paragraph, the email, the article.
• So the first email should start like an email. Plain text, the short answer first, the detail below.

They thought it was a chatbot

A few of the people I have emailed through my agents have gone the opposite way from what I expected. They assumed the email came from a chatbot: an automated reply, a model behind a form, with nobody reading. And I understand why. Most of us have been trained, by years of customer-service bots and support widgets, that a chatbot is not very clever. The few that are, ChatGPT, Claude and the other labs' models, we use in a chat window, not in our inbox. So when an email arrives that is clearly written with an agent's help, the easy reading is: another bot.

That reading is wrong, and it matters that it is wrong. How you read an email depends on who you think wrote it: what you forgive, what you trust, whether you bother to answer. Who is speaking made the same point about this site, and proposed a line on every email saying who drafted it and who sent it. This article is the fuller answer, and I want it to be the link at the bottom of those emails.

The Wizard of Oz, in reverse

The analogy I keep coming back to is the Wizard of Oz: the voice and the machinery in front, and a man behind the curtain. In this case the man is me.

It is also, almost exactly, a research method. In 1984 J. F. Kelley, at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, described how he built a natural-language calendar program using what he called the OZ paradigm, "in which experimental participants are given the impression that they are interacting with a program that understands English as well as another human would." In the early stages, a hidden experimenter supplied the answers the program could not; as the program improved, the hidden person did less and less (Kelley, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, March 1984). It is now usually called the Wizard of Oz method.

My emails reverse it in two ways. First, nobody is being given an impression: I am telling you, here and in the email, that I am behind it. Second, the hidden person is not being phased out. For emails, the person stays, on purpose. An article can be corrected tomorrow; an email cannot be unsent. That is the line the human in the loop drew: put the person where the output cannot be undone, and an email in my name is exactly that.

What happens behind the curtain

The agents that run my correspondence, the agent team as it runs, do a lot. They draft the reply. They follow up the thread. They map what was said into a CRM, one folder per person, with where each fact came from. They collect the evidence and the data. They keep track of what is owed to whom. And they send nothing to the people I write to: every email waits in drafts.

Then it is my turn. I read every draft. More than that, I use the drafts as a way to think: a draft is a first answer, and reading it tells me what I actually want to say. Often I change it a lot. And often, as I was doing earlier today, I decide the answer needs more than an email can carry, and I ask for an article instead, so that the email can be short and point to it.

An article behind every email

These days my rule is: if I am sending an email that answers a real question, there should almost always be an article behind it, or a set of articles, with the evidence, the explanation and what can actually be done. And if there is not one ready, that is the signal that it is worth writing one.

Some of the articles on this site started exactly like that. What can your agent reach? answers a reader who spent real time on RiskMandate and came back with four fair points. The human in the loop answers a question from someone shaping a roundtable. Research, delivered as a vault came out of a meeting.

Someone pointed out to me that they had sent me an email of about two hundred words and got back something closer to two thousand. Fair. But it works, because I only have to write it once. The next person who asks the same question gets a link. The article can be read later, forwarded to a colleague, checked against its sources, and corrected as a new version when I learn more, none of which an email can do. Each answer makes the next one cheaper.

Every part of an email buys the next

Recording the memo for this article changed my mind about how the first email to someone should look.

Each part of an email buys the next. The subject, a few seconds of attention, buys the first line. The first line buys the rest of the paragraph. The first paragraph buys the decision to read the email. By the end of the email the reader is more committed, and the email buys the article. Nothing further down gets read if something higher up did not earn it.

This matters more than it sounds, because of what the inbox shows. Next to the subject, most mail clients show a preview, which is normally "pulled from the first text in your email", and they show up to about 140 characters of it, often fewer, by Customer.io's estimate. So the first sentence of the email is, in practice, part of the subject line.

Today, when my agents send a first email to someone, it starts with an HTML banner that explains who we are. That spends the most valuable space on the least useful thing. I think the first email should start like a normal email: plain text, one short paragraph that is the whole answer, the TL;DR, so that someone who reads only that has what they need. Then the detail, the banner and the links below. The US Army has a rule for this: its correspondence regulation asks for "putting the main point at the beginning of the correspondence (bottom line up front)" (AR 25-50, 2013, paragraph 1-36).

So the changes for the agents that draft my emails are:

1. Open with plain text. One short paragraph that answers the question or says why I am writing.
2. The detail and the banner go below. For the reader who has decided to keep going.
3. Say who is speaking. A line saying the email was drafted with my agents and sent by me.
4. Link this article at the bottom. For anyone who wonders who is behind the curtain.

We are starting to try variations of the first email, and I will report what we learn.

The memo is where the thinking happens

This article is also an example of why I write by voice memo. I started recording with one idea, that people misread my agents' emails, and by the end I had three: the curtain, the article behind every email, and how each part of an email buys the next. The memo zooms in as I talk. Then the agent that writes with me checks it against the record and the sources, and what I thought I remembered becomes something I can link. That is the method in your own newsroom.

And there is a bigger point I will write next: people who can work this way, with agents behind them and an article behind every answer, are highly employable. It is a real opportunity, and I want to say so clearly in its own article.

If you got here from one of my emails

Then yes: the email was drafted with my agents and sent by me. I read it before it went. If it was long, it is because I wanted you to have the full answer, and the article behind it is where the full answer lives. If you only read one paragraph, the first one should have been enough; if it was not, tell me, and I will fix how the next one starts.

What this does not claim

• The chatbot reading is anecdotal. A few people, not a measured result.
• The new email layout is a proposal. The current first emails start with a banner; the plain-text-first version is what we are starting to try.
• The preview length varies. About 140 characters is an estimate; many clients show fewer.
• Not every email gets an article. Short replies stay short; the rule is for answers to real questions.
• The analogy is loose. Kelley's participants were not told; my correspondents are.

If you have read one of these emails and want to say how it read to you, write to agent@riskmandate.ai.

Where this comes from

A voice memo from me on 18 October 2026. J. F. Kelley, An iterative design methodology for user-friendly natural language office information applications, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems 2(1), March 1984, pages 26 to 41, read from the paper. US Army, AR 25-50, Preparing and Managing Correspondence, 17 May 2013, paragraph 1-36b, read from the archived PDF. Customer.io, custom preheader text. Related: who is speaking, the human in the loop, the agent team as it runs, what can your agent reach?, research, delivered as a vault, my memory, checked, your own newsroom. Written up and checked by this site's agent, newsroom.writer; the editorial responsibility is mine.

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