The Library is where you define the core building blocks that power your messaging in Octave. Each element connects together to give context for playbooks, agents, and campaigns.

Offerings

Offerings represent what your company sells. They can be products or services, and they serve as the foundation for your messaging in Octave. All other elements in the Library, such as personas, use cases, and proof points, connect back to an offering. An offering can represent a software product, a service package, or any defined solution you take to market.

Personas

Personas represent the types of people or perspectives you want to speak to. They are not limited to job titles. Instead, they describe what a person values, what challenges they face, and what kind of messaging will land with them. A single persona can span multiple roles if those people share similar goals or pain points.

Use Cases

Use cases describe the functional jobs or outcomes your offering enables. Each offering will often have several use cases, depending on the customer's goal or workflow. Use cases help define why someone would buy your product and how they use it to achieve a result.

Segments

Segments represent the groups of companies or teams you want to reach. They combine both firmographic traits (like size, industry, or geography) and qualitative traits (like growth stage or go-to-market maturity). Segments are how you break up your market and think about different ways to go to market. For example, you might approach one part of your market differently from another based on how they operate, what stage they are in, or how they make purchasing decisions.

Proof Points

Proof points are aggregated outcomes or observations across your customer base. They show the measurable or qualitative impact your offering typically delivers. Examples could include increases in revenue, improvements in efficiency, or time saved. While reference customers tell one company's story, proof points summarize the broader results achieved by many customers.

Reference Customers

Reference customers are specific, named customers who illustrate success with your offering. They represent concrete examples of what happened and how they achieved results, rather than aggregate trends. Each reference customer captures the details of an individual story that can later support your proof points.

Competitors

Competitors are alternative tools, vendors, or approaches your audience might use today. Defining competitors helps clarify how you position your offering and where you have a competitive advantage.

The Library is where you define the key elements that shape how your company goes to market. This article outlines best practices for creating each Library element, and global best practices around bringing in context, creating the library, updating the library, and collaborating as a team.

1. Creation Best Practices (by Element)

• Offerings — Only create a new offering if you go to market in an entirely different way. That means a distinct motion, audience, or message. Keep offerings broad enough that each one represents a meaningful change in how you sell, not just a new feature or pricing tier.
• Personas — You don't need to list every possible job title. Focus on the audiences you message to in a meaningfully different way. A single persona can represent multiple roles if their goals or motivations overlap.
• Use Cases — Think of use cases as your core product stories, not a list of every benefit. Start with a few clear, high-value use cases that define what your offering helps customers accomplish.
• Segments — Focus on breaking up your market in a way that captures meaningful nuance. You don't need a long list or highly detailed breakdowns, but define enough distinct segments that you can start tailoring messaging. Identify a few clear slices that differ in how you talk to them or how they buy.
• Proof Points — Include proof points that are strong and representative of real customer results. Focus on the data or qualitative outcomes you want to consistently message around, and keep them grounded in evidence.
• Reference Customers — Choose reference customers that align with your key personas or segments. They don't have to be a perfect one-to-one match, but aim to have customers that map to the unique sections of your market.
• Competitors — Capture the competitors that actually show up in conversations or influence how you position yourself. You don't need a full list of everyone in the space. Focus on where you need to differentiate clearly and how your messaging should change when they come up.

2. Global Best Practices

Bringing in Context

Bring targeted, specific context into each element rather than trying to cover everything at once. If you're building a persona, use context and examples relevant to that persona only. If you're defining a use case, include details that help explain that use case clearly. The goal is to make each Library element concise, focused, and supported by relevant context from customer data, calls, or campaigns.

Building Your Library

Spend enough time upfront to make sure your Library accurately reflects how you understand your market today. It shouldn't take weeks, but a few hours of meaningful setup is worth the investment. The goal is to build a strong foundation that represents your best current view of your offerings, audiences, and use cases. It doesn't need to be perfect, but should be close enough that you can confidently run campaigns and learn from them.

Updating Your Library

Your Library should evolve as your product, audience, and strategy evolve. You don't need to update it daily or even weekly, but plan to make thoughtful changes as you learn from campaigns, sales conversations, or customer feedback. Expect updates roughly month to month or quarter to quarter as your GTM motion matures. Keep your Library stable enough to serve as a consistent foundation, but flexible enough to capture what's changing.

Collaboration and Time Allocation

Bring in the right people when creating or refining your Library. Product, marketing, GTM, and customer-facing teams can all provide valuable insight. It's worth spending focused time early so that what you build reflects your best understanding of your market. A strong foundation makes early campaigns more effective and learnings more valuable. There's no per-seat cost to collaborating in Octave, so involve anyone who helps shape your message.

The Library is the foundation of how Octave understands your market and builds messages. Every product, persona, use case, segment, and proof point you define in the Library flows downstream into Motions and Agents to shape how Octave communicates on your behalf.

How It Flows Through Octave

Library elements feed directly into Motions. When you create a Motion, Octave uses the personas and segments linked to your offering in the Library to generate a full ICP matrix with a tailored narrative at every Persona x Segment intersection. The Library provides the raw inputs; the Motion produces the strategic output.

When you connect a Motion to an Agent, that Agent determines where the target sits in the matrix (which segment, which persona) and uses the corresponding cell narrative to generate messaging grounded in that specific ICP context.

Dynamic vs Directed Use

Default Playbook — The Motion's default playbook covers the full matrix. The Agent finds the right cell at runtime and uses that narrative. This works for broad outbound where you want full coverage without manual configuration.

Themed Playbooks — Layer Motion Playbooks (Thematic, Milestone, Account, Competitive) on subsets of the grid for campaigns with a specific angle. You can let the Agent pick the best playbook at runtime or lock it to a specific one.

Both approaches draw from the same Library and the same ICP matrix. The difference is whether the Agent uses the broad default narrative or a focused overlay.

The Bottom Line

The Library is the base layer. Motions turn that structure into strategy with full ICP coverage, and Agents turn that strategy into action.

You can bring your own existing materials into Octave to sharpen how the system understands your company and your go-to-market strategy. If you've already done the work in slides, briefs, or docs, you don't need to start from scratch. Instead, you can upload or link that context directly into the Library so Octave's reasoning reflects what you already know: your positioning, audience insights, proof points, and more.

This helps Octave build a more accurate "brain" around your business. The richer the context you provide, the better your Agents can reason about who you serve, what you offer, and how to communicate your value.

What to Include by Element

• Product — Any context or documents you have about the positioning of the product as a whole.
• Personas — For each persona, if you've defined them in any documents, include those as context. Reference the "Common Job Titles" section to see how fuzzy matching works, and tweak it for titles you want to include or exclude.
• Use Cases — For each capability or use case, include any documents on why it exists, how it is helpful, and how it drives business outcomes.
• Reference Customers — For each one, include as much info as possible about how you helped them specifically and what they achieved. Reference Customers refer to actual customers, not ones on the wishlist.
• Segments — For each one, include any info on how these types of companies operate, why you care about them, etc.

Beyond Library entities, your Knowledge Base includes three style controls that shape how agents write and what they offer. These live alongside your Library and apply across Motions and Agents.

Brand Voice

Define reusable brand voices with core traits, guiding principles, tonal qualities to use and avoid, key terms, and additional context. Once created, select a brand voice on any Sequence or Content Agent and it automatically applies across all generated content.

• Core Traits — The personality attributes that define how your brand sounds (confident, approachable, technical, etc.).
• Guiding Principles — Rules your brand always follows (lead with value, never trash competitors, etc.).
• Tonal Qualities — Qualities to use and avoid (conversational over formal, concise over verbose, etc.).
• Key Terms — Brand-specific vocabulary and terminology the agent should use consistently.

Writing Styles

Writing Styles are saved versions of the formatting and copy configuration from the Sequence Agent. Instead of re-configuring sentence structure, paragraph length, punctuation preferences, and other writing mechanics every time you build a new agent, save them as a reusable Writing Style and apply it in one click. The voice defines personality, the style defines execution.

Smart CTAs

Smart CTAs let you define reusable calls-to-action so you don't have to re-prompt the Sequence Agent every time. Create a CTA once with "when to use" logic, and agents dynamically select the right one at runtime based on the recipient's profile.

• Fixed — Always use this exact CTA. Good when you have one clear ask for the entire campaign.
• Best Of — Pick the best CTA from a curated set you define. The agent chooses based on recipient context.
• Auto — The agent selects from your full CTA library automatically based on persona, role, and company type.

You provide specific companies, and the agent finds relevant contacts based on your persona and title criteria. This is best when you already have a defined target account list and need to identify who within each company to reach out to.

You provide a seed list of ideal customers, and the agent identifies similar companies, then surfaces contacts at those companies as well. Define similarity by offering type, industry, geography, employee count, revenue range, or company stage.

Before you configure your sequence, you need to establish the fundamentals: your test subject, sequence type, sequence length, AI model, and any baseline instructions that should apply to all emails.

Step 1: Select a Test Subject

Your test subject is the person you'll use to validate outputs as you build. Every time you change a configuration, you can run a test and see exactly how it affects the email generated for this person.

Why this matters: It lets you iterate in real time instead of guessing what changes will do.

Best practice: Choose someone who's genuinely representative of your list, ideally someone you'd actually want to reach out to. If your list is diverse, pick someone from a core persona or segment.

Step 2: Choose Your Sequence Type

This determines the framing and tone of your outreach. Octave tailors the approach based on your relationship with the prospect.

• Cold Email Sequence — For prospects with no prior relationship. The agent assumes you're introducing yourself and your offering for the first time.
• Warm Outbound — For prospects who have engaged with you (visited your site, downloaded content, signed up for a demo). The agent can reference that prior engagement.
• Inbound — For prospects who reached out to you first. The tone is different — they're already interested, so you're responding to their inquiry rather than initiating.
• Custom — For any other specific use case. You can provide custom context about the nature of the relationship.

Step 3: Set the Number of Steps

• 3-email sequence — Quick, punchy cadence. Good for highly targeted lists or simple offers.
• 4-email sequence — The most common. Good balance between persistence and avoiding fatigue.
• 5-email sequence — Extended cadence. Good when you have complex messaging or lower expected response rates.

This setting determines the flow and structure. A 3-email sequence has a different rhythm than a 5-email one, and Octave adjusts accordingly.

Step 4: Select Your AI Model

Different models have different trade-offs between cost and capability. Pick the one that matches your use case.

Pulse — Best for simple, straightforward offers. Use when you have a clean value prop and don't need heavy context complexity. Lowest cost.

Echo (Recommended) — Best for most typical use cases. Handles diverse personas and contexts well without being overkill. Mid-range cost. Why it's recommended: handles most use cases well.

Harmony — Best for complex organizational context. Use when you have lots of nuance in your Library (many personas, segments, playbooks) or you're passing significant runtime context (firmographics, company signals, etc.). Highest cost.

Step 5: Agent-Level Custom Instructions (Optional)

Add instructions that apply to all emails in your sequence. Think of this as baseline guardrails for the entire campaign.

Good examples of agent-level instructions:

• Avoid spam trigger words: "Never use these words: guarantee, limited time, exclusive offer."
• Style preferences: "Don't use em-dashes. Use short, punchy sentences."
• Context about your list: "These contacts visited our pricing page last week."
• Brand voice: "We're playful and irreverent, not formal."
• Campaign-wide constraints: "Keep every email under 100 words."

When to use agent-level instructions:

• Rules that apply across every email in the sequence
• General context the agent should know about the campaign
• Baseline copywriting or brand voice guidelines
• Information about why this list is warm, cold, or special

You can override or adjust these instructions for individual emails later, treat this as a default, not a hard rule.

Pro Tip: Don't overthink agent-level instructions on your first try. You can add more sophisticated ones as you see what Octave produces. Start simple, test, and refine.

Now that your agent is configured, the next step is defining what you're selling and which strategic context from your Library to use. This tells Octave what product to focus on and how to intelligently select the right messaging strategy for each prospect.

Step 1: Select Your Offering

Your offering is the product or service you're selling: the thing you're asking prospects to pay attention to or engage with. Most companies have one offering defined in Octave unless you're a true multi-product company.

If you are multi-product, you have two options:

• Auto Mode — Octave automatically selects the best offering for each prospect based on their profile and context. Useful if you have multiple products and want the agent to intelligently route.
• Manual Mode — You manually select a specific product or service to ensure this Sequence Agent always sells the right one.

When to use Manual Mode: If you're running a highly focused campaign around one product, pick Manual and hard-code that offering.

Step 2: Choose Your Context Selection Approach

After selecting your offering, you need to tell Octave which strategic context to use for messaging. You have two main approaches.

Approach 1: Using Playbooks (Recommended for Most Users)

Playbooks are tight, pre-defined strategies you've already built in your Library. Each playbook bundles together specific personas, use cases, segments, and reference customers into one focused go-to-market narrative.

Why Playbooks are powerful: They're opinionated. You've already made strategic decisions about who to target and how to position to them. Playbooks let you reuse that thinking without reconfiguring every element.

Option A: Best Match Playbook Mode (Auto)

When the agent runs on your list, it will review the prospect's LinkedIn profile and company domain, analyze which playbook from your Library is the best fit, and use that focused strategy to guide the messaging. Best for when you have multiple tight playbooks defined and want Octave to intelligently pick the right strategy for each prospect.

Example: You have three playbooks, "Series B Tech Companies," "Enterprise Healthcare," and "Mid-Market SaaS." With Best Match mode, Octave looks at each prospect and automatically chooses which playbook to use. No two prospects get the same messaging, it adapts based on their fit with each playbook.

Option B: Best Of Playbook Mode (Auto)

Same as Best Match but you limit Octave to choose from a subset of playbooks you provide.

Option C: Single Playbook Mode (Manual)

You hard-code the agent to use one specific playbook for your entire list. Best for when your list is already highly focused (for example, all VPs of Engineering at Series B companies or all Marketing Directors in Healthcare).

How to set it up: Switch from Auto mode to Manual mode, select the specific playbook for your focused audience, and every prospect on your list gets messaging tailored to that playbook.

Approach 2: Customizing Context Manually (Advanced)

If you don't want to use pre-built playbooks, you can manually customize exactly which context elements to use. This gives you granular control but requires more setup.

Instead of using a playbook, you're bundling together specific elements from your Library: Personas, Use Cases, Segments, Reference Customers, and Proof Points.

For each element, you can choose between:

• Auto Selection — Let Octave decide which element is best for each prospect. Example: "Choose the best persona based on job title and responsibilities." Octave analyzes each prospect and picks the most relevant persona automatically.
• Manual Selection — Specify exactly which elements to use. Example: "Only create messaging for the VP of Engineering persona." or "Only use these three use cases: API Integration, Real-Time Analytics, Compliance." Everyone on your list gets messaging built around those exact elements.

You can also mix and match — set some elements to Auto (Octave picks) and others to Manual (you specify).

Value Props Toggle

Value Props ON: Octave generates persona-specific versions of your story for each contact. This creates personalized messaging: each persona sees different value propositions.

Value Props OFF: Everyone in your list receives the same value proposition and story. This creates more consistent messaging but less personalization.

Best practice: Toggle ON for diverse lists. Toggle OFF for highly homogeneous lists.

Which Approach Should You Use?

Use Best Match / Best Of Playbook Mode (Auto) if: You have tight playbooks you trust, you want to save configuration time, your list has diverse personas or use cases, you want Octave to intelligently route messaging.

Use Single Playbook Mode (Manual) if: Your list is already very focused, everyone fits into one clear strategy, you want consistency across the entire campaign, you know exactly who you're targeting.

Use Customized Context if: You need granular control over context elements, your use case doesn't fit a standard playbook, you want to experiment with different context combinations, you're comfortable with extra configuration.

Pro Tip: If you have strong playbooks defined, use Best Match Mode, it saves time and produces excellent results. Only go custom if you have a specific reason to.

After selecting your context, the next step is configuring the writing style. This is your canvas to be as opinionated as you want with specific copywriting nuances. The writing style determines exactly how your emails will sound, look, and flow.

Best Practice: Start with Defaults

Before tweaking anything, run the agent with the default writing style first. It gives you a baseline to work from. Hit "Run Test" and see what Octave produces out of the box with standard configurations. This way, you can see what the agent produces with your context and offering, make deliberate informed changes, and avoid guessing, you'll know exactly what needs adjustment.

Global Email Settings

Tone

• Casual — Conversational and friendly. Good for younger companies, creative industries, or founder-to-founder outreach.
• Neutral — Professional but approachable. Most common; works across most industries and personas.
• Formal — Traditional business tone. Best for enterprise, legal, or highly regulated industries.

Reading Level: Controls vocabulary complexity. Recommended: High School. This level keeps your emails professional yet clear, smart people should understand you easily without confusion or jargon.

Email-Level Configurations

Here's the powerful part: each email in your sequence can have completely different configurations. Email 1 might be casual and short. Email 2 might be neutral and medium. Email 3 might be formal and long. You have complete flexibility.

Subject Line Settings

Configure how your subject lines are generated: include the person's name, include the company name, make it all lowercase (often improves open rates), add custom instructions for formatting.

Custom instruction examples: "Always use this format: [Company Name] + [Benefit]." or "Start with a question mark and number the sequence (Re: 1, Re: 2, etc.)."

Email Body Settings

Basic Controls: Length (Short/Medium/Long), Sentences (e.g., "7-9 sentences"), Paragraphs (e.g., "3-4 paragraphs").

Methodology (How Octave Structures the Email)

This controls how Octave writes your emails. Choose from three options:

• Octave Methodology — Octave's opinionated structure that follows proven best practices. Starts with the problem, avoids clichés like "Hope this finds you well," and follows a clear flow. Start here by default. It's battle-tested and high-performing.
• Mixed Methodology — Uses Octave's opinionated structure but lets you add specific rules. Use when you mostly like Octave's approach but want extra control. Examples: "Don't use these jargon terms", "Avoid starting sentences with 'Additionally'", "Keep paragraphs to two sentences max."
• Custom Instructions — Gives heavier weight to your own structure. Use when you have strong opinions about format. Examples: "First line should mention [X]", "Second line should say [Y]", "Always include [Z] in paragraph three."

Focus

Controls what the email emphasizes:

• Pain — Highlights the problem. Great for early emails.
• Benefits — Emphasizes outcomes. Great for later-stage emails.
• Neutral — Balanced mix of both. Most common.

Call to Action Settings

Every email needs an ending. Octave offers preset CTAs or allows custom ones.

Preset Options: Initiate conversation, Find time to connect, Request introduction, Ask for feedback, Politely disengage.

Best Practice CTA Strategy based on top-performing campaigns:

• Emails 1-2: Don't ask for time. Use "Initiate conversation" or a soft lead magnet ask.
• Emails 3-4: Ask for time, "Find time to connect" performs well here.
• Final email: Politely disengage. Giving an "out" builds trust and drives replies.

Custom CTAs: Use these when you want something not in presets. Example: "Hey, can I send you a guide on how a customer similar to you solved this problem?" This is a soft ask that's easy for prospects to say yes or no to. Select "Custom" instead of a preset, write clear instructions for structure, and describe the lead magnet or ask you want to use.

Training Examples (Most Important)

Training examples are the most powerful part of writing style configuration.

They're "golden examples": real emails you'd send to one person. Octave uses that one-to-one example to scale your tone, logic, and flow across your entire list. You're not creating a template. You're showing Octave how you think.

How to add Training Examples: Click "+" under Training Examples, add your golden example for that email, repeat for each email (optional).

What makes a great training example:

• Highly relevant to a specific person (not generic)
• Matches the tone and style you want replicated
• Demonstrates how you'd reference persona, use case, or company details
• Shows your preferred structure and flow

Example: Instead of "Hey, we help companies with X", try: "I noticed you just hired a VP of Engineering. That usually means you're scaling the team and running into data pipeline issues. We worked with [similar company] on this and helped cut data latency in half while saving 40 hours a week. Worth a quick conversation?"

This tells Octave: use research signals, mention similar companies, lead with outcomes, and end with a soft ask.

Key insight: You're teaching Octave your approach. It will intelligently adapt it to everyone else on your list.

Configuring Individual Emails

Each configuration option can differ for every email in your sequence. Example strategy:

• Email 1: Casual tone, short, Octave Methodology, Pain focus, "Initiate conversation" CTA
• Email 2: Neutral tone, medium, Mixed Methodology, Neutral focus, Lead magnet CTA
• Email 3: Neutral tone, medium, Octave Methodology, Benefits focus, "Find time to connect" CTA
• Email 4: Formal tone, short, Custom Instructions, Benefits focus, "Politely disengage" CTA

You have full flexibility to design your rhythm.

Pro Tip: Don't try to perfect everything before the first test. Run it with defaults, see what happens, and then make targeted improvements. Iterate, don't over-engineer.

Now that you've configured your agent, it's time to test it, tune it up, and launch it in your automation tool. This section covers how to iterate on your outputs and integrate Octave into your workflow.

Step 1: Run Your First Test

Hit "Run Test" to see what your agent produces with the current configuration.

What to look for:

• Does the tone match your brand?
• Is the structure right?
• Are the CTAs appropriate?
• Does it use context effectively?
• Does it feel like something you'd actually send?

Don't expect perfection on the first run. This is your starting point for iteration. Even if you like 70% of what you see, that's a great baseline to build from.

Step 2: Improve Outputs with Chat

Instead of manually adjusting configurations, use the Improve Email feature to chat directly with the agent.

How to use Improve Email:

1. Click the "Improve Email" button on any output
2. Describe what you want to change (e.g., "Split up the paragraphs for better readability" or "Make the second paragraph more specific to their company")
3. Select which emails to improve (or apply to all)
4. Review the configuration changes Octave makes
5. Choose to either Approve Changes (save updates) or Approve and Rerun (save and test again immediately)

Key benefit: You're chatting with the agent to improve outputs instead of manually tweaking settings. Octave applies your feedback automatically to the writing style, saving time and keeping iterations fast.

Step 3: Turn Good Outputs into Training Examples

When you see an output that's about 90% there and you like it but want to tweak it, convert it into a Training Example.

How to add outputs as Training Examples:

1. Find an output you mostly like
2. Click "Add to Training Examples"
3. The email appears in your Training Examples section
4. Edit it to make it perfect
5. Save it as your golden example

Why this matters: Training examples are the most powerful way to teach Octave your exact voice. Starting with a strong output and refining it is faster than writing from scratch. This creates a feedback loop: Octave generates → you refine → it becomes a training example → future outputs improve.

Step 4: Save Your Writing Style as a Preset

Once you have a writing style you love, save it to reuse across future agents.

How to save a preset: Go to the top of the Writing Style panel, click "Save Style", name your preset (e.g., "Cold Outbound – Tech Buyers" or "Warm Inbound – Enterprise"), and load it in future agents as needed.

Benefit: You shorten the path to high-quality copy. Instead of configuring from scratch each time, load your preset and you're 80-90% there instantly.

Using Saved Presets: When building a new agent, go to the Writing Style step, load your saved preset, the agent immediately produces copy that matches your tone, and make minor tweaks for the specific campaign if needed.

Step 5: Test in Your Automation Tool

Before launching at scale, test your agent on a small sample.

Best practice: Run on 5-10 rows first to check how it performs across different prospects, catch issues before full rollout, and make final writing style adjustments.

If you're using Clay: Add the Octave enrichment column to your table, select 5-10 rows to run, review outputs across personas and companies, and confirm the agent adapts correctly to each context.

Step 6: Deploy to Your Workflow

Once outputs look good, integrate Octave into your automation workflow.

Example: Clay Integration:

Your data table should include: First name, Job title, Company domain, LinkedIn profile, Company name.

Setup steps:

1. Add the Octave column or node to your Clay table
2. Run on 5-10 rows to verify results
3. Map the outputs to your campaign tool: Email campaigns (Instantly, Smartlead), LinkedIn campaigns (HeyReach), Both (SuperSend, LaGrowthMachine, Lemlist)

Pro Tip: Extract Email Fields: Open the Octave payload, extract emails and subject lines as individual columns, and map those directly into your campaign tool. This keeps your view clean and ensures accurate delivery.

Step 7: Deploy at Scale

When you're confident in the results: remove the row filter, run the agent on your full list, generate emails for every prospect, map the outputs to your campaign tool, and launch your sequence.

In Short: The Sequence Agent is designed for iteration. Run it, see what comes out, refine, and repeat until it's production-ready. The combination of chat-based refinements, training examples, testing with profiles in Octave, and testing on profiles in Clay should help you tailor your agent to match your specific and desired style.