Build · Intermediate · A weekend
Build a lead research and outreach assistant with open-source software
Catch leads, research them and send a personal reply or post, without a sales-tool subscription.
Instead of paying for Typeform, Firecrawl Cloud, ChatGPT Plus, Zapier or Mailchimp.
What you'll build
An assistant for the busywork of finding customers: when someone fills in your contact form, it reads their website, drafts a reply that mentions what they actually do, and queues it for you to send. The same setup helps you turn a long post into a short social version or test video titles. It replaces a stack of sales and AI writing subscriptions with tools you run, and you approve every message before it goes out.
Blueprint
A Formbricks form catches the lead, Crawl4AI reads their site, LibreChat drafts the reply or post, and listmonk sends it.
- You A contact or enquiry form on your site Formbricks
- Formbricks A new lead with their website Activepieces
- Activepieces The website to read Crawl4AI
- Crawl4AI What they do, in plain text LibreChat
- LibreChat A draft reply to approve You
- You The approved message listmonk
The repos
- 01 · Catch the lead Formbricks
Self-hostable survey platform for link, website, in-app and email surveys with logic, webhooks and integrations; some team features are Enterprise.
- Setup
- Medium; one-click Ubuntu script or Docker Compose, needs a domain with HTTPS source
- Hardware
- 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 20 GB SSD for evaluation; 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM for low load source
- Paid extras
- Core is free with unlimited responses; Enterprise adds branding removal, teams and roles, contacts, SSO, audit logs, spam protection
- 02 · Research the lead Crawl4AI
Open-source Python web crawler that turns pages into clean, LLM-ready Markdown or structured JSON, as a library, CLI or Docker server.
- Setup
- Easy, pip install crawl4ai then crawl4ai-setup to install the browser source
- Hardware
- Not documented; runs a headless browser source
- Paid extras
- None required; LLM extraction optional (local Ollama or paid APIs), Crawl4AI Cloud optional
- 03 · Draft the message LibreChat
Self-hosted ChatGPT-style interface for many AI providers, with agents, MCP, file chat, web search and multi-user auth.
- Setup
- Medium; Docker Compose (bundles MongoDB, MeiliSearch, RAG API) or npm + MongoDB source
- Hardware
- Not documented; depends on the model you run source
- Paid extras
- Works with local Ollama; most providers it targets are paid APIs
- 04 · Connect the steps Activepieces
Self-hostable no-code automation builder with 280+ TypeScript integrations ("pieces") that are also exposed as MCP servers.
- Setup
- Medium, install script or a single docker run with embedded database source
- Hardware
- Not documented
- Paid extras
- None required; enterprise licence and Activepieces Cloud are optional
- 05 · Send the email listmonk
Self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager in a single Go binary with PostgreSQL; lists, SQL segments, templates, analytics and archives.
- Setup
- Easy; download binary or docker compose up, plus a PostgreSQL database source
- Hardware
- Light; a production instance sent 7M+ emails using a fraction of one core and 57 MB peak RAM source
- Paid extras
- App is free; you need an SMTP server or sending service such as Amazon SES to deliver mail
Step by step
Install commands change, so each step links to the repo's own docs for the exact commands.
-
Put a form on your site
Create an enquiry form in Formbricks that asks for name, email and website, and embed it on your site.
Uses Formbricks · its docs
-
Wire it together
Build an Activepieces flow from new form response, to Crawl4AI, to the draft, and email the draft to you for approval.
Uses Activepieces · its docs
Watch out
Cold email rules differ by country; only email people who can expect to hear from you.
Take it further
- Turn each blog post into a short LinkedIn version with the same LibreChat prompt.
- Generate ten title options for a video and pick the best yourself.
- Score incoming leads by fit before you read them.
Questions
Can I use this for cold email?
Be careful. Many countries restrict unsolicited email. This build is designed for people who contacted you first.
Will it sound like a robot?
Less so if your saved prompt includes examples of your own writing and you edit each draft before sending.
Do I need LibreChat?
It gives you a chat screen and saved prompts. You could call Ollama directly from Activepieces instead.
Every repo here is open source, still maintained and checked against its own documentation. How we check →