How to use this site

Pick your role. Get five rules. That is the whole method.

There is no course and no onboarding to complete. The shelf is small on purpose, and it filters itself to your desk.

Show me what applies to me Check a domain

The filter is the product
Say what kind of work you do and where you send. You get five rules to open first, not all 39. Of those 39, your email tool already covers 24 — the site says so on every page rather than letting you worry about them.
Every rule answers the same four questions
Plain English first. Then whose job it is, the one thing to do first on a named screen, and who can stop reading. Dotted words open a definition in place.
Dates are the substance
Every rule carries an effective date, a last-verified date and its own changelog. Nothing goes on the shelf without a primary source you can open. Pages older than ninety days say so instead of pretending.
Come back only when something moves
What changed is market moves, not housekeeping. A quiet month means nothing material happened, which is the honest result and the one no newsletter will give you.

Sharing with a team? The one-page brief turns your filter into something you can paste into Slack or print. What is on the shelf and what we refuse to put on it is on the coverage map.

Awkward questions

Who is this actually for?

People who ship email and are too busy to re-read every PDF: week-one marketers, lifecycle/CRM, deliverability, multi-country ops, DTC brands, agencies — on Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Braze, HubSpot, SFMC, or something else. Pick your tool and geos so product-specific pages only appear when they match. EU and UK are first-class filters. Not for people who sell tools about email and need a fake score to demo.

Why only ~40 rules? Isn’t that… thin?

On purpose. A wall of 400 undated “best practices” is how you look busy and still get burned. Every page needs a primary source we actually read. Thin and checkable beats fat and folklore. Europe, bulk inbox rules, measurement honesty, and protocol topics like BIMI/DMARC policy are on the shelf when we can cite them — not every Member State and not every vendor myth. Coverage map lists what we still refuse to invent.

Is this legal advice?

No. If it were, you’d have a billable hour and a longer PDF. This is a dated operator reference written by an email geek. Confirm anything high-stakes with counsel who knows your facts. Same for “will this make me compliant?” — no tool does that. Lawyers and judges do. We say what the sources say and what to do first on Monday.

Why no trust score out of 100?

Because we refuse to invent a number you can’t audit. Fake scores sell seed tests and panic. You get findings, dates, and links. If that feels less exciting than a red dial, good — you’re not the red-dial customer.

Why should I trust you more than my ESP’s blog?

ESPs sell seats. Seed-score vendors sell fear. AI invents citations when nobody watches. We sell nothing today — no pixels, no placement scores, no affiliate — so we can say when a tool is the problem. A human verifies, dates, and corrects in public. Tools may help draft; they do not ship unsourced claims. Check the primary links. Fail that test and leave.

Do I need an account?

No. Filters live in this browser and the URL. Share the link. That’s it. Accounts come later only if they earn it — not so we can nurture you about email.

I’m an agency. Where’s multi-client mode?

We tried a client-name CRM on the setup card. It made the product feel like work before it felt useful. Role filters + copy link + one-page brief (optional PDF title) is enough for now. Complexity comes back when the free shelf is habit, not before.

Is the quiet changelog a bug?

No. Quiet means nothing material moved. We don’t invent urgency so the homepage looks “alive.” Sticky risks still show what usually needs a person when the market is still.

Pick your role. Get five rules. That is the whole method.

The filter is the product

Every rule answers the same four questions

Dates are the substance

Come back only when something moves

Awkward questions