we got it. you are in.

Someone fills in your waitlist worksheet and then hears nothing. Did it work? Are they in? This step makes your site answer them by email, three times: when their worksheet arrives, when they update it, and when you let them in. The emails come from Loops, an email service your site talks to, and they come from your own address.

• These go to them, not to you — you hear about new worksheets through Slack and in /admin/submissions
• Sign-in emails are not these — the codes people get when they sign up or sign in come from Clerk, set up in Add sign-in. You change those in your Clerk dashboard
• Each one is optional — leave a key out and that email is simply not sent

• Your own domain — from Your domain. Loops will not send from an address ending in vercel.app
• The waitlist working — from Let people in. These emails are about it

Email from a new address lands in spam unless the address can prove it is really yours. Loops handles the proof; you add a few lines to your domain's settings, the same place you connected your domain to Vercel.

1. Sign up at loops.so. When it asks for your sending domain, enter your domain, like yourname.com
2. In Loops, open Settings → Domain and click View records. It lists a few records, marked SPF, DKIM and MX
3. In your domain registrar, open the DNS settings for your domain and add each record exactly as shown
4. Back in Loops, click Verify Records

Loops calls these transactional emails: one email, sent to one person, because of something they did. You write each one once. Your site fills in the person's details every time it sends.

1. In Loops, open Transactional and create a new email
2. Write it. Where a detail should go, type it between curly brackets, like {name}, and Loops turns it into a data variable
3. Click Next. Under API Details, check the data variables listed match the table below
4. Click Publish. An unpublished email never sends
5. Copy the transactional ID shown under API Details
6. Repeat for the other two

• Spell them exactly — capitals count: ideaName, not ideaname or idea_name
• Use only these — if an email uses a variable your site does not send, Loops refuses to send that email at all, and nobody is told
• Use fewer if you like — an email that only says {name} is fine

Last, your site needs a key to use Loops. In Loops, open Settings → API and create an API key. Put it and the three transactional IDs in .env, and add the same four to Vercel's Environment Variables, then redeploy:

1. In a private window, sign in with your test account. Use an email address you can read
2. Submit a worksheet at /waitlist/apply. Worksheet received arrives
3. Change something and submit it again. Worksheet updated arrives, because the first one is still waiting
4. As yourself, approve it in /admin/submissions, or with the button in Slack. You are in arrives

• The free plan sends 4,000 emails every 30 days — marketing and transactional together, with Loops branding at the bottom. Upgrading removes the branding
• Each resubmission counts as an update — while their worksheet waits, every change sends Worksheet updated, and adds a row to /admin/submissions. Approve either row
• After a decision, it starts over — someone you rejected who submits again gets Worksheet received, as a new application
• Your computer sends real email — with the keys in .env, testing on localhost emails real people. Test with your own addresses

• No email arrives — check spam first. Then, in the terminal running npm run dev (or your Vercel logs), look for a line starting with Loops that says an email failed. It includes Loops' reason
• Missing required data variable(s) — the email uses a variable your site does not send, or spells one differently. Fix it in Loops, publish again
• Loops says the email is not found or not published — the ID in .env is wrong, or you did not click Publish
• Nothing in the logs at all — LOOPS_API_KEY or that email's ID is missing where you tested. Restart or redeploy after adding it
• Updated never arrives, only received — the first worksheet was already approved or rejected, so the new one is a new application

• Loops shows your domain as verified
• Three transactional emails are published, each with the variables from the table
• .env and Vercel both have LOOPS_API_KEY and the three IDs
• Your test account received Worksheet received, Worksheet updated and You are in

Nobody on your waitlist has to wonder any more. They hear from you the moment they reach out, and again the moment you say yes.