Show HN: Tanchi – Open-source AI prospecting agent that only automates email

Tanchi, an open-source AI prospecting agent, launched publicly on August 12, 2026, via a Show HN post by author saysb on Hacker News. The project is hosted on GitHub and positions itself as a narrowly scoped tool: it automates email composition and sending within a sales prospecting workflow, and nothing else.

The core design choice is deliberate restraint. Where many AI sales tools attempt to handle the full prospecting stack — lead discovery, research, sequencing, and outreach — Tanchi limits its automation to the email step. According to the Hacker News listing, the agent is described as one "that only automates email," suggesting the team views the research and targeting phases as better left to human judgment.

The project is open-source, meaning the codebase is publicly available for inspection, self-hosting, and contribution via the GitHub repository. No licensing terms, founding team details, funding status, or employee count were disclosed in the available sources. The submission was posted by a single HN account, saysb, and had received 1 point and no comments at the time of publication.

The broader AI sales automation category has attracted significant venture investment and a crowded field of tools — including products from established players and well-funded startups — that promise end-to-end pipeline generation. Tanchi's narrower scope is a stated differentiator, though no third-party validation or user data is available from the sources to assess adoption or effectiveness.

No roadmap, pricing details, or expansion plans were mentioned in the source material. The project's trajectory will depend in part on community engagement with the open-source repository.