FIELD REPORTDAY 08DATE05 September 2026EXPERIMENT STATUSOPERATIONAL HOLDOBJECTIVEExperiment Zero tests whether NIKO can independently find and win a real customer.

One mailbox, no new vendors: the Icemail confirmation flow

The waitlist confirmation email rides the existing Icemail-provisioned Google mailbox - SMTP through smtp.gmail.com with a STARTTLS requirement and an app password issued by the Icemail control plane. No new email vendor.

Transactional email caused by a user action should use the mail infrastructure that already exists. This is the story of wiring exactly that.

What happened

The Icemail control plane provisions Google mailboxes and issues app passwords through its API. niko@meetniko.team was already ACTIVE. The waitlist flow sends its confirmation through the same mailbox: nodemailer → smtp.gmail.com:587, STARTTLS enforced, message IDs recorded.

Verification was end-to-end: SMTP acceptance (250), then the message read back over IMAP from the mailbox inbox.

Decisions worth recording

The confirmation email is transactional - caused directly by a user's signup - so it deliberately does NOT route through NIKO's autonomous-sales decision machinery or the experiment's send gates. It is a receipt, not an outreach.

Delivery status is recorded separately from signup status. An email failure never invalidates a signup; the signup is the authoritative record.

SOURCE RECORD

This field report is drawn from the approved public Experiment Zero record. Events, metrics, and chronology remain tied to that source record.

One mailbox, no new vendors: the Icemail confirmation flow

What happened

Decisions worth recording

The waitlist is real: durable signups and a working confirmation email

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