Instantly.ai outbound engine

Overview

The Instantly.ai Outbound Engine connects Agent Lab to your Instantly.ai workspace for cold email outreach. The integration talks to the Instantly v2 REST API and provides:

Connection verification to confirm your API key authenticates correctly.
Campaign listing to query the campaigns in your Instantly workspace.
A webhook receiver that ingests Instantly engagement events and classifies positive replies as hot leads.

Use this integration when you run cold outbound campaigns in Instantly and want Agent Lab to surface interested leads automatically instead of monitoring replies by hand.

The integration operates under trial governance. It is flagged as a trial integration in the operational register so that no unbudgeted costs accrue when the Instantly trial concludes.

Configuration

Authentication uses a single environment variable. Every Instantly endpoint reads it at request time:

INSTANTLY_API_KEY="your-instantly-api-key"

Generate the key in your Instantly workspace under Settings > Integrations > API keys. If the variable is unset, Instantly endpoints fail with the error INSTANTLY_API_KEY is not configured in environment.

Verify the connection

GET /api/outbound/instantly/verify

Checks connectivity and authentication against the Instantly v2 API by requesting a single campaign. Call this endpoint after setting INSTANTLY_API_KEY to confirm the integration is live. Returns HTTP 200 on success:

{
  "success": true,
  "message": "Instantly.ai connected successfully via v2 API. Authentication verified.",
  "campaignCount": 1
}

Returns HTTP 400 with success: false when Instantly rejects the request (for example, an invalid API key). The message field includes the upstream status code and error text. Returns HTTP 500 if the request itself fails.

List campaigns

GET /api/outbound/instantly/campaigns

Retrieves campaigns from your Instantly workspace.

Query parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`limit`	integer	`10`	Maximum number of campaigns to return.
`skip`	integer	`0`	Number of campaigns to skip, for pagination.

Example

curl "https://your-app-domain/api/outbound/instantly/campaigns?limit=5&skip=0"

Returns HTTP 200:

{
  "success": true,
  "count": 5,
  "campaigns": [
    {
      "id": "camp_12345",
      "name": "Founder M365 Modernization Q3"
    }
  ]
}

Campaign objects are returned as provided by the Instantly v2 API. Returns HTTP 500 with an error message if the Instantly request fails.

Webhook receiver

POST /api/webhooks/instantly

Receives engagement events from Instantly. Configure this URL as a webhook destination in your Instantly workspace so campaign activity flows into Agent Lab as it happens.

Event payload

Field	Type	Required	Description
`event_type`	string	Yes	One of `reply_received`, `lead_interested`, `lead_not_interested`, `email_sent`, `email_opened`, `link_clicked`.
`lead_email`	string	Yes	Email address of the lead. Requests without it return HTTP `400`.
`campaign_id`	string	No	Instantly campaign ID.
`campaign_name`	string	No	Instantly campaign name.
`lead_first_name`	string	No	Lead first name.
`lead_last_name`	string	No	Lead last name.
`company_name`	string	No	Lead company name.
`reply_text`	string	No	Reply body, used for hot-lead classification.
`timestamp`	string	No	Event timestamp.

Hot-lead classification

The receiver classifies each event and returns the action it took:

lead_interested events are always flagged as hot leads.
reply_received events are flagged as hot leads when the reply text contains buying-intent keywords such as “interested”, “schedule”, “call”, “demo”, or “pricing”.
All other events are logged as activity without triggering alerts.

Example

curl -X POST "https://your-app-domain/api/webhooks/instantly" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "event_type": "reply_received",
    "campaign_id": "camp_12345",
    "campaign_name": "Founder M365 Modernization Q3",
    "lead_email": "ceo@example.com",
    "reply_text": "This looks interesting. Can we schedule a call this Thursday?"
  }'

Returns HTTP 200:

{
  "success": true,
  "timestamp": "2026-09-06T20:28:05.000Z",
  "processed": {
    "actionTaken": "flagged_hot_lead",
    "leadEmail": "ceo@example.com",
    "summary": "Hot Outbound Lead detected via Instantly. Campaign: Founder M365 Modernization Q3. Reply snippet: \"This looks interesting. Can we schedule a call this Thursday?\"",
    "isHotLead": true
  }
}

For non-hot events, processed.actionTaken is logged_activity and isHotLead is false. Returns HTTP 400 when lead_email is missing and HTTP 500 on processing errors.

API documentation

SDKs

Runs and artifacts

Endpoint examples

Playbooks

Integrations

Audit logs

Workspace snapshots

Voice agent

GTM tools

Instantly.ai outbound engine

Overview

Configuration

Verify the connection

List campaigns

Query parameters

Example

Webhook receiver

Event payload

Hot-lead classification

Example

​Overview

​Configuration

​Verify the connection

​List campaigns

​Query parameters

​Example

​Webhook receiver

​Event payload

​Hot-lead classification

​Example

Overview

Configuration

Verify the connection

List campaigns

Query parameters

Example

Webhook receiver

Event payload

Hot-lead classification

Example