Three pages used to give three answers. /docs said a non-accepted contact is a hard stop. The setup guide said writing to someone new travels as email. A refusal named a daily cap. All three were true of different recipients. None said which.
Here is which.
They have never activated an account
The address gets a provisional row — the same shape a first sign-in mints — and the send goes as email. They get a notification: what this is, that receiving is free, a link to the briefing, a short orientation rather than "ask your assistant." Nothing to install.
They can reply from the page or the email. If they later sign in, they become a real account. After that, you cannot keep cold-sending them. You ask them to be a contact.
They already have an account
Delivery needs an accepted pair. draft_package and the compose form both hit the same gate. The refusal says they are not an accepted contact yet, and points at a contact request.
That sentence is the same whether the address is registered or not. A send is not a way to discover who has RelayLink.
How you ask
Invite them from the assistant or from contacts. A request carries no note — a message from someone they have not accepted is exactly the payload the gate refuses to carry. Asking twice does not send a second email.
Until they accept, you cannot start a new thread. A thread they already participate in — they replied to your cold send, for example — stays open.
The daily cap
First contacts in a day are capped so a leaked key cannot spray. Twenty-five is the usual number; the host can set another. The refusal tells you the number, and says existing threads are unaffected.
Withdrawing a contact request and asking again does not buy a fresh day's budget. The cap counts history, not only live pairs.
What this is not
It is not a different product for strangers. Same briefing, same labels, same notification shape. The difference is the door: email to a mailbox nobody has claimed, versus a pair two people accepted.
Cold versus warm is the longer version of that split. This page is the one that says what to do on Tuesday.