Production email on a fresh domain

This guide takes a fresh domain to production lifecycle email: DNS verified, a deployed Hogsend instance, a welcome email landing DKIM-signed from your own domain — and replies coming back, without paying for a mailbox. Every step was run for real on hogsend.com itself, and every step ends with a check you can verify. Budget about thirty minutes, most of it waiting on DNS.

What you need

• A domain. Any DNS host works; the examples use Cloudflare, which also gets you the inbound trick in step 4 for free.
• A Resend account. The free plan holds one domain, which is all this needs.
• Somewhere to deploy. The Railway template, or your own infrastructure.

1. Create a Resend key and add your domain

In Resend, create (or pick) a team, then create one API key with full access.

Then add your domain under Domains, picking a region (the examples use eu-west-1).

Check: the domain appears in the Resend dashboard with status not_started.

2. Add four DNS records

Resend's records live on the send subdomain, so they coexist with anything already on the root. Add all four as DNS-only (unproxied) records, swapping eu-west-1 for your chosen region:

Check:

dig +short TXT resend._domainkey.yourdomain.com

returns the DKIM key.

3. Verify the domain

Trigger verification from the dashboard button, or via the API:

curl -X POST https://api.resend.com/domains/{domain_id}/verify \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer re_your_api_key"

Then poll until the status flips:

curl https://api.resend.com/domains/{domain_id} \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer re_your_api_key"

Check: status is verified. On Cloudflare this usually takes under a minute.

4. Receive replies without a mailbox

Sending is solved; you also want hello@yourdomain.com to be a real address people can reply to — without buying a mailbox plan. Cloudflare Email Routing does it free:

1. In Cloudflare: Email → Email Routing → enable. It adds its own MX and SPF records on the root — no conflict with step 2, whose records live on send.
2. Add a destination address (your existing inbox). A verification email lands there — click it.
3. Create a rule routing hello@yourdomain.com to that inbox, plus a catch-all if you want one.

To reply as hello@yourdomain.com, use Gmail's "Send mail as": SMTP server smtp.resend.com, username resend, password your Resend API key.

Total mailbox cost: zero.

While you're at it, send as a person rather than a department — the from address accepts a display name (engine ≥0.13.1):

EMAIL_FROM="Doug at Hogsend <doug@yourdomain.com>"

A founder's name in the from line reads like a note from a human; noreply@ reads like a receipt. Pair it with the reply routing above so answers actually reach you.

5. Deploy

Two paths.

The Railway template stands up the whole topology in one click — see Deploy on Railway. It asks for RESEND_API_KEY and STUDIO_ADMIN_EMAIL; then mint HATCHET_CLIENT_TOKEN headlessly and set it:

hogsend hatchet token --url https://your-hatchet-url \
  --email you@yourdomain.com --password 'your-password'

Or scaffold and deploy yourself:

pnpm dlx create-hogsend@latest my-app --domain yourdomain.com

As of engine 0.13.0 a fresh deploy mints an ingest-scoped API key on first boot and prints it once in the deploy log — copy it from there.

Check:

curl https://api.yourdomain.com/v1/health

returns "status": "healthy" with an activity section.

6. Fire the first event

curl -X POST https://api.yourdomain.com/v1/events \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <ingest-key>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"user.created","email":"you@yourdomain.com"}'

The welcome journey enrols the contact, and the email arrives from your own domain, DKIM-signed.

Check: activity.emails.sent on /v1/health increments, and the email is in your inbox.

That's it. A fresh domain, production lifecycle email, replies routed to your existing inbox, and not a mailbox subscription in sight.

Hand it to an agent

Every step above is a command or an API call with a checkable result, which means an agent can run the whole thing. Hogsend is built for that:

• llms.txt — the docs index in a machine-readable form.
• Vendored skills — every scaffold ships Claude Code skills in .claude/skills, including deploy and CLI know-how.
• The hogsend CLI — domain status, health checks, and token minting, all scriptable with --json output.

Point your agent at this guide and say "set up my domain". A one-command version — hogsend email setup — is planned; this guide is its spec.