The guide
Our beginner's guide to AI email automation made one argument: design the journey first, segment before you automate, and let AI optimise the variable layer while humans own the offer and the message. Klaviyo's Composer — generally available to every Klaviyo customer since 13 October — is where that division of labour gets interesting, because Composer isn't a writing assistant. It's an agent that answers questions about your customer and flow data in plain language, with citations, benchmarks your account against 205,000 other customers, and can be scheduled to keep watching while you do other work. Used well, it does the auditing jobs that eat retention marketers' Fridays. Used carelessly, it's one more tool producing confident lists nobody checks. Here's the order we'd run it in.
One audit to run today, one segment analysis to approve carefully, one Monday habit to schedule — and the guardrails that keep an agent useful instead of noisy.
Key takeaways
What Composer actually is
Composer is Klaviyo's marketing agent: you ask questions in plain language — about customers, flows, campaigns, revenue — and it answers from your account data, showing its sources. It can also do work: drafting segments, reviewing flows, and running recurring checks on a schedule without you opening Klaviyo.
It sits on top of a bigger shift Klaviyo announced in September: the platform went "headless", opening 260+ tools to AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT through MCP. Composer is the in-Klaviyo face of that same idea — an agent with access to your data and the ability to act on it. Which is exactly why the setup order matters.
Run the flow audit first
The highest-value first job is the one Klaviyo itself suggests: a full audit of your live flows, returned as a ranked fix list. Ask Composer to check every live flow for:
- Expired or invalid coupon codes still being sent
- Broken links in live emails
- Products featured in flows that are now out of stock
- Draft messages sitting inside live flows
- Emails earning more than 25% below their 90-day revenue-per-recipient average
Every item on that list is a quiet revenue leak — the kind that survives for months because nobody re-opens a "finished" flow. Work the ranked list top-down, fix the causes rather than the symptoms, and re-run the audit monthly. This is the variable-layer work AI is genuinely good at: tireless, literal, and easy to verify, because Composer cites where each finding came from. Klaviyo documents Composer and its other AI features in the Klaviyo Help Center.
Then find the segments you're missing
The second starter workflow Klaviyo publishes is a segment-gap analysis: Composer reviews twelve months of purchase history, finds audiences you aren't currently targeting, and proposes them — you approve before anything is created. That approval step is the whole game. Our Part 1 rule was "segment before you automate"; with an agent, the rule becomes "review before you approve".
Judge each proposed segment commercially, the way you would a colleague's suggestion: Is it big enough to matter? Does it overlap a segment you already mail? What would you actually send these people that they aren't getting now? Approve the ones with a clear answer, reject the rest without guilt, and note why — the notes make next quarter's review faster.
Put it on a Monday rhythm
Composer can run scheduled, recurring monitoring in the cloud — the example Klaviyo gives is "every Monday, review our top flows and flag anything slipping". Set that up once and the audit stops depending on someone remembering.
Keep the rhythm human-sized: one scheduled flow-health check, reviewed in your Monday standup, with a named owner for whatever it flags. An agent that reports into a meeting gets acted on; an agent that reports into an empty inbox becomes noise by week three.
If a flag turns out to be a false alarm twice, tighten the instruction — the prompt is a process document, and it should be edited like one.
Save your process as a Skill
Once your audit and review routine works, save it as a Composer Skill — Klaviyo's format for reusable team processes. The value is consistency: the flow audit runs the same way in December's BFCM chaos as it did in October, whoever is on shift, with the same checks in the same order.
Start with the two routines in this article — the flow audit and the Monday health check — before inventing new ones. A small library of proven Skills beats a long list of clever prompts nobody trusts yet.
The other door: Klaviyo from Claude or ChatGPT
Since September, Klaviyo's 260+ MCP tools and 490+ APIs have been accessible from external AI assistants, so the same questions can be asked from inside Claude or ChatGPT, alongside your other tools. For teams already working in an assistant all day, that's genuinely convenient — reporting, analysis and even changes without opening another tab.
Treat that door with more care than the in-Klaviyo one. Check who on your team has access, what the connected assistant can change (not just read), and keep approvals on for anything that touches live flows or sends. Convenience scales mistakes at the same speed as good work; the approval habit from section 03 applies double out here.
Guardrails before you delegate
Four rules keep Composer an asset. Check the citations — it shows its sources, so spot-checking takes minutes and catches the confident-but-wrong answers every agent produces sometimes. Treat benchmarks as directional: the 205,000-customer comparison tells you where you're unusual, not what to do about it.
Watch usage: thred-party testing reports a small free monthly allowance (around $5) before paid usage, so scheduled jobs on big accounts should be costed like any other tool. And keep the Part 1 boundary intact — humans own the offer, the core message and the decision of when not to send. Composer audits, proposes and monitors. You decide.
Frequently asked questions
Is Klaviyo Composer included with my account?
Composer became generally available to every Klaviyo customer on 13 October 2026. Third-party testing reports a small free monthly usage allowance (around $5) with paid usage after that — check your account's usage page for your exact terms.
What should I ask Composer first?
The flow audit: check all live flows for expired coupons, broken links, out-of-stock products, draft messages in live flows, and emails earning over 25% below their 90-day revenue-per-recipient average, returned as a ranked fix list.
Can Composer create segments automatically?
It proposes segments from your last 12 months of purchase history and creates only the ones you approve. Review each for size, overlap with existing segments, and what you would actually send that audience.
What is a Composer Skill?
A saved, reusable team process — for example, your flow-audit routine — that runs the same checks in the same order every time, whoever triggers it.
Can I use Klaviyo from ChatGPT or Claude?
Yes. Since September 2026, Klaviyo exposes 260+ tools through MCP, so external assistants can query and work with your Klaviyo data. Keep approvals switched on for anything that changes live flows or sends.
