ah i was triggering on a donation, not a "new recurring contribution". That helped make it unique enough to not trigger errantly.

What if it isn't the first time they've contributed? Isn't this sort of a miss on the underlying core CiviCRM code? If someone makes a recurring donations there should be some email recognition of that where the donor is told that future confirmations will come at the time that the transaction is attempted. I may need to play with the conditions more because I'm having a hard time finding a way to make it work for any recurring contribution, regardless of if a prior contribution was made, and not for unrelated contributions.

This extension looks awesome. Unfortunately if I make a rule for "pending contribution" and "has recurring..." it works, but then if the contact makes ANY other contribution (membership, event, direct non-recurring donation) during the life cycle of the recurring they get the email all over again because the conditions match. Am I missing a logical AND that would limit it to only emailing for a new recurring?