finding-contacts

Finding Contacts

Use the dedicated contact lookup only after the company or buyer targets are clear. It is the outreach-grade workflow and is different from table fields, research columns, and one-company profile contacts.

Do not infer contact lookup from ranking, shortlist, acquisition-target, PE add-on, or buyer-universe requests. Use this skill only when the user explicitly asks for people, emails, person LinkedIn profiles, outreach, or contact routes.

Contact Source Choice

• Outreach contacts for selected companies: use the grasp_search_contacts tool. Reserve it for selected domains where the user is likely to act on the result.
• Broad contact-like table fields: use the table-enrichment skill. Research columns can cover many companies, but they are not contacts lookup results.
• Reported/source fields: use the table-enrichment skill for company-level phone, website, generic email, or company LinkedIn fields when Grasp exposes them as table columns. These are not person-level outreach contacts.
• One-company profile contacts: use the company-lookup skill only for a one-company profile/deep-dive context. Do not use profile contacts as the default response to outreach requests.

Guardrails

• Do not run contact lookup across a full long list by default. Reserve it for a trimmed set of companies planned for outreach.
• If the user asks for contacts for many companies, first narrow to a shortlist. If they insist on broad coverage across hundreds of companies, use research columns from the table-enrichment skill instead and state that they are not contact lookup results.
• Pull domains from inspected table rows or validated company profiles. Do not guess domains when using grasp_search_contacts tool.
• Respect the grasp_search_contacts tool's domain, title, and result limits.
• Founder-owned, owner-managed, PE-backed, family-owned, or management-owned target criteria are ownership criteria, not contact requests. Use finding-contacts only when the user asks for people or outreach details.

Locked Emails and Unlocking

Contact emails from grasp_search_contacts may be locked (email_locked: true with email: null). Locked means the email exists but has not yet been revealed for the user.

• Never guess, fabricate, or substitute a locked email. Present the contact with the email marked as locked.
• To reveal locked emails, use the grasp_unlock_contact_emails tool with the contacts' person_id values. Contacts the user already unlocked are returned without re-fetching; contacts without a resolvable email come back as not_found.
• Only unlock contacts the user has explicitly selected, and confirm the selection with the user before calling. Never unlock an entire search result set unprompted.
• Unlocking requires an OAuth-connected Grasp account. With API-key auth, direct the user to unlock contacts in the Grasp platform instead.
• Re-running grasp_search_contacts returns real emails for contacts the user already unlocked (email_unlocked: true).

Workflow

1. Identify the target companies or buyers.
   • From a table: use the working-with-tables skill to inspect rows and URL/domain columns.
   • From names: use the company-lookup skill to validate canonical domains.
2. Translate the outreach goal into role filters.
   • For specific roles such as CEO, CFO, Founder, Owner, Partner, Head of M&A, or Corporate Development, pass explicit titles.
   • Use senior_only only as a broad seniority hint when the user asks for senior decision-makers without naming specific roles.
   • Use seniorities only when the user asks for seniority classes rather than titles.
3. Call the grasp_search_contacts tool with selected domains, explicit titles/seniority when useful, and a concise usage_rationale.
4. Present contacts with company/domain, person, title, available contact fields (marking locked emails), and missing coverage.
5. If the user selects contacts whose emails are locked, confirm the selection, then call grasp_unlock_contact_emails with those person_id values.

Never invent emails, LinkedIn URLs, source links, or people. Treat absent results as coverage gaps, not proof that no relevant contact exists.