find-service-providers

name	find-service-providers
description	Use whenever the user wants to find, shortlist, vet, enrich, or research US professional-services firms — law, marketing, consulting, accounting, IT services, architecture, engineering, HR, PR, design, and similar B2B service providers. Triggers on requests like "find me a PPC agency in California", "shortlist three boutique IP law firms", "build a longlist of 50 mid-size IT consultancies", or "here are 12 agency domains — pull contact info and confirm which are US-based", even when the need is described indirectly without naming a category. Drives the ServiceGraph API (api.servicegraph.co) — a 100k+ US firm catalog with filters for industry, services, location, size, ratings, and third-party listings. Skip when the user is asking for personal/consumer services for themselves (an individual's own legal, tax, or medical needs), non-US firms, individual freelancers, retail/ecommerce/SaaS-product companies, recruiting-an-employee tasks, or general web research that doesn't need a structured firm directory.
version	0.3.0
metadata	{"api_base":"https://api.servicegraph.co","dataset_id":"pro_services"}

find-service-providers

Drive the ServiceGraph API (https://api.servicegraph.co) to find, shortlist, and enrich US professional-services firms.

The API hosts several datasets behind a uniform per-dataset URL shape (/v1/datasets/:id/…). This skill is for the agencies dataset — dataset id pro_services — which holds 100k+ B2B service firms classified across 22 industries with multi-tag service taxonomies, location, size, and third-party rating signals.

Any HTTP client works (curl, fetch, requests). Examples below use curl.

MCP server (preferred for authed calls)

If your agent harness has the ServiceGraph MCP server loaded (https://mcp.servicegraph.co) — recognizable by tool names containing servicegraph — prefer those tools over raw HTTP. The MCP server uses OAuth 2.1 + PKCE so the harness handles credentials in its own sandbox and no token value ever enters the LLM context. Otherwise, fall through to the REST flow described below.

API surface

Every endpoint requires the bearer (Authorization: Bearer vk_…). There is no anonymous tier.

Endpoint	Cost	Use it for
GET /v1/datasets	free	Discover available datasets.
GET /v1/datasets/pro_services	free	Full schema for this dataset (brief vs detail fields, allowed filters, unlock price, TTL).
GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/fields[?include_values=1&q=]	free	Filter-field catalog + DSL grammar. Call this first per session.
GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/values/:field[?q=&limit=&offset=]	free	Enumerate values for one field (e.g. legal industry / state / service_provided values).
GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/check?filter=…	free	Validate a filter string. Returns {valid, normalized} or {valid:false, error}.
POST /v1/datasets/pro_services/translate-intent	free	Body {intent, model?}. LLM-translates plain English → DSL filter + sanity-check row count.
GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/search?filter=…&limit=&offset=	free	Brief firm cards + per-row unlock hint. No url, no phone, no email.
GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/:apex	free	One row: always brief; detail block only if caller has an active unlock for (user, dataset, apex). Idempotent, never charges.
POST /v1/datasets/pro_services/unlocks	10 credits / firm	Body {apexes: [...]}, max 100. Atomic batch — either all uncached apexes unlock, or none do (402 if balance short). Already-unlocked rows return was_cached:true with no extra charge. Detail TTL: 30 days. Returns brief + detail + per-item billing.
GET /v1/me/credits	free	Current credit balance.
GET /v1/me/credits/transactions[?limit=&offset=]	free	Spend history; unlock rows carry (dataset_id, apex, expires_at).

Cost model in one paragraph. Discovery, validation, search, and brief reads are free. Detail data (apex, full url, phone, email, social, address, legal name, platforms map) costs 10 credits per firm and lasts 30 days. Re-fetching an unlocked firm within the TTL is free — both the detail GET and the unlock POST honor the cache. Charges are atomic per POST /unlocks call: a 402 leaves balance untouched.

Auth

Tokens are vk_* API keys minted in the dashboard. The user creates them themselves; this skill never sees raw email/password.

Security model — keep the token out of the LLM context.

• Never read .env, .env.local, or any other credential file into your context. The token's literal value must never appear in the conversation.
• Every authed call goes through a shell wrapper so the token flows from the user's environment / dotenv file into the Authorization header without round-tripping through the LLM.

First-call resolution:

1. Just try the call. Dispatch via shell, sourcing .env.local if present:

   ( set -a; [ -f .env.local ] && . ./.env.local; set +a;
     curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $SERVICEGRAPH_API_KEY" \
          'https://api.servicegraph.co/v1/datasets/pro_services/fields' )
   

2. On 401 unauthorized, prompt the user (don't accept the key in chat):

   "I need a ServiceGraph API key. Open https://servicegraph.co/profile/api-keys, sign in, click Create key, and copy the vk_… value.

   Then either export it in your shell — export SERVICEGRAPH_API_KEY=vk_… — or add the line SERVICEGRAPH_API_KEY=vk_… to .env.local in this directory. Tell me when done and I'll retry. Please don't paste the key into chat — keep it out of the LLM context."

3. After the user signals ready, re-dispatch the same call. If a later call returns 401, the key was revoked or rotated — re-prompt.

For the user's convenience: if SERVICEGRAPH_API_KEY is already set or already in .env.local, the very first call will succeed and the prompt step never happens.

Filter DSL

One query parameter, GitHub-search-style.

filter   := orExpr
orExpr   := andExpr ("OR" andExpr)*
andExpr  := notExpr (("AND")? notExpr)*    # whitespace = implicit AND
notExpr  := ("NOT" | "-") notExpr | atom
atom     := "(" filter ")" | predicate
predicate:= IDENT op valueOrList | bareword
op       := ":" | "=" | ">=" | "<=" | ">" | "<"
valueOrList := value ("," value)*
value    := IDENT | NUMBER | tagAtEvidence
tagAtEvidence := IDENT "@" ("low"|"medium"|"high")
bareword := IDENT | NUMBER          # → keyword:<bareword>

Four rules that bite:

1. AND binds tighter than OR. a OR b c parses as a OR (b AND c). Use parens.
2. Comma list = OR within one predicate. state:CA,NY,TX matches any of the three.
3. Negation is -x or NOT x. Negative literals inside a comma list are not allowed: state:CA,-NY is rejected. Use state:CA -state:NY.
4. Bareword = keyword search. Any IDENT or NUMBER not followed by an operator becomes a free-text substring across name / brand / title / meta / legal_name. Multiple barewords AND. Wrap multi-word phrases in double quotes: keyword:"foo bar". Punctuation (& ' . ; ! ? * / etc.) is silently dropped outside quotes, and stray commas are treated as ANDs — so paste-friendly inputs like Cox, Castle & Nicholson work without quoting.

Field kinds you'll use most:

• categorical — industry, state, service_model, geography_served, company_size_signal, pricing_model — op : only.
• tag_set_with_evidence — service_provided — Map<tag, evidence∈{low,medium,high}>. Op : with optional @evidence.
• numeric — rating, review_count_total, founded_year, linkedin_employees, etc. — ops =, >=, <=, >, <.
• presence — has:phone, has:clutch, has:rating, has:linkedin_company, etc.
• keyword — any bareword in the filter becomes a free-text substring across name / brand / title / meta / legal_name / linkedin company text.

Examples (validate yours with /check):

industry:marketing_agency service_provided:seo
dental industry:marketing_agency
industry:legal state:CA,NY -company_size_signal:solo
industry:management_consulting (service_provided:strategy-consulting@high OR service_provided:operations-consulting@high)
state:CA has:phone has:email
rating>=4 review_count_total>=20 has:clutch
industry:it_services NOT (service_provided:web-development OR service_provided:hosting)
"Cox, Castle & Nicholson"

Don't put kind: in the filter — the dataset URL is authoritative and the API will reject it. Don't use fields outside this dataset's allowed list either; /check will tell you which ones.

Identifying firms — apex

Firms are identified by their apex domain (registered domain only: mckinsey.com, not www.mckinsey.com/about). When the user gives you URLs, strip to the apex before calling /datasets/pro_services/:apex or POST /unlocks. The endpoint accepts any lowercase host-shaped string; a 404 means the firm isn't in this dataset (no charge).

Recipes

A. Shortlist by industry + state

GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/search?filter=industry:legal+state:CA+-company_size_signal:solo&limit=20
# → 20 brief cards + total + per-row unlock.status; pick top 3 with user

# user agrees → unlocking 3 firms costs 30 credits, 30-day TTL
POST /v1/datasets/pro_services/unlocks
  { "apexes": ["firm-a.com", "firm-b.com", "firm-c.com"] }
# → brief + detail (url, phone, email, social, address) for all 3

B. Multi-tag service intersection

User: "Marketing agency that does both branding and SEO at high evidence."

GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/search?filter=industry:marketing_agency+service_provided:branding@high+service_provided:seo@high&limit=10

C. Quality threshold

User: "Consultancies with at least 4★ and 20+ reviews and a Clutch listing."

GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/search?filter=industry:management_consulting+rating>=4+review_count_total>=20+has:clutch&limit=10

D. Indirect intent — user describes a need without naming the category

User: "I need someone to handle our open enrollment communications for 200 employees."

That's HR/benefits comms. Either translate by hand or hand it to the intent translator:

POST /v1/datasets/pro_services/translate-intent
  { "intent": "open enrollment communications for 200 employees" }
# → {filter: "...", reasoning: "...", valid, normalized, count}

Then validate with /check and run /search. If the breakdown is thin, broaden — drop the service tag, add adjacent industries, or fall back to keyword.

E. Keyword + structured filter

User: "HIPAA-savvy IT consultancies in Texas."

GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/search?filter=hipaa+industry:it_services+state:TX&limit=10

hipaa is a bareword keyword → substring match in firm text.

F. BYO apex list — enrich domains the user already has

User pastes 12 domains. Two-step:

1. GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/:apex for each — free brief, 404 for not-in-catalog (no charge). Flag misses to the user.
2. User picks the N they want fully enriched. One POST /v1/datasets/pro_services/unlocks with all of them = 10×N credits, single atomic charge, single response with detail bundles.

Within the 30-day TTL, re-running step 2 is free for the same apexes.

Gotchas

• looks_not_pro_services / not_in_dataset 404 is not a bug. A firm may exist in another dataset but 404 on /datasets/pro_services/:apex if its kind doesn't include pro_services. Skip and continue; not charged.
• Briefs from /search do NOT include apex ... wait, they do. Briefs include apex (and name, industry, service_provided, location, ratings). What they DON'T include: url, phone_primary, email_primary, legal_name, address_full, full platforms map. Those require an unlock.
• Catalog is US-only B2B pro-services. Refuse non-US asks rather than returning misleading partial matches. Refuse consumer-facing legal/financial requests (e.g. "I need a divorce lawyer for personal matters") — the catalog is built for B2B procurement.
• Always confirm legal field values via /fields?include_values=1. Inventing industry:law instead of industry:legal returns zero results silently — the parser doesn't validate categorical values.
• Multi-word phrases must be split or quoted. family law parses as two AND'd keywords (family AND law); "family law" parses as a single phrase.
• Unlock is atomic. POST /unlocks with 5 apexes either charges 50 credits (or less if some were cached) or charges nothing on 402. Plan the batch — don't dribble single-apex calls.
• Within-TTL re-views are free. Re-running POST /unlocks for an apex that's still inside its 30-day TTL returns was_cached:true and no charge. Re-pagination of /search is free regardless.
• /translate-intent is a convenience, not a contract. It may return filter:"" if the intent is too vague, or a filter that doesn't match what the user wanted. Always inspect reasoning and the sanity-check count before running /search.

Errors

All errors return JSON: {"error": {"code": "...", "message": "..."}}.

Status	Code	What to do
400	filter_parse_error	Payload includes position. Fix the filter, re-validate with /check.
400	filter_required	Empty filter where one is required.
400	kind_in_filter	The URL is authoritative — strip any kind: predicate from the filter.
400	field_not_in_dataset	The filter references a field this dataset doesn't expose. Drop it or pick a different dataset.
400	invalid_apex	Apex doesn't look like a domain. Re-normalize.
401	unauthorized / invalid_audience	Key missing/expired/wrong audience. Re-prompt for a new vk_… from /profile/api-keys.
402	insufficient_credits	Balance too low for the unlock batch. Response carries needed and balance. Surface to the user; nothing was charged.
404	unknown_dataset	Wrong dataset id in the URL.
404	not_found	Apex isn't in the catalog. Not charged. Skip and continue.
404	not_in_dataset / apex_not_in_dataset	Apex exists but its kind doesn't include pro_services. Not charged. Skip.
429	rate_limited	Honor Retry-After header.

Authed responses carry X-RateLimit-* headers. GET /me/credits is the source of truth for spend planning.

End-to-end example

User: "Find me three top management-consulting firms in California focused on strategy, with strong third-party ratings."

# 1. Discover fields once per session
GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/fields?include_values=1
# Confirms 'management_consulting', 'strategy-consulting', 'rating' are legal.

# 2. Validate the filter (free)
GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/check?filter=industry:management_consulting+state:CA+service_provided:strategy-consulting@high+rating>=4+review_count_total>=20

# 3. Search briefs (free)
GET /v1/datasets/pro_services/search?filter=...&limit=10
# → 10 brief cards + total + per-row unlock.status:'none'

# 4. Present briefs, get user's pick of 3. Tell them: "Unlocking 3
#    firms costs 30 credits and gives 30 days of detail access."

# 5. Atomic batch unlock (charges 30 credits, returns detail too)
POST /v1/datasets/pro_services/unlocks
  { "apexes": ["firm-a.com", "firm-b.com", "firm-c.com"] }
# → brief + detail (url, phone, email, social, address, platforms) ×3

# 6. (Optional) Confirm remaining balance
GET /v1/me/credits