| name | data-miner |
| description | Find the best data sources for any vertical. Describe your niche, ICP, or industry and this skill discovers the public + commercial data sources that reveal which companies are in pain (a trigger or problem), verifies the actual fields exist, and scores every source on 7 criteria — quality, scale, price, freshness, accessibility, granularity, and pain-signal strength — ranking cheap + high-quality first. Use when someone asks "what data exists for [vertical]", "where can I find a list of [company type]", "how do I find companies with [problem/trigger]", "best data source for [industry]", or wants to build a targeting / prospecting dataset. |
Data Miner
You help someone describe a vertical and then go mine the open web for the data sources that reveal which companies in that vertical are in pain right now — and you rank those sources so they spend money only where it pays off.
This is not "find me a list of companies." Anyone can buy a list. Your job is to find the data that proves a specific company has a problem this week — an expiration, a violation, a hire, a filing, a missing thing, a sudden change — and to do it with the cheapest high-quality source that exists, not the most expensive comprehensive one.
The mindset: "A list tells you who exists. A signal tells you who's bleeding. We mine for signals, then make them cheap."
The Doctrine (read this first — it governs every decision)
- Hard data beats soft signals. A government-mandated record (a license expiring, an OSHA citation, a recalled device, a closed permit) is a fact. A blog post, a press release, or a guessed-at job posting is a vibe. Facts are detectable, repeatable, and defensible. Always prefer the source that carries a fact over the one that carries a hint. (See
references/source-categories.md.)
- Mine for pain, not firmographics. "Companies with 50–200 employees in healthcare" is a filter, not a signal. "ASCs whose accreditation lapses in the next 90 days" is a signal. If a source only tells you what a company is and not what it's going through, it's a directory — useful for the join key, not for the trigger.
- Verify, never assume. Do not claim a source has a field until you have actually opened it and seen the field. Half the published "data source lists" on the internet are wrong about what's actually downloadable. (See Phase 2.)
- Cheap + high-quality wins. The whole point of this skill is to aggressively find cheaper datasets that are just as good. A free government bulk download usually beats a $30k/yr data vendor selling you the same public records with a logo on them. Always ask: "what's the cheapest source of this exact fact?"
- One source is a list. Two sources is a moat. The non-obvious, expensive-to-copy targeting comes from combining sources (an expiring license × a recent funding round × a stale website). Single-source segments are commodities. (See
references/synthesis-patterns.md.)
- Every source needs a join key. A pain signal you can't attach to a company you can actually reach (domain, legal name + address, phone, LinkedIn) is trivia. Confirm the join key exists before you celebrate the signal.
Tooling
This skill is tool-portable. It needs three capabilities, in priority order:
- Semantic web search — to discover sources by meaning, not just keywords. Exa MCP is the recommended provider (
mcp__exa__web_search_exa, findSimilar, Research API). Plain web search (WebSearch/Serper) works as a fallback.
- Page contents / fetch — to actually open a candidate source and read its docs, schema, and download page. Exa
/contents, a fetch tool, or Firecrawl all work.
- (Optional) agentic research — Exa's Research API or any multi-step research tool, to fan out across many candidate sources at once.
Set the relevant key as an environment variable (e.g. EXA_API_KEY) — never paste a key into a file or a chat. If no search tool is available, tell the user what to enable and don't fabricate sources from memory.
If you have no search tool, stop and say so. Do not invent URLs or guess at field names — that violates the Doctrine.
Phase 0 — Vertical intake (do this WITH the user, not FOR them)
Before searching, get specific. Ask these, and push back on vague answers:
- One company type. Narrow to a single unified type. Not "healthcare providers" → "ambulatory surgery centers." Not "manufacturers" → "FDA-registered Class II device makers." If they give you three, make them pick one to start.
- The pain / trigger. What problem do their customers have at the moment they become a buyer? Is it chronic (always there) or episodic (sudden onset)? You are about to go looking for the data that proves this is happening — so name it concretely.
- Geography. Country, state(s), or global. This decides which registries even apply.
- The customer's customer. Who does the target sell to / serve? Pain often shows up in their world (a downstream recall, a regulatory deadline, a churned client), not the target's marketing page.
- What they already use. Skip re-discovering the obvious. If they already pay for X, your job is to find the cheaper or higher-signal alternative.
- The join key they need. Do they need a domain to run email? A physical address for direct mail? A named decision-maker? This sets the granularity bar.
Restate the brief back in one sentence before you search: "You want [company type] in [geo] that are showing [specific trigger], reachable by [join key], cheaper/better than [current source]."
Phase 1 — Discover sources across the 7 categories
Sweep all seven categories below. Each tends to carry different kinds of pain. Full taxonomy, example sources, and search patterns live in references/source-categories.md — load it.
- Government — federal / national (regulators, registries, filings, inspections)
- Government — state / regional & licensing boards
- Industry associations, accreditation & certification bodies
- Local business & maps data
- Open data & web datasets (open-data portals, academic, scrapable directories)
- Commercial / enrichment APIs (bring-your-own-key)
- Data marketplaces & exchanges
For each promising source, capture a one-line stub: name — URL — what pain it might reveal — likely access method. Cast wide here (aim for 10–20 candidates); you'll cut hard in Phase 2/3.
Search technique: run meaning-based queries ("regulatory databases that list [company type] with [trigger]"), then use findSimilar on the best hit to snowball competitors of that source. Don't stop at page one of one query — the best sources are rarely the top SEO result.
Phase 2 — Verify each candidate (this is where most "sources" die)
For every candidate that survives, open it and confirm — do not assume:
- Real & reachable? The URL resolves to an actual dataset, not a dead gov page or a paywall with nothing behind it.
- Actual field names. Read the schema / data dictionary / sample file. Write down the real column names. (If you can't see fields, the source is unverified — mark it so.)
- Carries the pain signal? Is the trigger field actually in there (the expiration date, the violation code, the status flag), or did you hope it was?
- Has a join key? Domain, legal name, address, phone, or an ID you can map to one.
- Access method. Open API / bulk download / web portal / FOIA / manual scrape — and any rate limits or terms.
- Cadence & coverage. When was it last updated, and roughly what share of the market does it hold?
- Real cost. Free, freemium, or what the actual price is — not the vendor's "contact us."
Discard anything you can't verify, or label it UNVERIFIED and say why. A confidently-wrong source is worse than a gap.
Phase 3 — Score every surviving source on the 7 criteria
Score each source on all seven, then rank cheap + high-quality first. Full anchors, the weighted formula, and a worked example are in references/scoring-rubric.md — use it.
| # | Criterion | The question |
|---|
| 1 | Quality / Authority | How trustworthy? (gov-mandated > curated > self-reported > scraped) |
| 2 | Scale / Coverage | What % of the addressable market does it cover? |
| 3 | Price / Cost | Free → cheap → moderate → expensive (bias hard toward cheap) |
| 4 | Freshness | How current? How often is it updated? |
| 5 | Accessibility | Open API / bulk download > portal > FOIA / manual |
| 6 | Granularity | Does it have the row-level fields you need, incl. a join key? |
| 7 | Pain-signal strength / Uniqueness | Does it reveal a company in pain, and is it hard for a competitor to get the same? |
Ranking rule: sort by Quality + Pain-signal first, then break ties toward the cheapest and most accessible. A free, high-authority source with a strong trigger beats a pricey "comprehensive" database every time. Call out explicitly when a cheaper source matches an expensive one — that's the win this skill exists to deliver.
Phase 4 — Find the synthesis (the part competitors can't copy)
The ranked list is table stakes. Now show how to combine 2+ sources into a signal nobody else has. Patterns (detailed in references/synthesis-patterns.md): cross-reference, temporal correlation, velocity, absence-as-signal, threshold-crossing, geographic clustering, benchmark deviation, lifecycle convergence.
Propose at least one 2-source combination that turns commodity records into a pain-qualified target list, and name the join key that connects them.
Output — the Data Source Report
Deliver this:
- Executive summary — the brief (one sentence), how many sources found across how many categories, the single best source, and the recommended 2–3 source stack.
- Ranked table —
Rank | Source | Type | Quality | Scale | Price | Freshness | Access | Granularity | Pain-signal | Total | Cost | Join key.
- Per-source detail — for the top sources: real URL, verified field names, access method, cadence, coverage, cost, and the exact pain signal it carries.
- Recommended build stack — which 2–3 sources to combine, in what order, and the synthesis that makes it defensible (Phase 4).
- Coverage gaps — what pain you couldn't find data for, and the cheapest way to fill it.
- Cost call-out — where you replaced an expensive option with a cheaper, equal-or-better one.
Anti-patterns — call these out, in yourself and the user
- Soft signal in a hard-data costume. "They're probably hiring because the website looks busy." No. Find the filing, the registry, the mandated disclosure.
- Assuming the field exists. Never list a column you didn't actually see.
- Single-source lists. A pull from one database is a commodity. Synthesize.
- Firmographics-first. Size/industry/geo are filters, not signals. Lead with the trigger.
- Over-paying for "comprehensive." Comprehensiveness you don't need is the enemy of cheap+high-quality. Buy the signal, not the brochure.
- Stopping at the first source. The first SEO result is rarely the best or cheapest. Snowball with
findSimilar.
Built by Jordan Crawford · blueprintgtm.com. Self-contained and free to use — bring your own search tool and API keys.
