| name | list-expander |
| description | Expand a hard-to-build niche list from ~10 known-good seed companies into a full qualified TAM. Seed fingerprinting (how do good-fit companies ACTUALLY show up in the company database's filters) → lookalike generation (Prospeo company_lookalike, Exa findSimilar, Parallel.ai entity search) → filter mining with a precision/volume scorecard → wide pull with auto-sharding → cheap-AI qualification → live-website verification → client transparency report. Use when a vertical list feels "too small" (medical groups, hedge funds, Medicare brokerages), when known good-fit companies don't show up in keyword searches, or when someone says "expand this list", "the TAM should be bigger", "find more companies like these". |
List Expander — seed companies → lookalikes → mined filters → qualified TAM
The problem this solves
Niche lists come out tiny because we search databases with narrow explicit keywords, but real
good-fit companies (e.g. Atlantic Medical Group, Hackensack Meridian) often don't carry that
keyword in their database record. Instead of guessing keywords top-down, this skill works
bottom-up: take companies you KNOW fit, discover how the database actually tags them, expand via
lookalike engines, and only then derive the wide-net filters — with measured precision per filter
— before pulling and AI-qualifying at scale.
Pipeline (5 phases)
All scripts live in scripts/, run with npx tsx, and are dependency-free (node ≥ 18 native
fetch). Every script takes --help. Keys load from the repo-root .env (see .env.example),
falling back to ~/.env. Artifacts land in ~/output/list-expander/{run}/.
Phase 1 fingerprint.ts seeds → how each shows up in Prospeo + its live homepage
Phase 2 lookalikes.ts seeds → candidates via Prospeo lookalike + Exa + Parallel
(qualify candidates → lookalikes-confirmed.csv)
Phase 3 mine-filters.ts confirmed fits → candidate filters → scorecard (volume × precision)
Phase 4 pull.ts winning filters → wide pull, auto-shard, dedup, exclusions
score-batch.ts scale AI qualification (gpt-5-nano by default)
verify-website.ts second pass on QUALIFIED rows: live homepage fetch →
dead / suspended-parked / live; live sites re-judged on
their CURRENT content (catches stale-DB ghosts). Always run —
DB descriptions happily qualify dead companies otherwise.
Phase 5 contact-count.ts verified-email TAM ceiling (free Prospeo count trick)
report.ts single-file HTML transparency report for the client
Phase 0 — inputs
- ~10 seed companies known for sure to fit (domains).
- 1–2 sentence ICP description ("multi-site medical/specialty groups in the US, ≥$3M revenue").
- Optional: exclusion CSV (companies already in campaigns).
Phase 1 — fingerprint the seeds
npx tsx scripts/fingerprint.ts --domains="a.com,b.com,..." --run=<slug>
Prints coverage (which seeds Prospeo is missing — that gap IS the under-count story for the
client), plus industry and keyword-tag frequency tables. Writes fingerprint.json/csv.
Phase 2 — generate lookalikes
npx tsx scripts/lookalikes.ts --domains="<seeds>" --run=<slug> \
--objective="<NL description of the COMPANY TYPE (not your product!)>" \
--country="United States #US" --pages=3
- Prospeo
company_lookalike (required lane): {"domain": "<seed>"} — one call per seed,
single domain only (arrays 400). Composable with location/headcount/keyword filters.
One large health system seed returned 5,727 lookalikes.
- Exa findSimilar (optional lane): content similarity, and it returns homepage text in the
same call — free evidence for qualification.
- Parallel.ai entity-search (optional lane): ~$0.005/req, pads to
match_limit with junk —
always qualify before trusting; returns LinkedIn URLs, not domains.
Optional lanes whose key is unset are skipped with a log line, so the run still completes on
Prospeo alone. Then qualify candidates (Claude sub-agents for a small set, or score-batch.ts
with a draft prompt) → write lookalikes-confirmed.csv. Target 50–150 confirmed.
⚠️ EXHAUSTIVE-SWEEP DEFAULT
Phase 3's scorecard is for TRANSPARENCY, not selection. The pull in Phase 4 must include:
(a) EVERY industry carried by ≥1 confirmed fit — whole industry, headcount band + geo only, no
keyword narrowing; (b) EVERY discriminative keyword from confirmed fits across ALL industries.
Score everything with the cheap model. Only band + geography are legal pre-filters. Snowball
until net-new drops under 2–3%. Never trim the sweep to save AI cost — recall is the product.
Pull keywords unless they are stopword-grade.
Phase 3 — mine + score filters
npx tsx scripts/mine-filters.ts --csv=<confirmed.csv> --run=<slug> --propose --country="United States #US"
npx tsx scripts/mine-filters.ts --run=<slug> --scorecard
for f in ~/output/list-expander/<slug>/samples/*.csv; do
npx tsx scripts/score-batch.ts --csv=$f --prompt-file=<icp-prompt.txt> --out=${f%.csv}-scored.csv; done
mkdir -p ~/output/list-expander/<slug>/samples-scored && mv ~/output/list-expander/<slug>/samples/*-scored.csv $_
npx tsx scripts/mine-filters.ts --run=<slug> --scorecard --precision-from=~/output/list-expander/<slug>/samples-scored
--propose fingerprints each confirmed company against Prospeo and fetches its live homepage,
then mines 2–3-grams across that combined text. The homepage is the evidence source that matters:
it says what a company calls itself today, which is exactly what a keyword filter has to match.
Pass --no-scrape to mine from Prospeo descriptions only (faster, thinner).
Output: filter-scorecard.csv — per filter: Prospeo count, sampled precision, estimated
qualified yield. Review with the user before Phase 4.
Phase 4 — wide pull + scale qualification
Tune the qualification prompt FIRST via /icp-prompt-builder (interactive, 10-company batches,
2 clean rounds to converge).
npx tsx scripts/pull.ts --run=<slug> --test
npx tsx scripts/pull.ts --run=<slug> --exclude=<existing.csv>
npx tsx scripts/score-batch.ts --csv=<run>/pull-all.csv --prompt-file=<icp-prompt.txt> --scrape --concurrency=8
npx tsx scripts/verify-website.ts --run=<slug> --prompt-file=<icp-prompt.txt> --concurrency=40
Verify the first test output shows real successes before the full run. Any filter set whose
total_count exceeds 24k is auto-sharded (country → 51 states → headcount-band bisection) so the
tail is never truncated.
Phase 5 — TAM ceiling + report
npx tsx scripts/contact-count.ts --csv=<qualified.csv> --run=<slug> \
--titles="COO,VP Operations,..." --seniorities="C-Suite,Vice President,Head,Director"
npx tsx scripts/report.ts --run=<slug> --title="<Vertical> — TAM Expansion"
open ~/output/list-expander/<slug>/report.html
Requirements / env
Put these in the repo-root .env (copy .env.example), or ~/.env.
REQUIRED
OPTIONAL (each is one lane; unset = that lane logs skipped: <VAR> not set and the run continues)
| Var | What for | Sign up |
|---|
EXA_API_KEY | Exa findSimilar lookalike lane in lookalikes.ts | https://exa.ai/ |
PARALLEL_AI_API_KEY | Parallel.ai entity-search lookalike lane in lookalikes.ts | https://parallel.ai/ |
OPENAI_API_KEY_NANO | A separate cheap-model key; used in preference to OPENAI_API_KEY when set | https://platform.openai.com/api-keys |
OPENAI_ICP_MODEL | Override the qualification model (default gpt-5-nano) | — |
PROSPEO_MIN_INTERVAL_MS | Slow Prospeo pacing below the built-in 450ms floor. Can only make it slower — values under 450 are clamped | — |
No database is required. Every artifact is a file under ~/output/list-expander/{run}/.
Verified API facts
| Filter | Syntax | Notes |
|---|
company_lookalike | {"domain": "x.com"} or {"icp_text": "..."} | single domain only; icp_text describing the product surfaces vendors — describe the company |
company_keywords | {"include": [...], "exclude": [...]} | multi-word phrases OK; combine with company_industry for precision |
company_key_customers | {"include": [...]} | matches by who their customers are |
company_headcount_custom | {"min": N, "max": N} | use this, not headcount_range (enum format unverified) |
company_products_services, company_icp | ❌ broken/unusable via API | use company_keywords / company_lookalike.icp_text instead |
Prospeo pacing (measured): PROSPEO_MIN_INTERVAL_MS=200 (5 req/s) trips "Rate limit exceeded"
after ~1,000 requests; 450 ms (~2.2 req/s) ran 1,550+ requests clean. The account limit is
GLOBAL, so lib.ts paces every process through a shared slot file
(~/.cache/prospeo-lock/) with a 450 ms floor, backs off 45 s on a rate-limit, and makes that
penalty visible to every other running process. Identical request+page re-runs within 30 days are
FREE (free:true) — re-pulling after a partial failure costs nothing.
Prospeo count trick: a page-1 call's pagination.total_count sizes any filter cheaply; add
person_contact_details:{email:["VERIFIED"]} on /search-person for the verified-email ceiling.
Seniority enum: Founder/Owner, C-Suite, Partner, Vice President, Head, Director, Manager, Senior, Entry, Intern — never "VP", never "President".
Related skills
/icp-prompt-builder — tune the qualification prompt before Phase 4 (the score-batch script it
refers to lives HERE: scripts/score-batch.ts)/prospeo-search-api — full Prospeo filter reference/prospeo-full-export — title-first paginated lead export once you have the company list/blitz-list-builder — domain-first contact discovery on the qualified companies/disco-like — a 4th lookalike source (seed domains or NL ICP text)/list-quality-scorecard — grade the final CSV before it goes anywhere near a campaign
