outreach-research

name	outreach-research
description	ALWAYS invoke when the user wants to find potential companies, generate leads, or plan outreach. Triggers: "find companies", "lead generation", "outreach", "prospect", "find potential clients", "research targets".

Outreach Research Pipeline

Overview

You are an orchestrator that drives a full business outreach intelligence pipeline. You receive an outreach goal and autonomously define strategy, research sources, discover companies, scan reputations, enrich with deep intelligence, score leads, write per-company dossier cards, and produce an executive summary report. Every company gets exactly two permanent files: a .json (machine-readable, progressively enriched) and a .md (human-readable dossier card). No bulk JSON arrays.

When to Use

Invoke when the user wants to find prospective companies, build a lead list, or prepare outreach research. Trigger phrases: "find companies", "lead generation", "outreach", "prospect", "find potential clients".

When NOT to use

• The user wants to draft outreach copy or messages — this skill researches targets, not content.
• The user wants competitive analysis of a single named company — use explain or debug certainty:low on public sources instead.
• The user has not defined an outreach goal or target profile — ask before invoking.

Input

• $ARGUMENTS — The outreach goal. Examples:
  • "find potential clients for our DevOps consulting in DACH region"
  • "SaaS companies in Latin America sector:HR-tech limit:30"
  • "find AI startups in Singapore for partnership opportunities"

If empty, ask the user what kind of companies they want to find and why.

Scope Parameter

Extract scope modifiers from $ARGUMENTS, case-insensitive. outreach-research is outbound (company discovery), so scope controls which prospective companies enter the funnel, not which files to scan. Remaining text controls the outreach goal (orthogonal).

• sector:<value> — restrict discovery to a specific industry/vertical (e.g. sector:HR-tech, sector:fintech). Default: inferred by outreach-strategist from the goal text.
• region:<value> — restrict discovery to a geographic market (e.g. region:DACH, region:LATAM). Default: inferred from the goal text; global if no signal.
• limit:<N> — maximum companies to carry through the pipeline. Default: 20.
• Default — full-scope strategist-driven discovery using only the goal text when no modifiers are present.

Argument Parsing

Extract from $ARGUMENTS:

• goal — the full description (everything not matching a parameter pattern)
• sector — optional, from sector:<value> (default: inferred by strategist)
• region — optional, from region:<value> (default: inferred from goal text)
• limit — optional, from limit:<N> (default: 20)

Directory Structure

Two separate directories are used:

• State — .mz/task/<task_name>/state.md. This is the source of truth across phases; never rely on conversation memory.
• Outreach data — .mz/outreach/<run_name>/ holds strategy.json, sources.json, temp _scout/ and _enrichment/ folders, permanent companies/<slug>.json + companies/<slug>.md pairs, scout_summary.md, and <YYYY_MM_DD>_outreach_<goal_slug>.md.

task_name follows the pattern <YYYY_MM_DD>_outreach_research_<slug>; run_name is <YYYY_MM_DD>_outreach_research_<goal_slug> (same leading-date convention). They are independent: task_name identifies the pipeline invocation, run_name identifies the outreach output bundle.

Core Process

Phase Overview

#	Phase	Agent(s)	Details
0	Setup	—	Inline below
1	Strategy	outreach-strategist	phases/discovery.md
1.5	User approval of strategy	— (orchestrator, AskUserQuestion)	Inline below (+ phases/discovery.md §Phase 1.5 for details)
2	Source Research	outreach-source-researcher	phases/discovery.md
3	Scout + Dedup	N x outreach-scout (parallel)	phases/discovery.md
4	Scan	N x outreach-scanner (parallel)	phases/enrichment_and_report.md
5	Enrich	outreach-enrichment-orchestrator	phases/enrichment_and_report.md
6	Score	inline (orchestrator)	phases/enrichment_and_report.md
7	Write Cards	N x outreach-card-writer (parallel)	phases/enrichment_and_report.md
8	Report	outreach-reporter	phases/enrichment_and_report.md

Read the relevant phase file when you reach that phase. Do not read both phase files upfront.

Phase 1.5: User Approval of Strategy

This orchestrator (not a subagent) presents this gate. This step is interactive and must not be delegated.

Pre-read: Read .mz/outreach/<run_name>/strategy.json with the Read tool. Capture the full file contents (target profile, sector/geo scope, candidate-source plan, estimated fan-out cost) into context.

Surface 1 — emit the plan message. Output the strategy verbatim as a normal markdown chat message. Emit the full verbatim contents of .mz/outreach/<run_name>/strategy.json — do not substitute a path, summary, or placeholder. Structure:

## Strategy ready for review — outreach-research

```json
<verbatim contents of .mz/outreach/<run_name>/strategy.json>
```

---
**Approve** → proceed to Phase 2 (source research and company discovery)  ·  **Reject** → mark task aborted, no outreach data generated  ·  reply with feedback to revise

Surface 2 — call AskUserQuestion. A short selector — do not re-embed the strategy in the question body, it lives in the plan message above:

• question: The strategy above is ready for review.
• options: Approve — proceed to Phase 2 (source research and company discovery) · Reject — abort the task, no outreach data generated

Response handling:

• Approve → update .mz/task/<task_name>/state.md phase to strategy_approved, proceed to Phase 2.
• Reject → update .mz/task/<task_name>/state.md Status to aborted_by_user and stop. Do not proceed.
• Any other reply (feedback) → re-dispatch outreach-strategist with the feedback appended, overwrite strategy.json, return to Surface 1, re-read strategy.json, and re-emit the entire plan message from scratch with the full new contents — never diff-only, never summary-only, since context compaction may have destroyed the user's memory of earlier iterations. This is a loop — repeat until the user explicitly approves. Never proceed to Phase 2 without explicit approval.

Techniques

Techniques: delegated to phase files — see Phase Overview table above.

Common Rationalizations

N/A — collaboration/reference skill, not discipline.

Red Flags

• You dispatched enrichment before the user approved the target profile.
• You used a banned data source (scraped LinkedIn, unverified aggregators, AI-summarized listings).
• Report lives in chat instead of .mz/reports/ or the run's executive summary file.

Verification

Before completing, output a visible block showing: run name, company count after dedup, scored leads count, and the absolute path of the executive summary report. Confirm the report file and per-company card pairs exist on disk.

---

Phase 0: Setup

Parse arguments. Derive two names:

• task_name (state dir) = <YYYY_MM_DD>_outreach_research_<slug> where <slug> is a snake_case summary of the goal (max 20 chars) and <YYYY_MM_DD> is today's date with underscores.
• run_name (outreach output dir) = <YYYY_MM_DD>_outreach_research_<goal_slug>, max 40 chars total (keep <goal_slug> short to fit). Example: "find DevOps clients in DACH" → 2026_05_11_outreach_research_devops_dach.

mkdir -p .mz/task/<task_name>
mkdir -p .mz/outreach/<run_name>/companies

Write .mz/task/<task_name>/state.md:

schema_version: 2
Status: running
Phase: 0
Started: <ISO timestamp>
phase_complete: false
what_remains: []
Goal: <goal>
Sector: <parsed or null>
Limit: 20
RunName: <run_name> (outreach output dir)

After setup completes, read phases/discovery.md and proceed to Phase 1.

---

State Management

State persists to .mz/task/<task_name>/state.md. Schema is v2: the file's first line is schema_version: 2, and alongside the skill's existing Status / Phase / Started keys it carries phase_complete (boolean) and what_remains (YAML list of strings). Set phase_complete: false on phase entry and true once the phase's artifacts are written and its gates pass; refresh what_remains on every phase transition; what_remains MUST be [] when Status: complete. On reading a schema_version: 1 or unversioned file, add the missing keys, set schema_version: 2, and log the upgrade.

Resume Support

Before creating anything in Phase 0, check if .mz/task/<task_name>/state.md exists for the resolved task_name. If it does, read the Phase field and resume from the next incomplete phase. All phases are idempotent — re-running overwrites output files.

Error Handling

• Agent fails or returns empty: append an Errors: bullet in .mz/task/<task_name>/state.md, continue with available data.
• ALL agents in a phase fail (zero results): stop the pipeline and report the failure.
• Never fabricate data — incomplete results are better than false results.
• Corrupted company JSON during any phase: log the error in state.md, skip that company, continue.