The argument in one line.
Clay's new CLI plugin lets an AI coding agent operate its lead-generation platform directly from a chat prompt, collapsing what used to take days of manual list-building and outreach-writing into a single spoken request.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You run cold outreach (email, DMs, calls) for an agency or B2B service and want a cheaper way to build prospect lists.
- You already use an AI coding agent for other tasks and want to see it operate a business tool through a CLI plugin.
- You're curious how AI 'agent' tools scrape and qualify leads automatically instead of returning a raw contact dump.
SKIP IF…
- You sell to consumers rather than businesses — this is a B2B decision-maker targeting workflow.
- You're looking for a permanently free tool — the walkthrough runs on a limited free-credit tier of a paid platform.
The full version, fast.
Clay, a lead-generation platform now valued at five billion dollars, released a CLI that plugs directly into an AI coding agent, so instead of manually operating Clay's interface you describe the list you want in plain language and the agent runs it for you. The walkthrough sets up the agent in a code editor, installs the Clay plugin, and prompts it to find ten kitchen-fitting companies in one city along with each owner's verified work email and the company's unique selling point. It then has the agent write a personalized, non-AI-sounding cold email for each lead using that USP, and finally merges list-building and email-writing into one reusable workflow that can be re-triggered for any future batch of leads.
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Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:36
01 · Cold open
The free-leads promise stated up front, with the caveat that ChatGPT works too.
00:36 – 02:32
02 · Introduction to Clay.com
What the lead-gen platform is, why it mattered when it launched, and how it aggregated hundreds of competing tools into one API.
02:32 – 03:02
03 · The feature that changes everything
The platform's new CLI plugin, which lets a coding agent run the whole system instead of a human operating the interface.
03:02 – 06:34
04 · The simple setup process
Installing the coding agent in a real code editor, installing the CLI plugin, and enabling bypass-permissions mode.
06:34 – 08:07
05 · How to claim 2,000 free leads
Authorizing the platform account to unlock a promotional free-credit tier tied to the plugin launch.
08:07 – 09:07
06 · Building the lead list
A single voice prompt with hard filters returns ten qualified companies with verified decision-maker emails and each company's USP.
09:07 – 11:07
07 · The targeting mistake everyone makes
Why most outreach defaults to a broad TAM list instead of a smaller, better-converting SAM list, and how cheap AI list-building removes that excuse.
11:07 – 13:35
08 · Writing automated custom emails
Turning the lead list into personalized, non-AI-sounding cold emails that use each company's USP as the hook.
13:35 – 15:24
09 · One automated workflow, start to finish
Merging list-building and email-writing into a single reusable Clay workflow triggerable from the agent.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- A lead-generation platform released a CLI in 2026 that lets an AI coding agent operate its whole system directly from a chat prompt, with no manual interface required.
- The underlying platform grew from a zero valuation to five billion dollars in four years by aggregating hundreds of separate lead-generation data sources behind one API.
- Before aggregator platforms existed, building a qualified B2B prospect list from scratch took days of manual research spread across dozens of separate sources.
- The platform's built-in scraping agent visits a target company's website and runs an AI query against it, filtering out any lead that doesn't match stated criteria like 'no bathroom companies, kitchen specialists only.'
- Most outreach campaigns target TAM (total addressable market — everyone who could theoretically buy) instead of the smaller, higher-converting SAM (serviceable addressable market — who a company actually wants to work with) simply because TAM lists are easier to build.
- A single spoken prompt with hard constraints — location, specialization, decision-maker seniority, verified email, and company USP — was enough for the agent to return a qualified lead list with no manual filtering afterward.
- Feeding a company's own unique selling point back into its cold email as the personalization hook is what keeps AI-written outreach from reading like a generic template.
- A one-off lead-generation prompt and a one-off email-writing prompt can be merged into a single reusable workflow that regenerates the full list-plus-outreach pipeline on demand.
- GEO (generative engine optimization) outreach pitches a free audit of whether AI chat tools recommend a business by name — a pitch angle that only exists because buyers now ask AI instead of Google.
- Enabling 'bypass permissions' mode lets a coding agent run terminal commands and install plugins without individual confirmation prompts, trading oversight for setup speed.
An AI coding agent can now operate a business tool, not just write code.
WHAT TO LEARN
Wiring an AI coding agent into a lead-generation platform's CLI turns list-building and outreach-writing into a single spoken request, and the same TAM/SAM targeting logic applies whether a human or an agent is doing the work.
02Introduction to Clay.com
- The platform's core pitch when it launched years earlier was aggregating hundreds of separate lead-generation tools and data sources behind one API, so no single source's blind spot limits a search.
- Before aggregator platforms existed, building a qualified prospect list meant manually working across separate single-purpose sources, because each early tool only covered one channel.
- Reaching a multi-billion-dollar valuation in a few years is one signal of how much unmet demand there was for a single aggregated lead-generation layer.
03The feature that changes everything
- A CLI plugin that lets a coding agent operate the entire platform from chat removes the need for someone to manually run searches and filters inside the platform's own interface.
- Handing lead-generation execution to an AI agent removes the ongoing 'manning the system' step that previously ate hundreds of hours even after the underlying data aggregation already existed.
04The simple setup process
- Getting a coding agent to control a third-party CLI plugin requires running it inside a real code editor and terminal, not a browser-only or sandboxed version of the agent.
- Enabling a permissions-bypass mode removes the need to individually approve each terminal command the agent runs, trading manual oversight for setup speed.
- Once a plugin is installed, the agent can confirm its own setup status on request, removing a manual verification step.
05How to claim 2,000 free leads
- A free-credit incentive tied to a new plugin launch is how platforms recruit their next wave of users before those users convert to a paid tier.
- The value of a free-credit tier is time-limited by design — the offer can be revoked once its promotional period ends.
06Building the lead list
- A single prompt specifying location, industry, exclusions, decision-maker seniority, a verified email requirement, and a request for each company's USP was enough for the agent to return a usable list with no manual filtering afterward.
- The platform's built-in scraping agent does the qualifying work of visiting each company's site and checking it against stated criteria before including it in the list.
- Requiring a verified work email, not just a guessed format, is what makes a scraped list actually usable for outreach instead of one that bounces.
07The targeting mistake everyone makes
- Most outreach defaults to targeting TAM (everyone who could theoretically buy) because it's the easiest list to build, not because it's the most effective one.
- A smaller SAM list — the people a business actually wants to work with — costs less to build once an AI agent is doing the work, and produces a higher reply rate.
- Cheap, fast list generation removes the old excuse for defaulting to a broad, low-quality TAM list over a narrower, higher-intent SAM list.
08Writing automated custom emails
- Feeding a company's own unique selling point back into its cold email as the personalization hook is what separates a targeted email from a templated blast.
- Explicitly instructing an AI agent to write 'casual' and to avoid sounding like AI is necessary — without that constraint, agent-written outreach defaults to generic marketing language.
- An agent can generate and batch multiple personalized emails from the same lead list in the same session that built the list.
09One automated workflow, start to finish
- A lead-generation prompt and an email-writing prompt, once each is proven separately, can be merged into a single reusable workflow that regenerates both in one trigger.
- Once list-building and outreach-writing are combined into one workflow, generating the next batch of leads no longer requires manually operating any software interface.
Terms worth knowing.
- Clay
- A lead-generation and sales-workflow platform that aggregates hundreds of data sources behind one API, letting users build and enrich prospect lists without manually querying each source.
- Claygent
- Clay's built-in AI agent that visits a company's website, searches for specified keywords, and returns only the leads that pass an AI-evaluated qualification check.
- Clay CLI
- A command-line plugin Clay released that lets AI coding agents operate Clay's platform directly from a chat prompt instead of through its web interface.
- TAM
- Total Addressable Market — every potential customer a business could theoretically sell to, often used by default as the (least selective) target list for outreach.
- SAM
- Serviceable Addressable Market — the smaller subset of the total market a business actually wants to work with, typically converting better but taking more effort to define.
- API waterfall
- A system that automatically tries multiple data providers in sequence until one returns a match, so no single source's coverage gap blocks a search.
- GEO (generative engine optimization)
- The practice of optimizing a business's online presence so AI chat tools and search engines mention or recommend it by name in generated answers.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
01:00
“I started a marketing agency that's now made tens of millions in revenue.”
01:49
“Clay went from zero to a five billion dollar valuation in just four years.”
09:14
“Very few companies will build a hyper personalized, hyper targeted list of SAM where they only reach out to the people they genuinely wanna work with.”
12:45
“Subject line, does ChatGPT know Solo Kitchens?”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
analogystory
00:00You can now use Claude to generate thousands of qualified b to b leads completely for free. When I say Claude, you can also use ChatGPT if you're that way inclined.
00:10I won't judge you. Now this list is what some would call a prospecting list, a big list of decision makers, people that own companies that could potentially buy your products or your services.
00:20By the end of this video, you'll be able to build a big fat list of them for yourself. So let's get straight into it. So we're actually gonna use Claude code today.
00:27So you go claude.ai forward slash code. Don't worry if you haven't used it before. I'm gonna take you through the full a to z.
00:32Now what we're actually gonna do is we're gonna use a plug in on Claude code from clay.com. Now clay.com, put really simply, is a lead generation tool.
00:42And when it first came to the market just four years ago, it completely revolutionized the lead generation space. Why? This is really important.
00:50It used to take days to generate big lists of qualified leads that we would then reach out to and sell our products or services to. I know that because eight years ago, I started a marketing agency that's now made tens of millions in revenue. And the way we got our first clients is was through cold outreaching, through cold calling, through emails, through DMs, most of which I've documented on this YouTube channel.
01:10And so I would have to generate huge lists of leads from all over the Internet, and I would have to do it manually because software products did not exist. The early stage products did make it easier. Companies like Apollo and Snub dot io, but the limitations of various different tools was they all had their own different sources for finding leads.
01:28One tool would use LinkedIn. One tool would maybe use Google Maps, for example, until Clay came along. Now Clay is an aggregate of all of these other lead generation tools.
01:38That was their first kind of value proposition to the market. So they married together hundreds of different lead generation tools via an API, otherwise known as an API waterfall.
01:49And this had such an impact that Klay went from zero to a $5,000,000,000 valuation in just four years.
01:57And I'm fortunate enough to be one of the people that invested in the early stages of this business. Now one of the benefits of being an investor is I get to hear about certain features that are being released before they come to market. And this feature is without a doubt the most exciting thing that the Clay guys have produced ever because I've spent tens of hours using clay.com to generate big lists of leads.
02:20It saves me hundreds of hours on the stuff I used to do manually, but I still have to man the system myself and generate my big list. In fact, I'll put out videos on this YouTube channel.
02:29They got hundreds of thousands of views teaching people how to use the platform. Now with Clay's CLI, which they released just this week, you can now plug it in straight to Claude code, and AI will manage Clay for you and do all of the work on the interface.
02:47So all we have to do now is just speak to Claude and say, I want you to generate me a list of leads with this criteria, and it goes and does it all for you. Insane.
02:57I wish this existed when I first started my agency. It would have saved me hundreds on hundreds of hours. So put a link in the description for the setup page.
03:05All you're gonna do when you get onto it is hit this button, install the clay plug in to start building. If you're interested, it's called CLI. It's a command line interface.
03:12It's basically just a form of integration. Now before we go ahead and copy this, we need to actually install Chord on our device into our terminal because this is Chord Web that I showed you earlier. It's an isolated web based version of Chord.
03:25We can't use CLIs on Chord Web. It has to be within our terminal.
03:29So there are two ways to do this. I'll put a link in the description. You can access the terminal guide.
03:33We need to go ahead and open the terminal by going command space and type in terminal. We can open that up.
03:38It opens a terminal window, and then we just follow these instructions. We copy and paste these prompts into the terminal, and it will go install that for us. Now my preference for how I like to use Claude Code is through something called Visual Studio Code, which is a completely free application.
03:55It makes things a little bit easier to manage. You can go ahead. Again, I'll put a link in description.
03:59You can download that. Now what that will look like is this. This is Versus Code.
04:04So let me just zoom in to make sure you can see everything properly. Okay. Cool.
04:10And this is what you will see when you open up Visual Studio Code for the first time. Okay? You're not gonna use most of these features if you're new to this.
04:17So so bear with me. This is nice and easy. We're gonna hit open folder as the first part.
04:22Now this folder is effectively gonna be a new folder, which we can call clay integration or let's call it lead generation. And what this effectively is is an application folder because when we are using Claude on the desktop, we are effectively creating applications, whether they're back end or they are front end.
04:41Now once we've created that lead generation folder, we're gonna go down to extensions, and we're gonna type in Claude code. Okay?
04:49And you're gonna go ahead until you find this extension here, which I've already got enabled. You're gonna hit the install button to install it, and I'm now enabling it for this specific project. And now we get this little Claude button here, which means we can open up Claude.
05:04We can access it here, or we can access it here. I'm gonna click the button. I'm gonna close there, and now we are good to go.
05:12So, again, let me just make this window just the perfect size for you guys so we're not missing out anything there.
05:19Now we can go back over. We can copy that prompt. We go back to Visual Studio, and we can paste it in here.
05:26And we can set it to auto. We want it to automatically run, or you can use bypass permissions where you just let Claude run on autopilot, which is my preference myself because, uh, then I don't have to accept anything that's going on in the background.
05:41But I would trade with an air of caution if you are new to using Claude on your desktop before you enable bypass permissions, which, by the way, you can just do by going over to your extensions, click the settings on Claude code extension, and then you can tick enable bypass permissions.
05:58So now it's telling me we actually need to install this via the terminal. Although, just a little hack for you. All we need to do is say, do it for me, and we can allow Claw to just go ahead and run that prompt in the terminal itself.
06:11Or if you like, you can go and bypass the need to do this and just go and paste it in the terminal first time around, but I'm trying to make this video as easy as possible for those of you that are complete novices to this interface. Now while setting up, Claude has thrown up the authorized Clay CLI window where I have to log in to a Clay account and authorize so I can actually use the system.
06:32You may not already have an account, so I'm gonna put a link in the description where you can set one up for free. When I saw this feature and Clay reached out to me about it, I told them that I had to record a video about it. I've recorded tons of videos on lead generation on this channel, and it just fit the bill.
06:45I needed to speak about it. But I said, if I'm gonna do this, I wanna make sure I can give people access for free. And so the team have kindly agreed to give all of you who are watching this right now 2,000 free credits as a sign on bonus when you jump onto Clay.
06:58That's pretty much 2,000 completely enriched leads that you can generate on the platform. You can go in and make some money before you go ahead and sign up to Clay on a paid subscription later, which I'm sure you're going to when you actually get to see the benefit of this.
07:12And so click the link in the description. Use that link. I don't know how long it's actually gonna be available for.
07:16They may revoke it in the future, so do it where you can wash your can. Cool. I'm gonna hit authorize, and that's authorization complete.
07:24We go back over to Visual Studio, and it's continuing to set up. So now we're all set up. The final thing we need to do is actually restart Claude so it all comes into play.
07:31So we can close that there. We can open up another Claude window. We're gonna go new session, and then we'll keep it really lazy.
07:39Can you please check that the clay CLI is now set up?
07:44That super whisper I'm using there for voice. And this is gonna say yes. There we go.
07:52Set up and working. And so now we can go ahead and we can use the Clay CLI straight in the terminal, or we can use it in this interface where it will effectively be using the terminal on our behalf.
08:03Great. So let's generate our first list of leads. Okay.
08:06Let's do this. So I want you to build me a list of 10 companies from the London area.
08:15These are home service businesses, and they fit kitchens.
08:21I don't want anybody that does bathrooms. They need to have a kitchen specialization.
08:26That's really important. I want you to find the decision maker's details as well. So founders, managing directors, and owners.
08:35I want their work email address, and I also want to understand what the company's unique sales proposition is.
08:43Please be as cost of as cost efficient as possible when it comes to credit usage. A little end one there is a hack for you. Okay.
08:53So really just voice based prompt. We're being pretty open, um, and, uh, just this is human, really, engagement as if we're asking a team member that we want them to generate a specific list of leads.
09:04Now you notice how specific I went there? I wanna test the system right now, and I wanna show you what this is capable of. Because back in the day, when we wanted to generate a hyper list of ICP, ideal customer profile, these are the customers that you actually want to reach out to.
09:18Now otherwise known as our TAM and our SAM. TAM is our total addressable market. These are the total amount of people that we could reach out to.
09:27SAM is our serviceable addressable market. These are the people we actually want to work with. Now most people who are reaching out to prospects will build a list of their TAM because it's easy to get access to.
09:38You know, very few companies will build a hyper personalized, hyper targeted list of SAM where they only reach out to the people they genuinely wanna work with. That means they're gonna get a better result, and they're gonna get more replies.
09:50They're gonna spend less money on generating those leads, but it used to take an awful lot of time in order to get that list. Now it doesn't because Clay will just go and figure out all the shit it needs to figure out.
10:01They will work out all of the filters, and it will go build that list for us and scrape those websites. So Clay has a tool called a Claygent. It's basically an AI agent which will scrape a website, will look for the keywords that we're searching for, run an AI query there, and only spit out the leads that we're looking for.
10:16That's what it will use when I say, I don't want anyone that does bathrooms. So let's wait to get this back. Cool.
10:22So here's our list. I'm gonna have to blur out some of this information because I can't just disclose this information online. We've got company decision maker, their name, the role, their work email, which is verified, which is really important.
10:34We need to make sure it's actually validated, and then the unique sales proposition. So what makes this company unique?
10:39This is gonna come in handy in a second. So the this is The UK's leading supplier of bespoke Scandinavian Scandinavian style kitchens and furniture, heritage bespoke luxury kitchens and joinery, independent British designers.
10:51So now we've got their unique sales proposition there as well, which is absolutely awesome. Now I've only done 10 leads here rather than hundreds or thousands because for the purpose of this video, I wanna keep it nice and clean. You can generate as many as you want to.
11:02Now we're gonna go a step further here, and I actually want this system to write personalized emails for me. So I want you to write personalized emails using the Klay CLI to each of these prospects.
11:18And I want you to bear in mind that I am a GEO agency, so generative engine optimization agency.
11:26And I wanna reach out to them to host a free AI search audit for them. It's really important that you use their unique sales proposition as a personalization point in the email.
11:38Make the email very casual but very human, and make sure it does not sound like AI.
11:45Let's do it. Okay. So what's actually happened is a workflow has been generated inside of Claude, the GEO Outreach email writer.
11:52So we can go have a look at that right now. And to be familiar to you, you've seen Zapier or NA 10 or any kind of flow based system. It's a manual trigger, and then we've an email writer.
12:01So you are Jordan, founder of a GEO agency, write one cold Outreach email to the person below, offering a free AI search audit, personalized email using their specific USP as the hook. And then we've got the import fields here and the voice, and then then we can go ahead and we can save them.
12:16We can have a look at this problem. We can play around with it. Hard bands never use it because we said make sure it doesn't sound AI.
12:22What I'm gonna do right now is I'm actually gonna ask for an example output, and then I'm going to go a step further and actually turn this workflow into the lead generation and email writing flow.
12:36So we've got everything in one. Can you give me an example of one of the emails that was outputted by this?
12:44Okay. So, yes, here's one that's already come back.
12:47Subject line, does ChatGPT know solar kitchens? Love that subject line. Sofia, quick one.
12:53Since 2006, you built solar into the go to name for bespoke Scandi kitchens. Here's the thing. Buyers don't just Google that anymore.
13:00They ask Chattypati Chattypati for the best kitchen company in London and take whatever name pops up.
13:06If AI doesn't mention solar, that inquiry never even reaches you. It just goes to whoever the AI picked instead.
13:12I ran a few of these searches out of curiosity and and figured you'd wanna see the results either way. Want me to send over what I found? No charge.
13:19This is a nice email. Like, a little bit of prompting, and this would be spot on, but this is a really, really nice email. It's actually going ahead and batching the rest of the emails as well.
13:28I already launched those in tandem. I'm gonna stop that for now, and I'm actually just gonna extend this workflow. Okay.
13:35I want you to take the workflow you created in Clay, and I want you to now add the lead generation part to it as well. At the moment, it's just an email writing workflow. So I'd actually like to be able to use this workflow in the future to both generate leads, get the decision makers details, the work email, and everything that you did here in this chat, and then write the email all in one workflow.
13:58Okay. It's done. So let's open this in Clay.
14:02And here we can see we've got a manual trigger still, so we can trigger this anytime we want more leads. We're gonna research the decision maker. We're gonna pick the best decision maker based on the fact on whether or not they are the single best decision maker, owner level outreach, who's gonna be the most senior people.
14:20We're gonna find their work email. We're gonna drive that USP, and then we're gonna write that email.
14:25So now we have that entire flow in one workflow, and we can go ahead and we can run this anytime we want to generate more leads, Or we can just go back over to Claude, and we can say, hey. I want you to use the g e a GEO lead gen plus outreach workflow to generate me another thousand leads, and it will go ahead and it will do that to our specification, write those emails, and we can then even go ahead and plug in Klay on the back end to instantly, for example, where we can send all of those emails out through automation.
14:56And now this entire thing is possible without us even having to man the software ourselves. So that is how you generate thousands of qualified b to b leads using AI. And as I said earlier, you can click the link in the description, and you will be able to get 2,000 free credits on Clay for you to generate over a thousand leads for your own business today.
15:16But use that link whilst it's still around because I'm sure it won't be around forever. Subscribe for more, and I will see you very soon.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
An agency owner opens with a blunt promise: build a list of qualified B2B decision-makers, completely free, using nothing but a chat prompt to an AI coding agent. What follows is a screen-recorded setup of a lead-generation platform's brand-new CLI plugin, which turns the agent into an operator for a platform now valued at five billion dollars.
Named ideas worth stealing.
09:14concept
TAM vs SAM
- TAM — Total Addressable Market
- SAM — Serviceable Addressable Market
TAM is everyone who could theoretically buy; SAM is the smaller set of prospects a business actually wants to work with. Most outreach defaults to TAM because it's easier to build, even though SAM converts better and costs less to reach.
Steal forany cold outreach targeting decision
01:43concept
API waterfall
Chaining together many different data-source APIs so that if one source lacks a match, the system automatically tries the next, removing any single source's blind spot.
Steal forany tool aggregating multiple third-party data providers
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
06:38product
“Put a link in the description for the setup page... use that link and you'll get 2,000 free credits.”
The free-credit pitch repeats three times (mid-video setup pointer, an explicit dedicated segment, and the final sign-off), each time framed as an early-investor bonus that could be revoked once the promotional window closes.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
