Research prospects with Clay

The Weekly prospect research template turns an ideal customer profile into a ranked account and contact brief. It is aligned with the prospecting marketing skill: define the target precisely, qualify with evidence, keep missing data visible, and hand outreach decisions to a person.

Connect Clay

An operator must first register one OAuth client with Clay, store its ID (and secret, when issued) in CLAY_MCP_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID and CLAY_MCP_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET, then enable MANAGED_MCP_CLAY_ENABLED. Open Connections → Clay and start OAuth. Work on Repeat reuses that client, connects only to Clay's production MCP endpoint, https://api.clay.com/v3/mcp, and requests Clay's single published mcp scope. Authorization uses PKCE; there is no API-key fallback in this managed integration.

The person authorizing selects a Clay workspace. Its admins must allow the registered client under Settings → MCP users → Allowed MCP clients. Clay checks that workspace policy again during token refresh, so disabling the client can move an existing connection to reauthorization_required.

Current beta boundary

Clay is connection-only until exact authenticated tool schemas are captured and classified. You can authorize and save the connection, but its checked-in policy exposes no runnable tools. This blocks unreviewed find, enrich, Function, or workspace operations even when the remote server advertises them.

Clay access tokens last one hour and refresh tokens rotate. Work on Repeat stores the replacement refresh token atomically. Clay MCP sessions also require the Mcp-Session-Id returned by initialization; the shared MCP transport owns that session lifecycle rather than exposing it to a routine.

Set governance before the first run

Clay tools consume workspace credits at the same rate as equivalent work in Clay. Before tool manifests are enabled, an admin should set a default monthly MCP credit limit, add per-user overrides where needed, and enable only the Clay Functions the routine should eventually call. Paid-plan and Enterprise-only controls can limit which users, functions, and Salesforce-owned accounts are available.

Choose Weekly prospect research, describe the ideal customer profile, attach the Clay connection, and prove one manual run after reviewed tools ship. Do not schedule credit-consuming enrichment until the first-run output and credit usage have been reviewed.

See Clay's official platform connection guide and MCP governance guide for current endpoint, OAuth, session, workspace, plan, and credit behavior.