clay-playbooks

Clay Playbooks

Nineteen playbooks. Each one answers a single question:

A campaign needs signal X on every row. What is the cheapest reliable way to get X, and what exact prompt turns X into copy-ready text?

One playbook produces one field. new_in_role_line. funding_line. pricing_page_line. That field slots into one sentence of email 1. That is the whole product.

The three run modes

Every playbook directory ships the same three files. They are three delivery mechanisms for the same recipe, not three different recipes.

File	What it is	Use it when
SKILL.md	The playbook itself: source chain, output contract, locked prompt, edge cases	You are running the signal from Claude, ad hoc, on a CSV or a one-off list
clay-table.md	The Clay table build: exact columns, types, formulas, credit gates, AI-column bindings	The signal needs to run continuously on a client table that other people will look at
clay-workflow.md	The Clay workflow build via the clay CLI: node graph, real action keys, publish and run	You want the signal version-controlled and buildable from a terminal, no UI clicking

Why tables are browser-driven and workflows are CLI-driven. This is a real constraint, not a style choice. The clay CLI's tables command group is read-only (list, get, columns, rows, query) — it cannot create a table or add a column. Tables must be built in the UI. Workflows are the opposite: clay workflows create / nodes create / publish / runs test all exist, so a workflow can be built end to end from a terminal.

Shared procedures, written once so the 19 playbooks do not repeat them:

• clay-table-harness.md — the generic browser procedure for building any playbook's table.
• clay-cli-harness.md — the generic clay CLI procedure for building any playbook's workflow.

Read the relevant harness once, then read the playbook's own clay-table.md / clay-workflow.md for what is specific to that signal.

Status: recipes, not verified builds

⚠️ Read this before you tell anyone a playbook "works".

The SKILL.md in each directory carries a verification line saying what was actually run and on how many rows. Where it says PASS, real rows were graded.

The clay-table.md and clay-workflow.md files in every playbook are documented recipes that have not been built and run in a live Clay workspace. They are written against the real Clay action catalog and the real CLI command surface, so the shapes are right, but nobody has clicked through the table build or published the workflow. Treat them as specifications. Build one, run it on 5 rows, read the output, and fix the file before you run it on a list.

The one thing most likely to be wrong on first build is the AI column's reasoning-effort parameter. See clay-table-harness.md § "The empty-column trap".

The 19 playbooks

Person-level signals (the person did something)

Playbook	Output field	What it says
playbook-new-in-role	new_in_role_line	they just took this seat
playbook-linkedin-engagement	engagement_line	they engaged with a relevant post
playbook-social-posts	social_post_line	they posted about something you can speak to
playbook-warm-intros	warm_intro_line	you share a real connection

Company-level signals (the company did something)

Playbook	Output field	What it says
playbook-fundraising	funding_line	they raised, so they are buying
playbook-hiring-surge	hiring_line	they are growing the team you sell to
playbook-job-posting-language	job_language_line	their own job post names your problem
playbook-ad-library	ad_line	they are spending on ads right now

Website-derived signals (their site says something)

Playbook	Output field	What it says
playbook-pricing-page	pricing_page_line	how they price, read off their own page
playbook-case-study-page	case_study_line	who they brag about serving
playbook-tech-on-website	tech_line	what they run, detected on the page
playbook-google-site-search	varies	find any page on their site by keyword

List-shaping playbooks (they make other playbooks work)

Playbook	Output field	What it says
playbook-company-name-cleaning	company_name_clean	"Irby Utilities, LLC" becomes "Irby"
playbook-first-name-cleaning	first_name_clean	"MARIA-JOSE (MJ)" becomes "MJ"
playbook-social-link-finding	linkedin_url etc.	find the profile you are missing
playbook-lookalikes	company list	more companies like these
playbook-name-to-other-prospects	contact list	more buyers at the same company

Copy-generation playbooks (they turn signals into words)

Playbook	Output field	What it says
playbook-ai-specificity	specificity_line	make a generic line concrete
playbook-creative-ideas	campaign angles	what campaign to run at all

Cost tags

Every source row in every playbook carries one of these. They are relative to a 1,000-row list.

Tag	Means
FREE	no per-row cost, or included in a flat plan
CHEAP	under $1 per 1,000 rows
METERED	$1 to $20 per 1,000 rows, scales with volume
EXPENSIVE	over $20 per 1,000 rows, or per-row LinkedIn reads

Rules that apply to all 19

1. One playbook, one field. If you need two signals, run two playbooks and let the copy pick.
2. Abstain is empty string. Never "N/A", never "unknown", never a guess. A blank is cheap; a confident wrong sentence about someone's own job costs you the account.
3. The model never establishes a fact. Every fact goes into the prompt already proven by a structured source. The model's only job is to turn a fact list into one sentence. If you find yourself asking a model "is this true?", you have skipped a source.
4. Deterministic fields are computed in code, not by the model. Dates, counts, enums, and anything that branches the copy. Models are for prose.
5. Gate the paid column. No paid enrichment runs on a row that failed a free upstream check or that has no valid email. This is the single biggest cost lever in Clay.
6. Run 5 rows and read them before you run 5,000. Every playbook has a smoke test. The failure modes are silent: empty columns, unbound variables, and gates that drop every row look identical to "still processing".
7. No em dashes in generated copy. They read as machine-written. Hyphens in number ranges are fine.

What you need

Playbooks name credentials by environment variable, never by value. Copy .env.example to .env and fill in only what the playbooks you actually run require. The common ones:

Variable	Used by
PROSPEO_API_KEY	new-in-role, name-to-other-prospects, social-link-finding
OPENAI_API_KEY	every playbook with a locked prompt
SERPER_API_KEY (or another SERP provider)	google-site-search, case-study-page, pricing-page
APIFY_API_TOKEN	ad-library, linkedin-engagement, social-posts
CLAY_API_KEY	the clay CLI, if you are not using browser OAuth

Never paste a key into a SKILL.md, a Clay column, or a workflow node body. Clay columns read credentials from the workspace's saved integration auth; the CLI reads them from your shell.