The pipeline
| Stage | What it does | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Import | Reads messy CSV/Excel, maps columns, normalizes phones, sites, and zips, and removes duplicates across files | Built |
| Pilot selection | Picks a test set spread across industries, favoring rows with a phone and website | Built |
| Research | Web search and site crawl, with AI extraction of facilities staff and the main line | Designed |
| Enrichment | People search by domain and title, plus email verification | Designed |
| Scoring | Confidence score sorts each account into resolved or needs a call | Designed |
| Calling | An AI agent asks the receptionist for the facilities contact | Designed |
| Review | Low-confidence or conflicting results go to a person | Designed |
Every stage reads and writes one database, and the cost ledger (built) records every paid API call. The pilot will report cost per verified contact, not just contacts found.
Guardrails (designed in, enforced as each stage is built)
- Research before calling. The phone is the last resort, not the first step.
- Live calls off by default. The configuration already has a live-call switch set to off, and a test number that every call will be redirected to during testing.
- Business landlines only. Numbers will be checked before dialing so mobiles are never called. This is designed around the FCC’s 2024 ruling that AI-generated voices count as “artificial” under the TCPA, and there will be a compliance review before any live call.
- Disclosure and limits. The agent will say it’s automated and that the call is recorded. A do-not-call table already exists in the database. Calls are planned for business hours only, with no pitching.
- Swappable vendors. Search, AI model, enrichment, and voice each sit behind a small interface with a zero-cost mock for testing.
What exists today
The database schema, the importer (column mapping, title rows in Excel, phone extensions, numbers Excel stored as numbers, zip+4, URL cleanup, cross-file dedupe), pilot selection, the cost ledger, the command-line tool, and vendor-neutral interfaces with mocks. 4 automated tests pass.
What comes next
Automated web research with AI extraction, then enrichment and confidence scoring, then test calls to our own phone only. No live call goes out without a compliance review.