Where Allies borrows trust from people who already gather your audience, the Prospector goes after individuals directly — the specific pastor, author, coach or ministry leader your campaign is for.
It runs as a motion inside a Growth campaign, not as a separate system. Same contacts, same inbox, same sending rail, same stop-on-reply rules.
1. Discovery — from a people database, not from memory
Growth translates your campaign's audience, problem, offer and geography into a search specification: roles, seniority, where they are, the kind and size of organisation, and anything the campaign excludes. That specification — never a name — is what the model is allowed to produce.
The search runs against a people database. Every person on your list came back from that search, and each record keeps the role, organisation and database reference exactly as returned. Nobody is invented.
The search is saved with the campaign and given a version, so any list can be traced back to the search that produced it. How Growth found these people shows you those filters in plain English.
Searching spends nothing per person: no address is looked up while searching. The same person is never added twice, and if the connected key is not permitted to run people search, discovery stops and names the exact missing permission — it never quietly falls back to made-up names.
1b. Structural fit, then a real check
A database match earns one honest label: structural fit. It means the role, place or organisation matches the profile. It never means they carry a real message, and it never means the problem is live for them.
You decide who Growth looks for. Every campaign has a Who Growth will look for card: who they are in plain English, what has to be true before someone counts, what moves them up the list, who to leave out and where. Edit it and Growth rebuilds the search from your words — you never have to learn the search provider's vocabulary. In Automatic the definition is derived from your campaign and shown to you read-only; in Guided you edit it in plain English; in Advanced you can also set exact job titles. Saving it versions the definition and the search together, and people already checked keep the evidence they were checked on.
When you shortlist someone, Check fit runs grounded web research that has to cite what it found. Two things are separate. Fit: who they really are, why they match who this is for, and published proof that they meet at least one of the qualifying signals saved on that campaign. For ACOS those signals are message-related — teaching, talks, a framework, a podcast, a newsletter, courses, a platform, a book — but another offer can name anything it likes and the same check applies. That is what qualifies someone. Priority signals: evidence the problem is live for them right now, or a recent signal worth referencing. Those move someone up the list; their absence never disqualifies anyone. Whatever cannot be proved is listed as still unproven rather than filled in.
When there is no published evidence of a live problem, the message may not pretend otherwise. It leads entirely from the message and expertise they are already known for, and offers the resource as something that may be useful — nothing more.
Older candidates from before this change are kept, and marked as an older list that was not database-sourced. Their old evidence text never unlocks outreach on its own: before anyone can be written to, there has to be a current fit check on file, with identity confirmed, real reasons they match, cited evidence they meet your qualifying criteria, and a verified professional address. If the check cannot confirm the person is real and currently identifiable, they can still be read on screen but they cannot be qualified, looked up or approached. When it does confirm who they are from a cited page, it also records their real full name, and that is the name used for the address lookup — which is what makes someone whose surname is hidden in the people database reachable at all. A hidden surname is never guessed at.
2. Address lookup (shared with Allies)
Finding a name is not the same as being allowed to email it. Every candidate passes through the same shared lookup used by Allies, which moves through four honest states:
- Found — we know who they are, nothing more.
- Contact discovered — an address was returned by a lookup provider.
- Contact verified — the address passed a deliverability check.
- Send eligible — verified, professional, matches the person and their organisation, and not suppressed.
The Studio will never invent an address from a pattern like firstname@company.com. If nothing is found, the candidate stays at "found" and says so. Personal addresses, catch-all domains, unverified guesses and anyone who has unsubscribed or bounced are all refused with the reason shown on the card.
Where the address came from and who checked it are shown as two separate facts. An address a data provider holds is labelled "From a data provider" — never as though the person published it. Where the same company both finds and checks an address, the badge reads "Provider verified"; only a separate checker earns "Independently verified". Results are cached, so re-checking the same person costs nothing.
There is one lookup path, not two. An address you found yourself can be typed in, but it goes through exactly the same verification and provenance rules as anything a provider returns — it is never treated as sendable just because you typed it. Lookups are only offered for people whose fit has been checked and who that check actually qualified, so no money is spent on someone the evidence has already ruled out.
3. Outreach
Send-eligible candidates go through the shared Outreach Core — the same one Allies uses:
- First approach, follow-up 1, follow-up 2, then stop. No endless nurture.
- Every message is grounded in the recorded evidence and written in your Voice DNA.
- Nothing sends without your approval. You can edit, approve one by one or in bulk, pause, or cancel.
- A genuine reply stops all remaining follow-up. Out-of-office does not.
4. After the reply
Replies land in the Growth Inbox against the same conversation, with full lineage back to the campaign and motion. Contacts, revenue and attribution all flow through the systems you already have.