Most firms see a fraction of the relevant deals in their own market. The rest do not disappear — somebody else finds them first.
This is the playbook for finding the companies nobody is calling yet, plus the Claude Code package that runs it: five agents and seven skills that map a market, find the companies inside it, score them against your mandate, read the ownership and succession signals, and get you a verified route to the person who can actually sell.
Origination only. It stops where outreach starts, deliberately.
Built for PE funds, family offices, search funds, independent sponsors, holdcos, and corporate development teams that want proprietary deal flow without a ten-person origination desk.
Runs on Claude Code and local files. No database, no API keys, no signups.
👉 Read this first: PLAYBOOK.md
The method itself, in six steps. Useful whether or not you ever install anything.
👉 Then set it up: SETUP.md
Fifteen minutes from zero to a running system. Every step in plain English.
What it does, in the order you will use it:
- Map the market beyond the obvious databases — segments, fragmentation, who is already consolidating, and where the companies in this sector are actually findable
- Find companies that fit the mandate — from association directories, trade show exhibitor lists, registries, licensing boards, and a dozen other places bought lists never cover
- Identify founder and family-owned businesses — classified from evidence, never inferred from a website that says "family owned since 1987"
- Score targets against the investment thesis — a rubric you approve first, applied identically to every row, then audited
- Find and verify the actual owners — the person who can say yes, with a route that works. Never a guessed email address
- Research each business before outreach — a one-page brief per target so the first conversation sounds like you know the company
| Agent | What it does |
|---|---|
market-mapper |
Maps the sector: segments, fragmentation, owner profile, who is already buying |
company-finder |
Finds the companies and classifies who owns them, with a source per row |
fit-scorer |
Scores every target against a mandate rubric you approve first |
signal-tracker |
Succession, ownership-change, and operating signals — quoted and dated |
contact-builder |
The person who can sell, and a verified route to them |
Install, then run /agents to see all five.
| Skill | What it does |
|---|---|
market-map |
Maps a sector before you source in it |
company-discovery |
Finds private companies matching the mandate |
ownership-classification |
Establishes who owns each company, from evidence |
mandate-fit-scoring |
Scores against an approved rubric, then audits itself |
owner-identification |
Finds and verifies the decision maker honestly |
business-research |
The one-page pre-outreach brief per target |
coverage-tracking |
What of the map you have actually covered, and what you have not |
Install, then run /skills to see all seven.
Both lists are the same system. The agents run the skills.
The chain:
market-mapper → company-finder → fit-scorer → signal-tracker → contact-builder
Each step does one job and hands its output to the next. Every step has an approval gate before it writes anything.
It hands you a scored target list, a signal record, and a verified contact route per company. It does not write outreach, sequence anything, or send anything.
PLAYBOOK.md— the method, in six stepsSETUP.md— the full setup guideskills/— the seven skills Claude Code readsagents/— the five subagentsreferences/— market mapping method, sourcing sources, ownership taxonomy, scoring rules, signal and evidence standards, research ethicstemplates/— mandate profile, market map, target list, target brief, coverage log
No fabrication. Not found is the correct answer for anything unverified.
Every claim carries a source and a date. Ownership is established from
registries, filings, and the company's own statements — never inferred from
branding. Revenue and EBITDA estimates are labeled as estimates with the basis
stated.
Every write is gated. You see counts, breakdowns, and full sample rows before anything is written to your files.
Public professional sources only. No pretexting, no personal-life data, no bulk harvesting of sites that prohibit it. A succession signal is something an owner said in public, not something inferred about their family.
Nothing is sent. There is no outreach in this package at all. Nothing here can email anybody.
This is not investment, legal, or tax advice. If you intermediate transactions for success fees rather than buy as a principal, broker-dealer registration rules may apply to you — talk to counsel. Data protection law (GDPR, PECR, CCPA and others) applies to owner research and differs by jurisdiction.
MIT — do whatever you want with it.