Apify Verified Email Finder

Verified Email Finder

Return a list of verified business emails by routing the user's input to the right Apify Actor and turning on the leads enrichment + email verification add-ons in a single run. No third-party verifier (Hunter, NeverBounce, Apollo) needed — verification happens inside the same Actor run.

Prerequisites

(No need to check it upfront)

The skill supports two execution paths. Pick the one that matches your environment — Steps 4 and 5 show commands for both.

MCP path (default in Claude sessions, recommended). If the Apify MCP server is connected, no setup is needed — auth runs through the user's Apify account. Use the call-actor and get-dataset-items MCP tools.

Script path (CLI / scheduled / non-Claude execution). Requires:

• .env file with APIFY_TOKEN
• Node.js 20.6+ (for native --env-file support)

Workflow

Copy this checklist and track progress:

Task Progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Collect the six required anchor inputs
- [ ] Step 2: Route to the correct Actor (confirm if ambiguous)
- [ ] Step 3: Build the Actor input (verification always ON)
- [ ] Step 4: Run the Actor and wait
- [ ] Step 5: Apply the result-scope filter, deduplicate, and render

Step 1: Collect the Six Required Anchor Inputs

Ask all six as one block before any Actor call. Don't bundle Actor-specific optional fields (country code, language, max pages) into this round — surface those as follow-ups.

1. What do you have to start with? — location query / SERP keyword / URL list. This drives the routing decision.
2. The actual input — the location string, the keyword(s), or the URLs themselves.
3. Department filter — one or more of: c_suite, product, engineering_technical, design, education, finance, human_resources, information_technology, legal, marketing, medical_health, operations, sales, consulting. Default is any (leave the array empty), but ask every time.
4. Max contacts per domain / business — passed as maximumLeadsEnrichmentRecords. Default 3, but ask every time.
5. Output format — CSV or JSON. Ask every time.
6. Result scope — which leads to keep in the deliverable. The Actor always runs the same way (verification always on); this only controls post-run filtering. Pick one:
   • verified-only (default) — only leads with emailVerification.result == "ok". Safest for cold email.
   • verified-plus-catchall — ok plus catch_all. Catch-all is often deliverable but unprovable.
   • all-emails — any lead with a non-empty email, regardless of verification.
   • with-phone — any lead with a non-empty phone number, regardless of email status. Use for call campaigns.
   • everything — every lead the Actor returned, even incomplete ones.

Step 2: Route to the Correct Actor

Inspect anchor #1 and pick the Actor.

All three Actors share the same three add-on fields, so verification behavior is identical across routes.

Decision examples

Ambiguity rule: if anchor #1 is unclear, ask one follow-up before running. Never burn Actor compute on a guessed route.

Mixed deliverables: if the user explicitly asks for two routes in one deliverable, run both Actors and concatenate. The Source column makes the mix clear; dedupe by email across the combined output.

Step 3: Build the Actor Input

Always set these three fields, regardless of which Actor is selected.

Full per-Actor input parameters and example payloads are in reference/apify-actor-usage.md.

URL-list pre-validation: before submitting URLs to vdrmota/contact-info-scraper, parse each one and check it is http/https and parseable. Skipped entries must appear in the output as skipped — invalid URL, never silently dropped.

Step 4: Run the Actor

Maps and SERP runs with leads enrichment can take several minutes per query. Raise the timeout for large jobs.

MCP path (default in Claude sessions):

Call the call-actor tool:

• actor: one of the three Actor IDs (compass/crawler-google-places, apify/google-search-scraper, vdrmota/contact-info-scraper)
• input: the JSON payload from Step 3
• callOptions: {"timeout": 1800, "memory": 4096} for a generous budget

The tool returns runId and datasetId. If status is still RUNNING, poll with get-actor-run (waitSecs up to 45) until SUCCEEDED. Capture both IDs for the run_metadata.json sidecar.

Script path (CLI / scheduled use):

node --env-file=.env ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/reference/scripts/run_actor.js \
  --actor "ACTOR_ID" \
  --input 'JSON_INPUT' \
  --output YYYY-MM-DD_verified-emails.csv \
  --format csv \
  --timeout 900

Use --format json for JSON. The script writes the raw dataset to disk; Step 5 still applies the spurious-match + scope filters on top.