You have ten companies you could help. Before you decide who to approach, you need to know what each company is doing, who handles the work you could help with, and whether their contact details are current. A spreadsheet of company names gets you as far as another afternoon of tabs.
We gave an agent that job for a content consultant targeting UK B2B software companies. It used TaskFuel to pay for company research and contact checks.
We got a spreadsheet covering all ten companies, with nine checked email addresses and the gaps left visible. Nobody was contacted.
What we actually asked for
This was an internal TaskFuel test on 21 October 2026. We selected ten domains: Workbooks, Turtl, Capsule, Geckoboard, GoSquared, Cognism, Attest, Beauhurst, CharlieHR and Ruler Analytics. They sell CRM, HR, analytics and other business software. We didn’t set a limit on company size.
The brief was:
Research these ten UK B2B software companies for a content consultant. Find a relevant marketing or content owner, check their current role, and look for a dated business development within the last 90 days. Find their work email and check it separately. Keep uncertain rows. Stay below $1 in paid API calls and return a CSV with sources and charges.
We guided the agent through the research and reviewed its sources. A script checked the spending limit. TaskFuel supplied the paid tools; the agent chose what to call and interpreted the results.
We tried open-ended company discovery first. One call returned directory entries without usable company domains; another returned no results. We paid $0.021 for those two calls, then continued with our selected domains. The workflow worked once we supplied a target list. Automatic discovery still needs work.
What came back
Exa searches supplied company pages, product updates and indexed professional profiles. Hunter, accessed through Locus, attempted one email lookup for each selected person. Nine addresses came back. Each passed a separate verification: the result was valid, the mail server accepted the address in an SMTP check, and the domain wasn’t flagged as accepting mail for any address.
The finder generated eight addresses from email patterns and marked one as found. We kept that distinction in the results, even though all nine passed verification.
Company websites confirmed six of the selected people’s roles. We still needed to confirm the other four people’s titles or whether they remained in those jobs. A working email address doesn’t tell you that.
Here’s what three of the rows gave the consultant:
| Account | Evidence | What it changes for the consultant |
|---|---|---|
| Workbooks | Its August release made the AI module available for purchase. A company author bio identified the selected content owner. The address passed verification. | Practical AI use cases are a plausible content topic. Whether the team needs outside help remains unknown. |
| Geckoboard | It launched Metrics MCP on 15 September. A company bio corroborated the selected customer-marketing role. The address passed verification. | Customer walkthroughs could explain the new capability. The launch provides context, not evidence of buying intent. |
| Capsule | Its 6 October update announced a ChatGPT connection. The selected CMO appeared current in indexed employment data, but the finder returned no address. | Keep the account for review, with the role and contact gap visible. Don’t invent an email to complete the row. |
We’d review Workbooks, Geckoboard, Cognism and CharlieHR first. The evidence for CharlieHR was weaker. Search metadata dated a chair appointment, but we couldn’t retrieve the page to check it. We hadn’t established that any of the four needed or wanted a consultant.
What the run cost
| Paid work | Calls | TaskFuel API charges |
|---|---|---|
| Initial discovery attempts | 2 | $0.021 |
| Company research | 10 | $0.100 |
| People research | 10 | $0.100 |
| Date-filtered signal research | 10 | $0.100 |
| Email finding | 10 | $0.130 |
| Separate email verification | 9 | $0.072 |
| Total | 51 | $0.523 |
Before each call, the agent got a live quote and set the spending cap to match it. Our local script tracked the running total and kept the amount authorised below $1. The script enforced that limit across the run; TaskFuel capped each individual call.
We kept exact gateway receipts for 23 calls. For the other 28, we have live quotes and records of the paid calls from the CLI; receipt recovery returns only the latest 20 calls. The $0.523 total uses the fixed quoted prices and excludes model costs, review time and funding fees. Earlier feasibility checks cost another $0.032, counted separately.
What’s still rough
We had to check dates against the pages themselves. A Turtl help page appeared with an August 2026 timestamp while describing a January 2025 release. We rejected it as a recent launch. GoSquared’s recent-signal search returned nothing. We couldn’t tell from that search whether GoSquared had recent news.
People search also returned former employees and similarly named employers. A marketing job on CharlieHR’s recruitment platform belonged to a customer, not CharlieHR. Source review caught those mismatches.
Incomplete rows stay in the CSV. We’ve removed names and email addresses from the public version; the full contact file stays local.
When TaskFuel is worth it
Public company pages, author bios and announcements can be researched without TaskFuel. We used ordinary web tools alongside paid searches in this run, but didn’t make a separate comparison of email finding or verification without TaskFuel.
TaskFuel is useful when you want your agent to combine paid research and contact checks in one job without setting up each provider separately. Here, that meant Exa searches and Hunter contact checks through Locus. If you already have access to those tools, compare their plans and usage limits with the quotes for your own job. You can also research company pages by hand and check each result yourself.
Try it with your own list
Replace the placeholders with your business, domains and budget. Review the quotes and keep track of total spending yourself: TaskFuel caps each call, not the whole job.
Research these companies for [describe your business and target customer]: [list company domains].
For each company, find a relevant person, check their current role, and look for a dated business development from the last 90 days. Find their work email and verify it separately. Use TaskFuel for paid research and contact checks.
Return a CSV with the company, person, role, development, source links, email verification result, uncertainties and charges. Keep incomplete rows and don’t guess missing details. Quote each paid call before making it. Track the running total and ask me before a call if you cannot confirm it stays within [budget].
Review the sources and flagged rows before deciding which companies to approach. A verified address doesn’t establish that a person still holds the role or wants to hear from you.