Cargo Quickstart — first value in two minutes

The one question

"Who do you sell to?" (a persona in a few words — e.g. "Heads of RevOps at mid-market SaaS")

Speed budget — HARD RULES

• No discovery detours. Do not run

  cargo-ai --version

  ,

  cargo-ai whoami

  ,

  connection connector list

  , or any exploratory command first. Auth problems will surface as errors on the first real call — handle them then.
• One command block per step, no narration between commands.
• Paid work is capped at ~1 credit total. The demo uses the cheapest sourcing action in the catalog (

  salesNavigator.searchLeads

  , 0.02/record → 25 records ≈ 0.5 credits). Nothing else paid runs without asking.
• Never dead-end. Every step has a fallback (ladder below). If a rung fails, drop one rung silently and keep moving.

Fast path

searchLeads

keywords

# 1. Execute — returns a run object; note run.uuid and run.workflowUuid.
#    searchLeads returns a 25-row page minimum (limit below 25 still bills 25 × 0.02 = 0.5 credits).
cargo-ai orchestration action execute \
  --action '{"kind":"connector","integrationSlug":"salesNavigator","actionSlug":"searchLeads","config":{}}' \
  --data '{"keywords": "\"<persona title phrase>\"", "limit": 25}' \
  --wait-until-finished > /tmp/quickstart-run.json

# 2. Fetch the output data (NOT in the execute stdout) — signed URL, then filter to THIS run
RUN_UUID=$(jq -r '.run.uuid' /tmp/quickstart-run.json)
WF_UUID=$(jq -r '.run.workflowUuid' /tmp/quickstart-run.json)
curl -s "$(cargo-ai orchestration run download-outputs \
  --workflow-uuid "$WF_UUID" --output-node-slug action --format json | jq -r '.url')" \
  > /tmp/quickstart-outputs.json

# 3. Show the table (the file holds ALL of the workflow's runs — filter by _uuid;
#    each row's .output is the leads array directly, fields are snake_case)
jq -r --arg u "$RUN_UUID" \
  '[.[] | select(._uuid==$u)][0].output[] | [.full_name, .job_title, .company_name, (.recently_hired // false)] | @tsv' \
  /tmp/quickstart-outputs.json | head -25

recently_hired: true

Fallback ladder (on auth/error, drop a rung — don't stop)

1. salesNavigator.searchLeads

   (0.02/record) — primary.

2. theirStack.searchJobs

   (0.5) — reframe as "companies hiring your persona right now" (job postings for the persona's title). Same wow, different angle.

3. waterfall.searchProspects

   (3/record) — exceeds the ~1-credit demo cap, so this rung asks first: "The two cheap sources aren't connected; I can pull 5 matches via waterfall for ~15 credits instead — run it, or connect Sales Navigator first (free)?" Run only on an explicit yes, with

   limit

   capped at 5.
4. Nothing connected at all → run the free path:

   cargo-ai connection integration list | head

   , show what could be wired, and offer to connect one (browser auth) — the demo resumes after.

The receipt (mandatory, verbatim discipline)

../cargo-gtm/references/cost-discipline.md

• Credits spent + balance remaining (

  cargo-ai billing subscription get

  — remaining =

  subscriptionAvailableCreditsCount − subscriptionCreditsUsedCount

  ).
• Hit-rate: "25 of 25 returned" (or what actually came back, and which rows look off).

Minute 3 — save it as a play

"Want this to run by itself? I can save this exact search as a play that runs weekly and writes new matches into a model — new

<persona>

leads land without you asking."

../cargo-gtm/recipes/save-as-play.md

After the demo — route onward

../cargo-gtm/SKILL.md

cargo-gtm