inbound-qualification

Inbound qualification

The outcome

Someone asks for a demo on the website, and within seconds their company is identified and qualified, they land in the workspace's accounts and contacts, the team hears about it in Slack, and the page answers them: a booking link if they fit, a thank-you otherwise. There is no backend to run and no form vendor: the form is a Cargo tool.

Four pieces make it:

1. A tool with a public form. defineTool("inbound_form", { workflow, publicForm }). The workflow's input is the form's fields; publicForm allows only the site's origin and sets the spam guards. Each submission runs the workflow.
2. The workflow. Refuse a personal email before anything is paid; identify the company from the email domain with LinkedIn company data; apply the ICP rules; upsert the account into gtm_accounts and the contact into gtm_contacts; post one Slack message; return the answer.
3. The shared GTM models. gtm_accounts and gtm_contacts, declared exactly as every pipeline declares them, so whatever else the project installs reads the same inbound contacts.
4. The form on the site. Rendered with the site's own markup and run headless through @cargo-ai/form-sdk, loaded once the page has hydrated. The tool's uuid arrives as the app env token inboundForm.uuid.

Two things worth knowing before you start. The company is enriched, never the person: the person already said who they are. And the server's minimum fill time counts from when the SDK loaded, which is why the site loads it once the page has hydrated: a form loaded on a lost focus event would stamp and submit in the same moment and be refused as a bot.

Example

Add a demo form to www.fabrikam.example: qualified companies get our booking link, the rest a thank-you, and the sales channel hears about every request.

Illustrative output, fictional records:

tool:inbound_form        deployed   public form on https://www.fabrikam.example
POST /contact            ada@northwind.example    -> qualified      (320 employees, United States)
  gtm_accounts           northwind.example        upserted
  gtm_contacts           ada@northwind.example    lead_source website, inbound_status qualified
  #inbound               "New inbound, qualified from Ada Lovelace at Northwind"
  page                   "Thanks, let's find a time."  [Book a demo]
POST /contact            sam@gmail.com            -> work_email_required   (nothing paid or written)

Put it in your project

This folder is a worked example: real CDK resources written for some other company. The job is to end up with the code your company would have written, in your project, and an agent does the adapting. If the cargo-project skill is in your session it carries the long form of this; if not, this is enough.

1. Install it: the CLI does the copy. From inside the CDK project, cargo-ai cdk add cookbook/inbound-qualification writes the tool and models to infra/inbound-qualification/ and this procedure, with the site/ files, to .claude/skills/inbound-qualification/. No project yet? cargo-ai cdk init --cookbook inbound-qualification && cd && npm install. If you are reading this from the project's .claude/skills/, the install already happened; start at step 2.
2. Reconcile it with what is already declared. The website must already be declared, usually by website-building. A gtm_accounts or gtm_contacts another pipeline declares is the same model: import that one and delete this copy. A Slack or LinkedIn connector the project already has is rewired to.
3. Wire the site. Follow form: copy site/ into the website app, add the dependency and the env token, link the contact page.
4. Adapt. Work the sections below in order: What should not change is what you argue back about (say what breaks, then do it if they still want it); What you can change is what you offer unprompted; What you will be asked is the floor, and you derive before you ask. Record what you changed and why under a ## Decisions section in your copy of this file.
5. Plan, then stop. node --import tsx evals/contract.mjs from this skill's folder, then npm run check && cargo-ai cdk plan from the project root, show the diff, and deploy only on an explicit yes: cargo-ai cdk deploy. If the project deploys from CI, the merged pull request is the deploy; do not also deploy from a laptop.
6. Verify. Walk Done when line by line with real submissions, and report each with evidence.

What you will be asked

Derive before you ask. An input with a lookup is looked up, not asked.

Checked before moving on, not after the deploy:

• the ICP rules match context/, and one live enrichCompanyFromDomain on a known customer returned the ISO country code the rules use
• allowedOrigins is exactly the canonical origin
• the Slack channel id resolves through the connector
• node --import tsx evals/contract.mjs passes against the adapted graph

What you can change

The code is a worked example. These reshapes are expected, and the agent offers them rather than waiting to be asked. Every one costs something.

What should not change

However far you adapt, these hold. Ask for one anyway and the agent tells you what breaks, then does it if you still want it, and records why under ## Decisions in your copy of this file.

• The public form allows only the site's origin. (infra/tools/inbound-form.ts) * lets any page on the internet submit into the workspace and spend its credits.
• Nothing is paid or written before the cheap checks. A personal email is refused before the enrichment call; the paid call comes before any write.
• The company is enriched, never the person. No person lookup, no personal email or phone search on a submitter.
• The shared models stay shared. gtm_accounts and gtm_contacts keep their exact definition; what only inbound needs is an added column under a plain name.
• No CAPTCHA secret in the repository. It goes through env().
• The SDK loads once the page has hydrated. (site/components/inbound-form.tsx) Its load time is what the minimum fill time counts from. Loaded on a focus event, a focus before hydration is lost and the visitor's submission is refused as a bot. Its id cookie is set only on submit.
• Marketing email only with the box ticked. marketing_consent is recorded per contact; a demo request alone is not consent to a newsletter.

Done when

• node --import tsx evals/contract.mjs passes: one tool whose public form is enabled for exactly the canonical origin with no CAPTCHA secret in code, a workflow that refuses personal email before the enrichment call and writes only gtm_accounts and gtm_contacts, both models matching the shared definitions
• the plan shows the tool, the models and the connectors, and the app update with the env token
• a work-email submission on the live site returns the right answer on the page, upserts the account and the contact (with account_id, lead_source website, inbound_status), and posts once to the Slack channel
• a personal-email submission is refused on the page, with no enrichment call and no row written
• a submission from another origin is refused with 403, and one sent faster than the minimum fill time is refused
• loading the contact page sets no cargo_anon_id cookie until a submission
• the privacy page has a contact form section the operator reviewed

What it costs

Each submission from a work email pays for one LinkedIn company enrichment; a refused personal email pays nothing. Read the live price from the integration (cargo-ai connection integration get linkedin) and say it per submission. The server's rate limit caps a single address at ten submissions a minute, and the origin allow-list keeps other sites from spending it. The models and the Slack post add nothing.

Composes into

website-building (the site the form sits on), visitor-identification (the companies that read the site without filling the form in), score-leads (inbound contacts scored against the ICP before a rep calls), and agentic-engagement (a follow-up to a contact who ticked the consent box).