One

Your four steps, and what each one becomes.

Reply broadly, contact narrowly. The rules you already wrote are the hard part, and they survive intact — the change is in what is done for you and what is not.

SIMULATED Synthetic data. The shape of the week is the point.

Your step	What it becomes
Find your top posts, recent first then analytics	Unchanged, and it stays with you. The funnel below is built from a week you gathered.
Reply to every commenter who is not spam	278 drafts, each grounded in the actual comment and the full post. Substantive, never filler. You send them.
Qualify by your DM criteria	14 match — then checked against dated records, not headlines. One rule of yours turns out to be two years stale.
Add to CRM, send the connection note	10 notes ready, each character-counted before you see it. You click send.

Where the week comes from

Calendar, mail, conference lists, and public company filings — things already on your machine or already public. A professional profile site is not consulted, and nothing is bought from a data broker, because a broker list is a claim you cannot show a source for. What replaces it is better: a calendar entry with two attendees is a dated fact you hold, and a company filing naming two officers is authoritative.

Two

The introduction it did not offer.

One request, worked end to end. A warm introduction to the founder of a logistics company, needed by end of week.

The strongest path it found

You → Wen Li SIMULATED yourscalendar entry, 2026-03-14, two attendees, 45 minutes
Wen Li → Ines Duarte SIMULATED yoursattendance list, both names, 2026-02-11 publicconference programme, session 4, both names
Ines Duarte → Tomas Brandt LIVE publiccompany filing, officers table, both names, dated 2026-07-30

Why not

The filing is newer than the tie. The record naming both people is from July. The only thing placing them in the same room is February. OWNER_REQUIRED
Co-presence is not a relationship. One shared afternoon is evidence they met once, not evidence one would introduce the other.
Nothing is missing. Every hop is sourced and the company is settled. The path fails because the evidence is thin, not absent — a different problem with a different fix.

Verdict: not offered.

relationship_path.insufficient_evidence

The company is identified beyond doubt and every hop carries a source. It still will not make this introduction, because the strongest tie in the chain is two people who once sat at the same table.

Three

One week of commenter outreach.

Six posts, 341 commenters, one pass. Reply broadly, contact narrowly. The narrowing step is where the work is.

6Posts processedlast 72 hours, deduplicated against three prior weeks
341Commenters collectedacross all six
2Suppressed as already contactedone reply, not two
61Filtered as non-substantivelink drops, self-promotion, empty praise
278Reply drafts writteneach grounded in the actual comment, none sent
14Match the DM criteria on roleexecutives at target accounts, and investors
3Refused, with a reasonthe evidence did not support the introduction
1Blocked on identitytwo people, same name, no way to tell them apart
10Connection notes readyeach character-counted, each awaiting your send
0Messages sentnothing written to a CRM, nothing left this machine

Browse the week

The numbers above are the same 341 rows below. Filter, then click anyone to see what was actually checked.

Paper copy: the filters and the per-person detail are on the live deck at groundtrace-pitch.pages.dev. The rows printed below are the first of 341.

Showing 341 of 341

✓ note ready ✕ refused ! blocked on identity * your criteria would have skipped them · replied, no note

Pick someone to see what was checked.

Three refusals

Priya Raman → target account contact

She is on your post and the record names someone at the right kind of company. Nothing says she would take an introduction, or that she knows the person you want.

relationship_path.insufficient_evidence

Daniel Okonkwo → investor

The firm is on your list. He has not confirmed a role there, and the record shows a previous one. A note that says the wrong thing is worse than no note.

identity.claim_unverified

Ana Souza → target account contact

The only support is a recollection with no document and no date. Co-presence is not a working relationship, and the record does not pretend otherwise.

evidence_assertion.sources_empty

The one your role rules would have got wrong

A buyer, skipped by a rule that was right last year

Maren Halvorsen's headline reads "Founder & CEO." Your criteria disqualify founders, so the rule skips her. The rule was correct when it was written.

The company filing says she incorporated in 2023, resigned in August 2024, and is now a Director at exactly the kind of company you sell to. She is not a founder. She is a buyer, and the headline is two years stale.

A rule that reads a headline will skip her. A record with a date on it finds her. No login, no scrape, no guess — an authoritative record instead of a self-reported one.

Notes, counted before sending

LinkedIn rejects notes over 300 characters without warning. Every draft is counted in code, and the count travels with it.

Hi Sofia, thanks for the comment on engineering-hiring costs. I'm Chris Vane, I work with early-stage teams on senior product engineers. Would you be open to twenty minutes on how you scope that?

Target account · Director of Engineering195 / 300

Hi Tomas, your point about interview rubrics landed. I run a developer talent practice and we keep hitting the same wall. Worth comparing notes for twenty minutes?

Target account · VP Engineering163 / 300

Four

What you'd still do by hand.

The obvious question, answered plainly rather than with a claim of "automated". The short version: everything except the fetching and the sending.

Step	Who	Note
Gather the week from your posts	You	Unchanged. Nothing in this touches the network
Deduplicate across posts and weeks	Machine	Two suppressed
Filter non-substantive comments	Machine	61 filtered, each one listed and reversible
Write a grounded reply draft	Machine	278 written, none sent
Match your DM criteria on role	Machine, then a person	14 matched; the stale headline was caught by a record, not the rule
Resolve identity across sources	Machine	One blocked: two candidates, no way to tell them apart
Count note length	Machine	Every draft, before it is offered — no silent rejections
Decide a person is worth contacting	You	Three refused rather than queued
Write to a CRM	You	Prepared only, with a receipt per approval
Send anything on the network	You	Every reply, note and request

Where the hours go

Collecting the week	by hand, on your machine
Reading 278 comments, writing a reply to each	machine
Judging 14 candidates against your criteria	machine, then you
Deciding on 3 refusals and 1 blocked identity	you
Sending 10 connection notes	you

The sending is the only small part of the week. Everything above it is where the hours were, and all of it is either done or reviewable.