Scout

An Ellypsis coworker example. Scout researches companies, finds the right people, and logs what it learns to a Google Sheet workbook. One clean loop, illustrative not exhaustive.

What this is — and isn't

Scout is a small, public, MIT-licensed example of an Ellypsis coworker — a Claude-powered agent that owns a slice of work end-to-end, not a chatbot you hand a single task to. SIA (our maritime sales coworker) is one shape; Scout is another, same spine.

What Scout does:

• Researches a company against an ICP and writes a row to a workbook
• Finds the right contacts and writes them to the workbook
• Logs notes, drafts, and follow-ups so nothing said out loud gets lost

What Scout doesn't do:

• Send anything. No email, no LinkedIn, no auto-CRM-push.
• Make decisions. Scout surfaces and waits — the human decides.
• Pretend to know what it doesn't. "Unknown" is a valid answer.

The clean loop

"Research Northwind Logistics"
  → Scout looks them up, finds the new Berlin office and the Workplace Lead job post,
    writes a Companies row.

"Find contacts there"
  → Scout discovers Marie Lindgren (Office Manager), surfaces her with rationale,
    writes a Contacts row.

"Log: spoke with Marie at the BlueTech booth, she's interested in the Pro Bar tier"
  → Scout writes an Activities row that survives the conversation.

Three skills, one workbook, one fictional ICP. That's the whole thing.

What's in here

scout/
├── .claude-plugin/plugin.json     ← plugin manifest
├── .mcp.json                      ← MCP servers (workspace-provisioned, see below)
├── CONNECTORS.md                  ← ~~web and ~~sheet contracts
├── company.md                     ← fictional ICP: Nimbus Roast (replace for real use)
├── commands/
│   └── start.md                   ← /start onboarding
├── skills/
│   ├── research/                  ← research a company → write Companies row
│   ├── contacts/                  ← find people → write Contacts rows
│   └── log/                       ← capture notes/drafts/tasks → write Activities row
├── workbook-templates/            ← CSVs to import into Google Sheets
│   ├── companies.csv
│   ├── contacts.csv
│   └── activities.csv
├── CHANGELOG.md
└── LICENSE

Setup

1. Spin up the workbook

Create a new Google Sheet. For each CSV in workbook-templates/:

1. Add a new sheet, name it companies, contacts, or activities (lowercase, exact match).
2. File → Import → Upload the matching CSV. Choose Replace current sheet.

You'll end up with a 3-tab workbook seeded with five fictional companies, five contacts, and five activities — enough that the sheet looks alive from the first prompt.

2. Wire up the MCP

Scout's writes go through an MCP server tagged ~~sheet in CONNECTORS.md. The reference setup is an n8n MCP Server Trigger that fronts the Google Sheets API. The tool contract Scout calls is documented in CONNECTORS.md — wire your n8n tools to those names and shapes.

.mcp.json ships empty by design: the MCP is provisioned at the workspace level (Cowork's auth model only allows OAuth in plugin manifests, and this MCP is bearer-auth). Add the URL once at workspace level and every Scout user inherits it.

If ~~sheet isn't connected, Scout runs in degraded mode — it surfaces the row payloads and the user copies them into the sheet manually. The skills don't change.

3. Run /start

In Claude Code or Cowork, with this folder loaded:

/start

/start checks the workbook connection, asks who you are and who you're researching for, and writes a CLAUDE.md to the working directory. Future sessions auto-load that file.

Booth quickstart (for Sewar)

For the BlueTech demo:

1. Spin up the workbook (Step 1 above) and pin the tab next to the Claude UI.
2. Wire up the n8n MCP and confirm get_workbook_info returns three sheets.
3. Run /start once before the booth opens — answer "Sewar, BlueTech demo, selling for Nimbus Roast."
4. Visitors prompt; the sheet fills.

Suggested visitor prompts:

• "Research [their actual company]"
• "Find contacts at [a company they know]"
• "Log: chatted with [their name] at the BlueTech booth, [topic]"

The "research X / find contacts at Y / log this" verb-set is the entire booth pitch. Anything that lands as a row on the sheet is the demo working.

Connectors

Category	Default	Why
~~web	Native WebSearch + WebFetch	Always available in Claude Code and Cowork. No paid keys committed to the public repo.
~~sheet	n8n MCP (workspace-provisioned)	Sheets writes — see CONNECTORS.md for the tool contract.

To upgrade research quality, add Exa, Perplexity, or Firecrawl to ~~web by editing CONNECTORS.md and .mcp.json. The skills don't change.

Adapting Scout for your own work

The boilerplate stays. The customer-specific layer is one file:

• company.md — replace Nimbus Roast with your product, your ICP, your golden signals. The skills read this file as the lens for fit and signal.
• Optionally edit skills/contacts/references/contacts.md if your priority framework looks different (Nimbus Roast is workplace-focused; a B2B SaaS company would weight VPs and Directors differently).

Everything else — the workbook layout, the skill bodies, the /start flow — is the universal scaffold.

License

MIT — Ellypsis ApS. Built as a public example of the Ellypsis coworker pattern.