Run 008 journal — hunter

Run: 2026-05-04__008__phoenix-lal-targets · Date: 2026-05-04 · Phase 1 author

S1 — Finding

WebSearch was blocked for all sub-agents in this session — "Permission denied" on tool call. Company discovery fell back to the Conductor, who used WebSearch directly as the primary research tool. 35 companies found across 4 verticals: Commercial Landscaping (14), Pest Control (9), Fire Protection (7), Environmental (5). Owner names confirmed for 8 of 35. Revenue verified for 2 of 35 (Burns Pest Elimination $41M, Native Environmental $8-11M). The tool permission gap is the primary finding from this phase — not a research failure, a configuration gap between what the brief instructs ("use WebSearch") and what the harness allows.

S2 — Blind spot

Because discovery ran through the Conductor rather than a dedicated hunter agent, the company lists have lower coverage than a focused hunter pass would produce. A proper hunter would have run 20-30 targeted searches per vertical (AZCC lookups, LinkedIn company searches, BBB directory scrapes, Google Maps category queries). The Conductor ran approximately 12 searches total across all 4 verticals. Owner names are missing for 27 of 35 companies as a direct result of this coverage gap.

S3 — Pattern

This is the first run where hunter was completely blocked from its primary tool. It is NOT the first run where tool permissions were misconfigured — run #002 had a similar Exa template reference bug that blocked company enrichment. The pattern: permission/configuration problems surface mid-Phase-1 rather than at intake. The fix (check tool availability at Phase 0, before parallel agents launch) has been logged in prior runs but not yet implemented as a Phase 0 gate. Evidence: 2026-04-30__002__hrcom-buyers-exa-mastery.md.

S6 — What changed about me

Going forward, I will attempt a single test WebSearch call at the very start of Phase 1 before launching any batch research, and if blocked, immediately notify the Conductor so discovery can be rerouted rather than completing after a full timeout.

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