> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://trysalty.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# AI Sales BDR

> How an AI sales-development-rep agent uses Salty to research prospects, log outreach, and surface follow-ups.

> **What is this?** A concrete recipe for wiring an AI sales-development-rep (BDR) agent against Salty's CRM. The agent researches prospects, logs outreach activity, and gets notified when leads change stage — all without humans clicking through dashboards.

## The scenario

You're a solopreneur running outbound. You have an LLM agent (Claude Desktop, Cursor, custom Python) that reads inbound leads from a form, enriches them, sends a personalized first-touch email, and tracks responses. You need a system of record for *who* you talked to, *what about*, *what stage they're in*, and *what to do next*.

Salty is that system of record. Your agent reads + writes via MCP or REST; signed webhooks notify your inbox or Slack when state changes.

## What the agent does

| Step                                                                                                  | Tool                                      | Salty object touched |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------- | -------------------- |
| 1. Inbound lead arrives                                                                               | (your form) → agent                       | —                    |
| 2. Lookup or create company                                                                           | `search_companies` → `create_company`     | `company`            |
| 3. Create the person, link to company                                                                 | `create_person` with `primary_company_id` | `person`             |
| 4. Add a deal in `prospecting` stage                                                                  | `create_deal`                             | `deal`               |
| 5. Send a first-touch email (via your provider)                                                       | —                                         | —                    |
| 6. Log the email send as an activity                                                                  | `log_activity` (type: `email_sent`)       | `activity`           |
| 7. Move deal to `awaiting_reply`                                                                      | `update_deal`                             | `deal`               |
| 8. When the prospect replies, your inbound webhook → agent updates stage to `engaged` + logs activity | `update_deal` + `log_activity`            | `deal`, `activity`   |
| 9. If no reply in 5 days, your scheduler → agent logs follow-up activity                              | `log_activity`                            | `activity`           |

## Driving it from Claude Desktop (MCP)

Once you've configured Claude Desktop with Salty MCP ([instructions](/docs/mcp/introduction)), you can drive the whole flow conversationally:

> "A new lead came in: [sarah@acme-corp.com](mailto:sarah@acme-corp.com). Search Salty for the company, create her, link them, and create a deal called 'Acme Q3 expansion' worth `$40,000` in prospecting stage."

Claude will:

1. Call `search_companies` with `{filter: {domain: {equals: "acme-corp.com"}}}`
2. If no result, call `create_company` with name=Acme Corp, domain=acme-corp.com
3. Call `create_person` with email, primary\_company\_id from step 2
4. Call `create_deal` with name, `value_cents: "4000000"` (string-encoded bigint), `stage: "prospecting"`, `primary_company_id`, `primary_person_id`

Four MCP tool calls. One conversational prompt. No browser tabs.

## Driving it from your own backend (REST)

If your agent is a Python/Node service running 24/7:

```python theme={null}
import httpx

API = "$SALTY_API"  # e.g. https://api.trysalty.com
H = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {SALTY_API_KEY}", "Content-Type": "application/json"}

# 1. Lookup or create company
r = httpx.get(f"{API}/companies?filter[domain]=acme-corp.com", headers=H).json()
company_id = r["data"][0]["id"] if r["data"] else httpx.post(
    f"{API}/companies", headers=H,
    json={"name": "Acme Corp", "domain": "acme-corp.com"}
).json()["id"]

# 2. Create person
person = httpx.post(f"{API}/people", headers=H, json={
    "email": "sarah@acme-corp.com",
    "first_name": "Sarah",
    "primary_company_id": company_id,
}).json()

# 3. Create deal
httpx.post(f"{API}/deals", headers=H, json={
    "name": "Acme Q3 expansion",
    "value_cents": "4000000",                  # string-encoded bigint
    "stage": "prospecting",
    "primary_company_id": company_id,
    "primary_person_id": person["id"],
})
```

## React to deal state changes via webhooks

Register a webhook so your agent gets notified the moment a deal moves stage:

```bash theme={null}
curl -X POST $SALTY_API/webhook-endpoints \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SALTY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://your-agent.com/salty-hook", "subscribed_events": ["deal.updated", "person.created"]}'
```

The response includes a `whsec_…` signing secret shown **once** — store it; future deliveries arrive with a `Salty-Signature: t=<ms>,v1=<hex>` header. Verify with HMAC-SHA-256 over `<t>.<body>`. See [Webhooks](/docs/webhooks/introduction).

## Custom fields specific to your funnel

Extend the schema on the fly — no migrations, no service restarts:

```bash theme={null}
curl -X POST $SALTY_API/schema/deal/attributes \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SALTY_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"attribute_key":"source","display_name":"Source","data_type":"enum",
       "enum_values":["typeform","linkedin","referral","cold_outbound"]}'
```

Now every deal write can include `custom_attributes: {source: "linkedin"}` — and bad values get rejected with a clear 400.

## Volume guidance

A typical BDR agent doing 100 outbound + 200 follow-ups per month makes \~1,500 API calls (3-5 calls per touch). That puts you on **Solo (`$20/mo`, 100k calls)** — Free (500 calls/mo) is a demo tier and won't sustain a real BDR workload, plus it blocks the custom attributes and webhooks the pattern above relies on. At 10× scale, Solo's 100k cap still has plenty of headroom.

## Related

* [MCP server](/docs/mcp/introduction) — connect Claude / Cursor / ChatGPT to Salty
* [Webhooks](/docs/webhooks/introduction) — signed delivery, retry, signing-secret rotation
* [Schema engine](/docs/concepts/schema-engine) — what validation does and doesn't enforce
* [Custom Objects](/docs/api-reference/custom-objects) — when "deal" isn't the right shape for your pipeline