Deal-sourcing Scout for VCs

Deal-sourcing scout for VCs running an AI-infrastructure thesis — AI infra, crypto-AI/decentralized-AI, robotics/embodied-AI, agentic payments. Use when asked to "scout AI infra startups", "find founders who haven't raised yet", "build a deal shortlist for my thesis", or "what pre-seed/seed rounds are being announced and what's the thesis behind them". Fuses Hacker News, Product Hunt, web, Twitter/X, and LinkedIn signal via vetted, price-capped paid endpoints (SELAT); pays per call in USDC from the user's own self-custody Circle wallet. Full run hard-capped at $0.40.

vc-ai-infra-scout

Source AI-infrastructure deals before the round. This skill runs a vetted multi-step pipeline that discovers emerging companies and founders from Hacker News, Product Hunt, the open web, Twitter/X, and LinkedIn, reads recent pre-seed/seed fundraising announcements, distills the live thesis of the funds leading those rounds, then enriches the top lead. You (the agent) do the judgment work around the paid data: dedupe across sources, rank by signal, flag teams that have not raised yet, and produce a shortlist with links plus a suggested outreach note.

The pipeline is a SELAT skill: a declarative, vetted recipe of paid API calls (no API keys, no signups) settled in USDC across multiple payment rails — direct Circle x402, routed MPP, and routed x402 on Base. The selat CLI resolves the vetted endpoints, auto-detects each step's rail, and prints a per-rail receipt summary.

Cost — read this first

• Every step is a real paid API call in USDC from the user's own Circle Agent Wallet (MPC self-custody — SELAT never holds keys or funds).
• Per-step caps are $0.02–$0.05; the full run is hard-capped at $0.40. Caps are enforced by the runner; the live HTTP 402 quote is the price source of truth.
• Always dry-run first (Step 1 — free, no wallet), show the user the real quoted prices, and get their OK before any wallet setup or paid run.
• Never ask for, paste, or handle a private key. Wallet auth is handled by the CLI's Circle integration.

Step 0 — get the CLI (free, no account)

If selat isn't on PATH yet, install it — one npm package, no signup, no credentials:

bash

selat --version || npm install -g @selat-ai/selat-cli

(macOS Skills UI users can also install it from this skill's dependency prompt.) Installing the CLI creates nothing money-related — no wallet, no account, no keys.

Step 1 — dry run first, before any wallet setup

Do this before creating a wallet or asking the user to fund anything. The dry run probes every endpoint's live price and reachability for free — no wallet, no funds, no account, no selat init:

bash

selat skill install vc-ai-infra-scout
SELAT_ROUTER_URL=https://router.selat.ai \
  selat skill verify ~/.config/selat/skills/vc-ai-infra-scout

(verify takes the installed skill's directory — $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/selat/skills/<name>, which defaults to the path above. The SELAT_ROUTER_URL prefix is only needed before selat init has written config; it lets the routed steps quote their price with zero setup.)

This prints each step's real quoted price and rail — the actual cost of a run, from the live 402 challenges. Show the user these prices and get their OK before going anywhere near wallet setup. If they don't want to proceed, stop here; nothing has been spent and nothing has been created.

Step 2 — wallet setup (only after the user opts in)

bash

selat init     # creates the self-custody Circle Agent Wallet + config
selat fund     # deposit USDC into Circle Gateway (user action)
selat doctor   # verify wallet, router, and balance are ready

selat init is safe to re-run — it detects an existing wallet and asks before changing anything.

Step 3 — run

bash

selat skill run vc-ai-infra-scout \
  --thesis "humanoid robotics foundation models" \
  --twitterQuery "humanoid robotics founder" \
  --fundraisingQuery "robotics startup raised seed pre-seed 2026" \
  --investorQuery "<lead funds surfaced by the fundraising steps>" \
  --domain <top-lead-domain.com>

Param	Required	What it steers
thesis	yes	Sub-thesis keyword for HN / Product Hunt / web discovery and the founder shortlist.
twitterQuery	no	Twitter/X keyword search for founder buzz.
fundraisingQuery	no	Keyword query for recent raise announcements (Twitter/X + LinkedIn). Put recency cues in the query itself.
investorQuery	no	Twitter/X search for the funds leading those rounds — set it from the fundraising results, then re-run just that lens if needed.
domain	no	The most promising company's domain, for the enrichment step.

Each step returns raw JSON. Your job afterward: dedupe companies across sources, rank by traction/recency/founder signal, summarize the lead-fund tweets into the live thesis, explicitly flag promising teams with no announced round, and output a ranked shortlist with source links and a short outreach note for the top pick.

Why this is safe to install

• The skill is a declarative JSON manifest — no executable code. Installing it only ever writes data.
• Endpoints are https-only and pre-vetted; each publish is gated on a machine-checked live verification receipt.
• Spend is capped per step and per run, and the runner surfaces the wallet's spending policy at every money moment.
• Funds stay in the user's own wallet. No API keys, no platform balance, no custodian.

Beyond this skill

SELAT is a general capability layer for paid agent actions. If the user's ask doesn't fit this skill:

bash

selat search "<intent>"          # FREE federated discovery + ranking
selat skill list --available     # other vetted multi-step skills

Docs: https://github.com/SELAT-AI/selat-skills