Clay Failure Triage

What it does

Clay failures cluster into a small number of recurring shapes, and almost all of them present as the same symptom: a column that is empty when the data is obviously there. This skill walks the symptom to the root cause in the order that resolves fastest, cheapest checks first, and never suggests re running the column until the cause is named.

When to use it

• my Clay column is empty
• Clay enrichment returns null
• Find People returned zero rows
• this worked last week and now it does not
• why is my Clay table broken

What it needs from you

• column: which column is failing and what action or provider backs it
• symptom: empty, wrong shape, zero rows, or intermittent
• sample: one row that should have worked, with its input values

How it works

1. Classify the symptom first: null on a row with good inputs, zero rows returned, an object where a scalar was expected, or a pipeline that degraded over time. The four take different paths.
2. Null with good inputs: check field name casing against the column output preview. This is the single most common cause and costs nothing to rule out.
3. Null with good inputs, casing correct: check whether the response is wrapped. A path of results.0.field and a path of field both look plausible and only one is real.
4. Zero rows: check the action name. Find People, Find People at Company and Enrich People are distinct actions. Enrich People needs a person identifier and returns nothing from a company filter.
5. Zero rows on a company lookup: check whether a company name was passed where a domain is required.
6. Object where a scalar was expected: read the provider schema in the response preview. Location is a string for some providers and a nested object for others.
7. Worked last week, blank now: the provider changed its response envelope. Re inspect raw JSON and update the extraction path. Log the date so the next degradation is measurable.
8. Intermittent: check the run condition, not the column. A conditional gate reading a column that is itself still running produces a race, not a failure.
9. Only after the cause is named, re run, and re run on 10 rows, not the table.

What you get back

A short triage report: symptom class, cause, the exact fix, and the check that proves the fix worked. If the cause cannot be isolated from the sample given, say which single piece of evidence would settle it.

The quality bar

• The report names one root cause, not a list of possibilities
• The fix references a value the user can see in their own column preview
• No advice to re run the full table appears anywhere
• The proof step is a check, not an assertion

Where it runs

• Claude Code
• Codex CLI
• Cursor
• MCP-compatible agents