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When a new user signs up for your product, understanding their background and company helps you personalize outreach and identify how your product can help them. Manually researching each signup does not scale. An AI agent with Linkup search APIs as tools can do this automatically. This guide shows you how to build a signup research application that:
  • Accepts a person’s name, email, and organization
  • Searches the web to gather company and person information
  • Generates a detailed research report with personalized recommendations
  • Streams results in real-time through a modern web UI
Signup Research UI
The complete source code is available in Autonomy examples.

Quick start

1

Sign up and install the autonomy command

Complete the steps to get started with Autonomy.
2

Get a Linkup API key

Sign up at Linkup and get your API key. Linkup provides a web search API that the agent uses to gather information.See the Linkup Python SDK documentation for more details.
3

Get the example code

/dev/null/terminal.sh
This creates the following structure:
File Structure:
4

Create secrets.yaml

Create a secrets.yaml file with your Linkup API key:
secrets.yaml
5

Deploy

/dev/null/terminal.sh
Once deployed, open your zone URL in a browser to access the research interface.

Build with a coding agent

You can also build this application from scratch using a coding agent like Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex CLI.
1

Sign up and install the autonomy command

Complete the steps to get started with Autonomy.
2

Get a Linkup API key

Sign up at Linkup and get your API key.
3

Give your coding agent this prompt

Prompt:
Your coding agent will create the complete application including the research agent, web search tools, FastAPI endpoints, and Next.js interface.

How it works

The application uses a research agent powered by Claude with access to web search tools via the Linkup API. The agent has two tools to gather information using the Linkup API:
images/main/main.py
images/main/main.py
The agent receives instructions that include the user’s business description, allowing it to generate personalized recommendations:
images/main/main.py
The FastAPI endpoint creates a fresh agent for each research request and streams the response:
images/main/main.py

Customize the agent

Edit the agent instructions in images/main/main.py to focus on different aspects:
images/main/main.py
Give the agent additional capabilities by adding more tools:
images/main/main.py
Change the model for different performance characteristics:
images/main/main.py

API reference

Research a new signup and stream the results via POST /api/research. Request:
/dev/null/request.json
Response (streaming):
/dev/null/response.json

Integrate into your product

The /api/research endpoint is a standard HTTP API that you can call from anywhere, not just the included web UI. This makes it easy to integrate signup research into your existing workflows and products. Trigger research automatically when a new user signs up:
/dev/null/example.py
Call the API from Zapier, Make, n8n, or any workflow automation tool that supports HTTP requests. Add a research button to your admin dashboard that fetches insights about any user on demand, or automatically enrich user profiles in the background when they sign up.
Learn more

Models

Available models for agents.

Agents

Build agents with custom instructions and tools.

Tools

Give agents the ability to take actions.

Programming Interfaces

Create APIs for Autonomy applications.
Troubleshoot
  • Verify your API key at app.linkup.so.
  • Check that secrets.yaml is in the correct format.
  • Ensure the key is passed as LINKUP_API_KEY environment variable.
  • The agent typically completes in 30-60 seconds.
  • Check your zone logs for timeout errors.
  • Consider reducing the number of searches in the agent instructions.
  • Try more specific organization names.
  • The person may have limited online presence.
  • Check if the company website is accessible.
  • Verify the UI is built and deployed: cd ui && npm run build-autonomy.
  • Check browser console for JavaScript errors.
  • Ensure the API endpoint returns proper streaming JSON.