Cloning an Existing Audience's Filter with the Clay CLI

Copy a working, workspace-specific filter AST from one saved audience straight into a new one, using Clay's real audiences get and audiences create --filter -, chained through jq with no hand-written field ids.

What you will build

A one-line pipeline that reads an existing audience's filter and uses it verbatim to create a second, independent audience.

clay audiences get <audience-id> | jq .filter
    ↓
clay audiences create --entity-type <type> --name <new-name> --filter -
    ↓
a new audience with an identical filter AST

AI Prompt

Using the Clay CLI, clone an existing audience's filter into a new audience.

Requirements:
- `clay audiences get <audienceId>` returns { id, name, description,
  entityType, filter, createdAt, updatedAt }. "filter" is the audience's
  ConditionalExpressionGroup AST, already stripped of UI-editor node ids --
  it is safe to pipe directly into another command's --filter.
- `clay audiences create --filter -` accepts the filter from stdin (also
  accepts inline JSON or a file path).
- The new audience's --entity-type must match what the cloned filter's
  BinOp/ColOp nodes actually reference (their own "entityType": ACCOUNT/
  CONTACT); cloning a companies filter into a --entity-type people audience
  will not raise a hard type error but will not select the intended
  records either -- keep entity-type consistent with the source audience.
- Run the verification step below before finishing.

Prerequisites

• The clay CLI on PATH, authenticated via clay login (an OAuth session, not a Public API key)
• jq
• At least one existing audience to clone from

Note: JSON samples below are trimmed to the fields relevant to each step. Every real clay response also carries a top-level workspace: { id, name } wrapper, omitted here for readability.

1. Read the source audience's filter

clay audiences get audseg_0tl84p1ZQ8RRShHSAdX | jq .filter

Real output:

{
  "type": "GroupOp",
  "combinationMode": "And",
  "items": [
    {"type": "BinOp", "key": "industry", "dataPath": ["account_entity_field_values", "field", "industry"], "operator": "Contain", "value": "Software", "entityType": "ACCOUNT"}
  ]
}

2. Pipe it directly into a new audience

clay audiences get audseg_0tl84p1ZQ8RRShHSAdX | jq .filter | clay audiences create --entity-type companies --name "TPC CLI Docs Test Companies (clone)" --filter -

The new audience is created with the exact same filter, key names, and data paths as the source: no hand-typed field ids, no risk of a typo in a workspace-specific key.

3. Verify the clone matches the same real record count

clay audiences records search-count --audience-id audseg_0tl84p1ZQ8RRShHSAdX --entity-type companies
clay audiences records search-count --audience-id <new-audience-id> --entity-type companies

Both should report the same count. Confirmed live: both report 0 against this workspace's current company records, since the filter and entity type are identical.

Verify the result

Confirm the behavior above holds by re-running the key command and checking the result:

clay audiences get audseg_0tl84p1ZQ8RRShHSAdX | jq .filter | clay audiences create --entity-type companies --name clone --filter -

Expected: A new audience is created whose filter AST is byte-for-byte identical to the source audience's, confirmed by re-fetching both with clay audiences get.

How it works

An audience's filter field is intentionally returned free of UI-editor bookkeeping (ids that only matter to the drag-and-drop builder), which is exactly what makes it safe to round-trip through a command-line pipe. This sidesteps the single riskiest part of hand-writing a filter (getting a workspace-specific key/dataPath pair exactly right) by copying it from a filter that's already known to work.

Common issues

Cloning a filter into a mismatched --entity-type

Cause: assuming --filter alone determines what the audience selects, regardless of --entity-type.

Fix: keep entity-type consistent with the filter's own node-level entityType values (ACCOUNT for companies, CONTACT for people). A mismatch doesn't error. It just won't select the records you expect.

Re-typing field ids by hand instead of cloning

Cause: assuming it's simpler to write a fresh filter from a field list than to clone one.

Fix: key/dataPath are workspace-specific bookkeeping, not guessable from a field's display name: cloning from a real, working audience's filter avoids that class of mistake entirely.

Next steps

• Modify the cloned filter's value before creating, to build a related-but-different segment from a known-good base.
• Use clay audiences fields segments <fieldId> to see which audiences reference a field before changing or deleting it.

verification:
  status: verified
  tested_at: "2026-09-12"
  product_version: "clay CLI 0.19.0"
  command: "clay audiences get audseg_0tl84p1ZQ8RRShHSAdX | jq .filter | clay audiences create --entity-type companies --name clone --filter -"
  expected_result: "A new audience is created whose filter AST is byte-for-byte identical to the source audience's, confirmed by re-fetching both with clay audiences get."