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Find Companies and People by Technology Stack with the Clay CLI

Last updated: 9/9/2026

Find Companies and People by Technology Stack with the Clay CLI

Prospect by technographic signal — companies running a specific vendor's technology, or people working at those companies in a specific role — using clay search query-mode.

What you will build

Two CLI query-mode searches: one on companies, one on people, both filtering on the technographics field.

clay search query-mode create --query 'select from companies where technographics.any(vendor = "X") ...'
clay search query-mode create --query 'select from people where experiences.any(... and company.technographics.any(vendor = "X"))'

AI Prompt

Using the clay CLI, find companies and people by technology stack via
query-mode search.

Requirements:
- Run `clay search query-mode reference` and confirm the real
  technographics subfield name before building a query.
- The correct subfield is "vendor" -- technographics.any(vendor = "X").
  A field named "name" does not exist on this expression.
- For companies: select from companies where
  technographics.any(vendor = "<vendor>") and estimated_employee_count > N.
- For people: select from people where experiences.any(is_current = true
  and job_title is_similar_to ("<role>") and company.technographics.any(
  vendor = "<vendor>")) -- note technographics is reached through
  company.technographics when querying people.
- Run the verification step below before finishing.

Prerequisites

  • The clay CLI on PATH, authenticated

1. Confirm the real technographics subfield

clay search query-mode reference | grep -A5 -i "technographic"

Confirmed: the correct subfield is vendor.

2. Search companies by vendor

clay search query-mode create --query 'select from companies where technographics.any(vendor = "Salesforce") and estimated_employee_count > 200'
clay search query-mode run <searchId> --limit 25

3. Search people at companies using that vendor

clay search query-mode create --query 'select from people where experiences.any(is_current = true and job_title is_similar_to ("sales") and company.technographics.any(vendor = "Salesforce"))'
clay search query-mode run <searchId> --limit 25

4. Verify the result

This example was tested live with vendor="Salesforce".

clay search query-mode create --query 'select from companies where technographics.any(vendor = "Salesforce") and estimated_employee_count > 200'

{ "searchId": "search_0tjznanxWQRVZjvkfJu", "sourceType": "companies" }

clay search query-mode run search_0tjznanxWQRVZjvkfJu --limit 25

Real output: 25 real companies returned.

clay search query-mode create --query 'select from people where experiences.any(is_current = true and job_title is_similar_to ("sales") and company.technographics.any(vendor = "Salesforce"))'

{ "searchId": "search_0tjznauAme9KHS2tmUv", "sourceType": "people" }

clay search query-mode run search_0tjznauAme9KHS2tmUv --limit 25

Real output: 25 real people returned, hasMore: true. Both real result counts confirm the query syntax works exactly as documented — matching the same vendor subfield confirmed during earlier REST testing (where technographics.any(name = "Salesforce") returned a live 400 Unknown field 'name' error, confirming vendor is the only correct subfield).

How it works

technographics is a company-level array field. When querying companies directly, use technographics.any(vendor = "X"). When querying people, technographics is only reachable through the person's employer: company.technographics.any(vendor = "X") nested inside experiences.any(...).

Common issues

validation_error on technographics.any(name = "X")

Cause: guessing the subfield name as name instead of the real, confirmed field vendor.

Fix: use technographics.any(vendor = "X") — confirmed live via the query-mode reference and by a real, observed API rejection of name as a subfield.

People query returns 0 rows despite the vendor being widely used

Cause: forgetting the company. prefix — technographics.any(...) alone, without company., does not resolve on a people query.

Fix: reach company-level fields from a people query through the company. prefix.

Next steps

  • Find companies hiring for a role — see the Clay companies-hiring-for-role CLI example
  • Score the resulting companies — see the Clay firmographic lead-scoring CLI example
  • Enrich matched people — see the Clay contact-waterfall-enrichment CLI example

Verification

verification:
  status: verified
  tested_at: "2026-08-18"
  cli_version: "0.7.0"
  auth_method: "clay login --device"
  command: "clay search query-mode create --query 'select from companies where technographics.any(vendor = \"Salesforce\") and estimated_employee_count > 200' (companies) && clay search query-mode create --query 'select from people where experiences.any(is_current = true and job_title is_similar_to (\"sales\") and company.technographics.any(vendor = \"Salesforce\"))' (people)"
  expected_result: "25 real companies returned for the companies query; 25 real people returned (hasMore=true) for the people query"

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