* Revenue figures are market-based estimates only and are not guarantees of income. Actual results will vary based on execution, market conditions, and individual effort. This is not financial or investment advice.
How the agent runs it
Employers submit candidate names and claimed credentials via a self-serve portal; the Intake Agent parses the request, the Verification Agent cross-references issuer APIs and public registries, and the Report Agent assembles a branded PDF audit delivered within 24 hours. The CEO orchestrator monitors SLA timers, routes edge cases to human review flags, and triggers the Billing Agent to collect payment on delivery—no human needed for the full standard workflow.
Who this is for
Ideal for a former HR tech founder or recruiting operations manager who understands background-check workflows and has light API integration experience. They should be comfortable setting up Stripe and Airtable but need zero coding ability to operate the system day-to-day. The business suits someone who wants a lean, mostly passive operation with clear B2B sales cycles they can open with a single cold outreach campaign.
Market opportunity
The global background verification market exceeded $4.5 billion in 2023 and micro-credentials from platforms like Coursera, Credly, and Badgr have proliferated to over 1 billion issued badges—yet most HR teams have no systematic way to verify them at scale. Hiring velocity post-AI-automation wave means HR teams are processing more candidates with smaller staffs, creating urgent demand for fast, cheap, automated credential audits that legacy background check firms don't offer as a standalone SKU.
Boss agent: HERALD (High-Level Enforcement and Routing for Agent-Led Deliverables)
HERALD polls the Airtable job queue every 15 minutes, assigns tickets to specialist agents based on credential type and SLA urgency, escalates confidence scores below 0.72 to the human flag queue, and enforces all quality and compliance rules before any report is released to a customer.
- ■ No report is delivered unless Verification Agent confidence score is ≥ 0.72 or a human reviewer has signed off on the edge case.
- ■ All customer data is purged from working memory within 48 hours of report delivery per the stated privacy policy.
- ■ Billing Agent must confirm Stripe payment receipt before the PDF delivery email is triggered—zero free deliveries after trial period.
The agent team
Human touchpoints
// the only things that still need you
- 👤 Signing the merchant services agreement and legal terms of service that define what the verification bureau is and is not liable for—requires a real signature from the legal entity owner.
- 👤 Reviewing and releasing any job tickets HERALD has flagged with a confidence score below 0.72, where the issuer registry returned ambiguous or conflicting data that requires human judgment before a result is delivered to an employer.
- 👤 Approving any refund requests above $150 or handling a formal customer dispute escalated through Stripe's chargeback process.
- 👤 Renegotiating or establishing direct data-share agreements with credential issuers who require a signed API access contract before granting programmatic lookup rights.
Tech stack
Monetization
Flat per-report fee of $29–$79 depending on credential complexity, with volume subscription tiers ($499/mo for 20 reports) sold to HR teams and staffing agencies. Upsell to a $199/mo credential monitoring retainer that alerts employers if a verified credential is later revoked.
Key risks
- → Credential issuer APIs change schema or rate-limit aggressively, breaking the Verification Agent's data pipeline without warning.
- → Employers in regulated industries (healthcare, finance) may require wet-signature chain-of-custody attestations that the agent team cannot legally provide autonomously.
Getting started
- 1 Map the top 15 credential issuers to verifyList the most commonly claimed micro-credentials on LinkedIn in your target sector (tech, healthcare admin, finance). Confirm each issuer offers a public verification endpoint, API, or registry lookup—this defines your agent's data sources before you write a single prompt.
- 2 Build the self-serve intake form and Airtable baseCreate a Typeform or Tally form that captures employer name, candidate name, credential claimed, and issuer. Pipe submissions into Airtable where each row becomes a job ticket the Intake Agent reads from—this is your entire operations database.
- 3 Configure the Verification Agent with issuer lookup logicUsing Claude Managed Agents, define the Verification Agent's tool calls: HTTP requests to issuer verification endpoints, fallback web-scrape instructions for issuers without APIs, and a confidence-score rubric (Confirmed / Unverifiable / Flagged). Run 20 test cases manually to calibrate accuracy before going live.
- 4 Set up Stripe payment-on-delivery flowConnect Stripe to fire a payment link automatically when the Report Agent marks a ticket complete in Airtable via Zapier. Use Stripe's hosted invoice page so no billing code is needed—the Billing Agent simply monitors for payment confirmation and updates the ticket status.
- 5 Acquire first 10 customers via targeted LinkedIn outreachManually message 50 HR directors and talent operations leads at mid-market tech and staffing firms, offering a 3-report free trial in exchange for a 15-minute feedback call. This is the one deliberate human-touch acquisition sprint that seeds the autonomous engine with real paying clients.
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