How to Use Attio to Research and Route Inbound Leads

The short answer: connect your mailbox and import your leads, add two attributes to hold the results, build a workflow on People that starts with Record created, research the company with a Web agent block, tag fit with Classify record, save both with Update record, pick an owner with Switch and Round robin, enroll qualified people in a sequence on Pro, publish, and read the run viewer and credit usage every week.

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The job: every new inbound person is researched, tagged for fit and owned before a rep opens the CRM. Attio does all of it on one workflow canvas. What the product is and costs is in the Attio glossary entry.

Before you build:

• Price one run. In Attio's new workflows, triggers, logic and lookups are free; writes such as Update record and Enroll in sequence cost 1 credit each, and agent blocks are billed by token use, per the credits guide. For example, 400 new people a month x 3 fixed-credit blocks = 1,200 credits before the agent, against 1,500 included on Plus and 10,000 on Pro.
• Reuse your export. A CSV of past enquiries with email addresses is enough: Attio creates and enriches companies from email domains, except public ones such as gmail.com, per the CSV import guide.
• Decide what you will check. Three readings: failed runs in the run viewer, credits per workflow on the usage screen, and the number of people with no owner in a saved view.

What you need

• A plan. Workflows run on all plans; sequences arrive on Pro, per the plans article, and new workspaces start with a 14-day Pro trial. Build and test on the trial before you pay for anything.
• Write access for the workflow. Workflows cannot write to objects until an admin or a member with full access grants it, per the create a workflow guide.
• Two attributes on People or Companies. A text attribute for research notes and a select attribute, say Fit, whose options match the tags you will use. Agent and AI outputs are not saved automatically, the block library explains, so they need somewhere to land.

Step 1: Fill the workspace

Go to Account settings, Email and calendar accounts, and connect a Google or Microsoft account. The email sync guide offers three sharing levels: metadata only, subject line and metadata, or full access. Then import the CSV from the People page with Import / Export, Import CSV. The CSV import guide caps a file at 100,000 rows and 100 columns, and treats email addresses as the unique attribute that prevents duplicates.

Step 2: Create the workflow and its trigger

Click Workflows in the sidebar, then Create workflow. You can also type a description in the Describe your workflow box and let Ask Attio place the blocks, which uses seat credits; nothing goes live until you publish, per the create a workflow guide. Add the Record created trigger and set its Object input to People.

Step 3: Let an agent research the company

Add a Web agent block. Its Record input takes the person or their company through a variable, and Questions takes one question at a time, with + Add question for the next: what the company sells, roughly how many employees it has, which market it serves. The block library warns that agents cannot reliably read sites behind a login, such as LinkedIn. For more control, a Custom agent block takes a system prompt, a model choice and a structured output schema.

The human check: for the first 20 runs, open each agent block in the run viewer. The troubleshooting guide describes an agent log with the prompt, the tools called and the credits each step used. Compare the answers with the company's own website before you let them route anyone.

Step 4: Tag fit and save both results

Add a Classify record block with your tags, for example Core fit, Adjacent and Out of scope. Follow it with Update record, mapping the classification into the Fit attribute and the agent's answers into the research text attribute. The tags in the block and the select options must match, per the block library.

Step 5: Give every lead an owner

Add a Switch block with one case per segment; cases are checked in order and the first true one runs, and a run with no matching case stops unless the Default path has blocks. On the core-fit path, a Round robin block picks whoever in the rota has gone longest without a lead, and an Update record block writes the Picked user into the owner attribute. Changing a team changes the rota without editing the workflow.

Step 6: Start the sequence (Pro)

Add Enroll in sequence after the owner update. The recipient must be a person record with an email address, and someone already enrolled does not fail the run, per the block library. Turn on delegated sending in the sequence's Settings tab first: without it, the block fails with an error that the sender has not enabled delegated sending, as the troubleshooting guide lists.

Step 7: Publish, then read the runs

Click Publish workflow. Incomplete blocks are flagged before anything goes live. Each run then appears under the Runs tab with green and red blocks, and failed blocks use no credits. Workspace credit use by workflow sits under Workspace settings, Billing, Credits, Usage.

What Attio's own guides warn about

• Loops. A workflow on Record updated that updates the same record can trigger itself; filter on Updated by, Type, is not Workflow.
• Values set at creation. Record updated ignores them; Attribute value changed catches them.
• One result instead of all. A block after Find records handles only the first record unless you wrap it in a Loop.
• Empty numbers. A Formula block fails on an empty variable; give each one a fallback of 0.

One more, about cost. Attio sells extra workspace credits from 5,000 a month for $85 on monthly billing, on the pricing page checked on 24 October 2026, so nothing in the product stops you running an agent on every new record. A Filter block placed before the agent, on source or country, is the cheaper design.

FAQ

How many credits does one inbound lead use?

The fixed blocks cost 1 credit each and the agent blocks vary with tokens and model. Hover over a run in the run viewer to see its credits, per the troubleshooting guide.

Can AI attributes do the research instead of a workflow?

They can, but they do not run on their own: each recalculation is manual or in bulk, and a Web agent attribute costs 10 credits per record, per the AI attributes guide. For research on every new record, the guide points to workflow blocks.

Can an outside assistant work on these leads?

Yes. Attio MCP connects ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor through OAuth; reads are approved automatically and writes ask for confirmation, so a person approves each record change the assistant proposes.