The skip-trace file you hand a VA
Lesson 6 of 6 · Find the owner nobody can find
1 · Learn the move · Recipe pattern
Handing owner research to a VA multiplies whatever discipline you put in the brief, and whatever you left out. A VA with a vague brief will take the first plausible match from a people-search page, record it as found, and sometimes call it to be sure. That is how a stranger with the same name gets a call about her dead 'father's' land. The recipe pattern fixes the steps, fixes what gets recorded for every find (source, date, the exact text, confidence as LEAD or RECORD), and fixes the stop points: a sign of a death, a minor, a lawsuit, a request not to be contacted, or two candidates with the same name. It also carries the hard noes - no contact of any kind, no pretending to be someone else to get information - and the data-handling rules, which you set with counsel, not with the model.
Write a skip-trace brief for a VA as a numbered recipe: the records to check in order, what to record for every find (source, date, exact text, LEAD or RECORD), the conditions that mean stop and send it back to me, and what the VA must never do. Where I have not given you a rule, write [NEEDS: owner decision] rather than inventing one.
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
Forty letters came back undeliverable from your Brannock County mailing this month. You are handing the research to a VA who works while you sleep. The last one marked a woman 'found' because she shared a surname and a town, then texted her. Write the prompt that produces a brief a VA can follow without you awake.
Write the prompt for this scenario as given, or swap in a real one from your own work. The score works the same either way.
Remember: the AI sees only your prompt, not this page. If the situation isn't in your prompt, it doesn't exist.
Optional. These shape the output when you run your prompt below, not your score.