Deep Dossier
Deep Developer Dossier
Start free — 50 credits, no card See de-anonymization →
One GitHub handle in, a full developer profile out · 1 credit · no LinkedIn resolve required
What a dossier is
A GitHub profile page shows you a bio, a follower count and a wall of repositories. It doesn’t tell you whether this person is influential in their ecosystem, whether they are still active, what they actually build with, or what kind of role they hold.
The dossier is the computed version of that judgement. You send a handle, you get back a structured profile built entirely from public GitHub data — no LinkedIn resolve, no email, no waiting on a match that may never come.
That last part is the point: a dossier is always deliverable. De-anonymization is probabilistic and charges only on a hit; a dossier works on every public handle you can name.
What comes back
Influence tier & activity cadence — Influence is bucketed as major, notable or contributor from follower-based reach. Cadence is daily, weekly, monthly or dormant. Together they answer the two questions that decide whether a handle is worth a rep’s time: does this person carry weight in their ecosystem, and are they still showing up?
Tech stack & top starred repos — The languages and tools they actually work in, plus up to ten of their most recently starred repositories. Recent stars are the single most honest signal of what a developer is evaluating right now, which is why they are ordered by recency rather than popularity.
Company, location, role signal — The employer and location fields where present, plus a derived role_signal — founder, devrel, data, designer, or null when the evidence does not support a call. A null is a deliberate answer, not a gap.
Followers, repos & social graph — Follower, following and public-repo counts, account age, hireable flag, blog URL, and the social accounts the developer has linked themselves. Self-linked accounts are the highest-trust identity signal on a GitHub profile, because the developer put them there.
Standalone or as an add-on
Pull a dossier on its own for 1 credit, or toggle it onto any de-anonymization call for +1 credit and get both in a single request.
Because a dossier is built from public GitHub data rather than a probabilistic match, it’s charged on delivery — including when the LinkedIn resolve alongside it comes back empty. A resolve that misses costs nothing; the dossier it was attached to still cost 1 credit, because it still arrived.
| Call | Credits |
|---|---|
| Dossier, standalone | 1 |
| De-anonymization, no dossier | 2 (on match only) |
| De-anonymization + dossier | 3 (2 on match, +1 on dossier delivery) |
API
curl -X POST https://app.leadcognition.io/api/v1/dossier \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $LEADCOGNITION_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"githubUser": "torvalds"}'{
"github_user": "torvalds",
"dossier": {
"github_login": "torvalds",
"name": "Linus Torvalds",
"company": null,
"location": "Portland, OR",
"influence_tier": "major",
"activity_cadence": "daily",
"role_signal": null,
"tech_stack": ["C", "Assembly", "Shell"],
"followers": 000000,
"public_repos": 00,
"top_starred_repos": ["..."],
"social_accounts": [{ "provider": "...", "url": "..." }]
},
"credits_charged": 1,
"credits_remaining": 49
}Counts above are placeholders — the live call returns real figures. Charging is idempotent per handle, so re-requesting the same developer inside a run will not double-charge you.
To attach a dossier to a resolve instead, pass includeDossier: true to /api/v1/deanon (or /api/v1/deanon/batch for up to 50 handles at a time) and the dossier arrives on the same response.
Where a dossier earns its credit
Qualifying a stargazer before you spend on resolution — Dossier first at 1 credit, resolve only the handles that clear your bar. On a list of a few thousand stargazers that is the difference between an enrichment bill and a rounding error.
Prioritizing by influence, not alphabetically — A major-tier developer starring your repo is a different event from a contributor-tier one. Same signal, very different follow-up.
Filtering out the dormant — An account that last pushed eighteen months ago isn’t evaluating your product. activity_cadence removes them before they reach a sequence.
Personalizing outreach with something true — Recent stars and tech stack give a rep an opening line that is specific and verifiable, which is the entire difference between developer outreach that lands and developer outreach that gets ignored.
Technical recruiting — Influence tier, cadence, stack and the hireable flag are the same four things a sourcer would otherwise reconstruct by hand from a profile page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a LinkedIn match to get a dossier?
No. The dossier is built entirely from public GitHub data. It doesn’t depend on a LinkedIn resolve, and it is delivered — and charged — whether or not one succeeds.
Why is the dossier charged even when the de-anon misses?
Because they’re two different products. Resolution is probabilistic and charged only when it produces a confirmed match. A dossier is deterministic: if the handle is public, the data exists and it arrives. Charging on delivery keeps that honest in both directions.
How is influence tier calculated?
From follower-based reach, bucketed into major, notable and contributor. It’s a coarse instrument on purpose — a three-way split you can route on beats a decimal score nobody trusts.
Why are top starred repos ordered by recency?
Because a star from last week says what someone is evaluating now, and a star from 2019 says what they were evaluating in 2019. The endpoint returns up to ten of the most recently starred repositories for that reason.
What does a null role signal mean?
That the evidence didn’t support founder, devrel, data or designer. It’s not a missing field — it’s the pipeline declining to guess, the same reason de-anonymization returns nothing rather than a maybe.
Can I try it free?
Yes. 50 credits on signup with no credit card is 50 dossiers, and API keys are available on the free tier, so you can wire it into your own stack before spending anything.
See the developers already evaluating you
Free tier, no credit card. 50 trial credits included.