AfieldIn this article
Clay suits recurring account-data work with provider fallbacks and reusable rules. Afield suits research assignments that continue into a brief, message, article or weekly plan. Both accept conversational instructions; the practical choice is whether you need to maintain a data workflow or work through a changing assignment.
Product details were checked against official documentation on 10 October 2026. The company records below are fictional examples.
What the documented workflows cover
| Work | Clay | Afield |
|---|---|---|
| Research a custom question | Claygent Builder supports agents for account research, lead scoring, copy and persona classification, with business context and reusable skills. | Research a question in chat with source links and follow-up questions about the result. |
| Fill missing fields | Waterfalls query configured providers in sequence and can preserve the successful provider and run conditions. | Targeted company and contact research returns findings with the remaining gaps. |
| Change a rule | Review the agent, table logic and affected rows before re-running the maintained process. | State the revised condition, review the affected companies and continue from the corrected result. |
| Hand off the work | Tables retain field-level outputs for the recurring process. | Saved briefs and drafts remain available with their original task conversation. |
See Clay’s Claygent Builder, waterfall configuration and global agent. The global agent also works across search, workflows and campaign settings; it is documented as an alpha with plan-dependent access. For provider selection and fallback order, Clay exposes waterfall configuration. Afield’s company-research task does not offer that same configuration surface.
A rule change with completed expected results
Demo brief: find organizations selling their own software to external business customers. The first rule excludes services firms. Sales then adds an exception: keep a services firm if it also sells a distinct software product.
| Fictional record and supplied evidence | First rule | Revised rule | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northline Studio: agency; client portal shows project updates. | Exclude | Exclude | A service portal does not establish a separately sold product. |
| Harbor Systems: consulting plus a subscription product with separate documentation. | Exclude | Keep product business | The new exception applies; record the product rather than relabel all consulting work. |
| Bridge Ops: says “platform”; no product or purchasing details supplied. | Needs review | Needs review | Neither rule resolves missing evidence. |
Demo corrected record
Company: Harbor Systems
Product: separately sold subscription software
Decision: keep the product business
Rule version: v2 — services allowed only with a distinct product
Supporting material: product description + customer documentation
Still unknown: target role and usable contact route
Affected work: replace the exclusion note; review any old draftThe revised rule changes Harbor’s decision but leaves the other two records alone. Any earlier exclusion note or outreach draft for Harbor now needs the same correction.
Choose around the output you need every week
Choose Clay for a maintained enrichment process: the same fields recur, provider order matters and someone owns the rules. The benefit is having those decisions in the workflow rather than repeating them for each assignment.
Choose Afield for research that changes the next task: a company finding may lead to an email, a product explanation or a new campaign brief. If every result must instead be copied into the same large spreadsheet, that repeated handling is a reason to prefer the data workflow.
Use the list-import guide for existing records and the workload worksheet for costs.