LinkdAPI with OpenClaw: Access LinkedIn Data Through Your AI Agent

Your sales team just got a list of 200 leads from a conference. Each one needs to be researched: What company are they at? What is their title? How big is the company? What did they post about recently? Have they changed jobs in the last year? Doing this manually on LinkedIn means 200 profile visits, copying and pasting into a spreadsheet, and half a day of repetitive clicking. By the time you finish, the list is already going stale.

LinkdAPI solves the data access problem. It is a third-party API that provides structured access to LinkedIn data — profiles, companies, jobs, posts, and more. And when you connect it to OpenClaw, you get that data through conversation. Ask your agent about a person and it returns their profile, experience, skills, and recent activity. Ask about a company and you get headcount, growth trends, and key personnel. No manual research. No copy-pasting.

This guide covers what LinkdAPI is, how to connect it to OpenClaw, practical use cases, and important considerations around data access and privacy.

What Is LinkdAPI?

LinkdAPI is a data API that provides programmatic access to publicly available LinkedIn data. It is not an official LinkedIn product. It is a third-party service that aggregates and serves LinkedIn profile data, company information, job postings, and content through a REST API.

What LinkdAPI provides:

• Person profiles — Name, headline, current company, title, location, skills, education, experience history
• Company data — Name, industry, size, headquarters, description, specialties, headcount trends
• Job listings — Active job postings with title, description, location, and requirements
• Content — Recent posts and articles by a person or company
• Search — Find people by name, title, company, location, or keyword
• Enrichment — Given an email or name, return the matching LinkedIn profile

The API returns structured JSON data. No scraping, no browser automation, no login required on your end. You send an API request, you get data back.

How LinkdAPI Works

LinkdAPI maintains its own data infrastructure. It crawls publicly available LinkedIn data and serves it through its API. Response times are typically under 2 seconds for profile lookups and under 5 seconds for search queries.

The service operates on a credit-based pricing model. Each API call costs a certain number of credits depending on the endpoint. Profile lookups cost more than search queries. Most plans include a monthly credit allocation with the option to purchase additional credits.

What the LinkdAPI Skill Does in OpenClaw

The LinkdAPI skill connects your OpenClaw agent to the LinkdAPI service. Once configured, your agent can look up people, companies, and jobs through conversation.

Instead of writing API calls or navigating the LinkdAPI dashboard, you ask your agent:

Look up Sarah Chen, VP of Engineering at Acme Corp, on LinkedIn

And get back:

Sarah Chen
VP of Engineering at Acme Corp
Location: San Francisco, CA
Experience: 8 years in engineering leadership
Previous: Senior Director at TechCo (2021-2024), Staff Engineer at BigCo (2018-2021)
Education: MS Computer Science, Stanford
Skills: Distributed Systems, Team Leadership, System Design, Python, Go
Recent activity: Posted about Acme's new infrastructure team 2 days ago

All through a text message to your agent.

Installation and Setup

Step 1: Get a LinkdAPI Account

Sign up at the LinkdAPI website and choose a plan. Most plans offer a free trial with limited credits so you can test the integration before committing.

Note your API key from the dashboard. You will need it for the next step.

Step 2: Install the Skill

clawhub install linkdapi

Step 3: Configure Your API Key

openclaw config set linkdapi.api_key YOUR_LINKDAPI_API_KEY

Or use an environment variable:

export LINKDAPI_API_KEY=your-api-key-here

Step 4: Verify the Connection

openclaw skills reload
openclaw start

Test with a simple lookup:

Look up the LinkedIn profile for Satya Nadella

If the agent returns profile data, the skill is working. If you see an authentication error, double-check your API key.

Lead Research Workflows

Lead research is the highest-value use case for LinkdAPI with OpenClaw. Sales teams, recruiters, and business development professionals spend hours researching prospects. The skill compresses that into seconds.

Single Profile Lookup

Look up John Smith, CTO at Startup XYZ, on LinkedIn

The agent returns the full profile: current role, experience history, education, skills, and location. You get a complete picture of the person without visiting LinkedIn.

Batch Research

For a list of leads:

Research these people on LinkedIn and give me a summary for each:
1. Sarah Chen, VP Engineering at Acme Corp
2. Mike Johnson, Head of Product at TechStartup
3. Lisa Wang, Director of Sales at Enterprise Inc
4. David Kim, CTO at DataFlow
5. Rachel Martinez, VP Operations at ScaleUp

The agent looks up each person and returns a structured summary. What would take 30-45 minutes manually happens in under a minute.

Pre-Meeting Research

Before a sales call or meeting:

I have a meeting with Jennifer Park, CEO of CloudNine in 30 minutes.
Give me a briefing: her background, career history, recent posts,
and anything notable about CloudNine as a company.

The agent pulls Jennifer’s profile and CloudNine’s company data, giving you context before you walk into the room.

Lead Qualification

Look up these 10 leads and tell me which ones are at companies
with more than 500 employees and have "VP" or "Director" in their title:
[list of names and companies]

Quick filtering without manual research. Focus your outreach on the leads that match your ideal customer profile.

Company Intelligence

LinkdAPI provides company-level data that is useful for competitive research, market analysis, and account planning.

Company Overview

Tell me about Acme Corp on LinkedIn. Company size, industry,
headquarters, and recent hiring trends.

Acme Corp
Industry: Enterprise Software
Headquarters: Austin, TX
Employees: 1,200-1,500 (LinkedIn estimate)
Founded: 2019
Specialties: Cloud infrastructure, developer tools, DevOps
Recent hiring: 45 open roles (up from 28 last quarter)
Key leadership: Jane Doe (CEO), Sarah Chen (VP Eng), Tom Lee (CFO)

Competitive Analysis

Compare these three companies on LinkedIn:
1. Acme Corp
2. TechRival
3. IndustryLeader
Show employee count, growth, and number of open positions for each.

Company Comparison:
| Company | Employees | Growth (6mo) | Open Roles |
|---------|-----------|-------------|------------|
| Acme Corp | 1,350 | +12% | 45 |
| TechRival | 890 | +8% | 22 |
| IndustryLeader | 4,200 | +3% | 67 |

Tracking Company Changes

Show me the leadership changes at Acme Corp in the last 6 months.
Any new C-level or VP hires?

Useful for account management. When a champion leaves a customer account or a new decision-maker joins, you want to know.

Department Mapping

Show me everyone at Acme Corp with "Engineering" in their title.
Group by seniority level.

Useful for account-based selling when you need to understand the org structure.

Profile Enrichment

If you have partial data (an email address, a name, a company), LinkdAPI can fill in the gaps.

Email to Profile

Find the LinkedIn profile associated with [email protected]

The agent searches LinkdAPI’s enrichment endpoint and returns the matching profile. Match rates vary depending on whether the person has a public LinkedIn profile associated with that email.

Name and Company to Profile

Find the LinkedIn profile for someone named David Kim who works at DataFlow

When you have a name and company but no LinkedIn URL, this is faster than searching LinkedIn directly.

Enriching a CRM Export

I have a list of contacts with just name and email.
Enrich each one with their current title, company, and location from LinkedIn:
1. [email protected]
2. [email protected]
3. [email protected]

The agent looks up each contact and returns the enriched data. This is common for cleaning up CRM data or preparing outreach lists.

Job Monitoring

LinkdAPI provides access to job posting data, which is useful for competitive intelligence, recruiting, and market research.

Searching Job Listings

Show me all open engineering jobs at Acme Corp

Search for "machine learning engineer" jobs in San Francisco
posted in the last 7 days

Monitoring Competitor Hiring

Check what roles Acme Corp, TechRival, and IndustryLeader
are hiring for this week. Focus on engineering and product roles.

Hiring patterns reveal strategic direction. If a competitor suddenly posts ten Kubernetes roles, they are probably investing in infrastructure. If they are hiring ML engineers, they are building AI capabilities.

Tracking Specific Roles

Alert me when Acme Corp posts a VP of Engineering role

Useful for job seekers and recruiters. Set up monitoring and let your agent notify you when matching roles appear.

Content and Activity Monitoring

LinkdAPI can surface recent posts and articles by people or companies.

Tracking a Person’s Activity

What has Sarah Chen posted on LinkedIn in the last month?

Useful for sales prep. If your prospect just posted about a challenge your product solves, that is a warm conversation starter.

Tracking a Company’s Content

Show me Acme Corp's recent LinkedIn posts. Any product announcements
or thought leadership pieces?

Tracking Industry Conversations

Search for recent LinkedIn posts by people with "CTO" in their title
at companies in the fintech industry that mention "AI" or "automation"

Broad content searches help you understand what topics matter to your target audience.

Privacy and Ethical Considerations

Using LinkedIn data through a third-party API raises legitimate questions about privacy and data use. Here is what to consider.

What Data Is Accessible

LinkdAPI provides access to publicly available LinkedIn data. This means information that LinkedIn members have chosen to make visible to the public or to logged-in LinkedIn users. It does not provide access to private messages, connection lists, or profile views.

LinkedIn’s Terms of Service

LinkedIn’s User Agreement restricts scraping and unauthorized data collection. Third-party data providers like LinkdAPI operate in a complex legal landscape. The US Supreme Court’s ruling in hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn (2022) established some precedent around public data access, but the legal environment continues to evolve.

Best Practices for Responsible Use

• Use data for legitimate business purposes — lead research, competitive analysis, recruiting
• Do not use data for harassment, discrimination, or deceptive practices
• Respect people’s privacy preferences — if someone has a minimal public profile, they probably want less visibility
• Be transparent — if you reach out to someone based on their LinkedIn data, do not pretend you found them through other means
• Stay within API rate limits and terms — do not bulk-download data for resale
• Check your jurisdiction — GDPR, CCPA, and other regulations may apply depending on where you and the data subjects are located

LinkdAPI’s Compliance

LinkdAPI publishes its own compliance documentation and terms of service. Review these before using the service, especially if you operate in industries with strict data handling requirements (healthcare, finance, government).

Configuration Options

# Set default search region
openclaw config set linkdapi.default_region "US"

# Set result limit for search queries
openclaw config set linkdapi.search_limit 25

# Enable/disable content (posts) lookups to save credits
openclaw config set linkdapi.include_posts true

# Set credit usage alerts
openclaw config set linkdapi.credit_alert_threshold 100

Managing API Credits

LinkdAPI uses a credit system. Different endpoints cost different amounts. The skill tracks your credit usage:

How many LinkdAPI credits have I used this month?

Credit usage this month: 2,340 / 5,000
Remaining: 2,660
Estimated days until limit: 17 (at current rate)

Set alerts to avoid running out unexpectedly:

Alert me when my LinkdAPI credits drop below 500

LinkdAPI vs. Other LinkedIn Data Sources

LinkdAPI is not the only way to access LinkedIn data. Here is how it compares.

Choose LinkdAPI when: You want structured API access without building and maintaining scraping infrastructure, and you need it to work with your OpenClaw agent.

Choose Sales Navigator when: You need the full LinkedIn search experience with advanced filters and InMail credits.

Choose the official LinkedIn API when: You are building a product that integrates with LinkedIn and can go through their partner approval process.

Choose manual research when: You have fewer than 10 profiles to look up and time is not a constraint.

Troubleshooting

”API key invalid”

Check that your LinkdAPI API key is active and has not expired. Log into the LinkdAPI dashboard to verify.

openclaw config set linkdapi.api_key YOUR_NEW_KEY

”Profile not found”

Not every person has a public LinkedIn profile. If the lookup returns no results, the person may have privacy settings that restrict public access, or they may not be on LinkedIn at all.

”Rate limit exceeded”

LinkdAPI enforces rate limits based on your plan. If you hit the limit, wait before retrying. For batch operations, the skill automatically spaces requests to avoid rate limiting.

”Insufficient credits”

Your monthly credit allocation is exhausted. Either wait for the next billing cycle or purchase additional credits through the LinkdAPI dashboard.

Stale data

LinkdAPI data may lag behind real-time LinkedIn profiles by hours or days. If accuracy is critical (e.g., confirming someone still works at a company before a meeting), verify key details on LinkedIn directly.

Pairing LinkdAPI with Other Skills

The LinkdAPI skill becomes more powerful alongside other OpenClaw capabilities.

• Pair with CRM skills to enrich contact records automatically when new leads enter your pipeline
• Pair with email skills to draft personalized outreach based on profile data
• Pair with the ClickUp skill to create follow-up tasks after researching prospects
• Pair with spreadsheet skills to export enriched lead data to Google Sheets or Excel
• Browse productivity skills for tools that complement sales and recruiting workflows

Getting Started

If you have not set up OpenClaw yet, start with the Getting Started guide.

Once your agent is running:

clawhub install linkdapi
openclaw config set linkdapi.api_key YOUR_API_KEY
openclaw skills reload

Try your first lookup:

Look up the LinkedIn profile for [someone you know]

From there, build toward batch research workflows, company intelligence, and automated enrichment. The manual research loop — open LinkedIn, search, click, copy, paste — becomes a single message to your agent.

For the full skill documentation, visit the linkdapi skill page. For more productivity and business tools, browse productivity skills. And for top picks across every category, read Best OpenClaw Skills 2026.