Q01Will the agent send notes or commitments to founders on its own?
No. Every outbound write, every IC memo export, and every LP report stops at a HITL gate. The crew prepares the deal screen, the reference plan, and the draft memo. You approve before anything reaches the founder, your partners, or your LPs.
Q02Can the agents reason over my deal flow, CRM, and past memos?
Three ways. Static context attaches your thesis, check size band, and stage filter to every persona on every run. The rag_retrieve tool lets MarketAnalyst and LiteratureSpecialist pull from past memos, founder updates, and prior diligence files on demand. Cross-run memory means last quarter's pass on a company is in scope when the founder pings you again.
Q03Is this an Affinity alternative or a Harmonic alternative?
It sits next to them. Affinity holds your relationship graph, Harmonic surfaces companies before they fundraise. Melaya is the reasoning layer that screens the deck, runs the market map, scores the founder backchannel, and writes the cited memo, while Affinity stays the system of record.
Q04How does this compare to PitchBook, Tracxn, or Crunchbase?
PitchBook, Tracxn, and Crunchbase are data feeds and search surfaces. Melaya treats them as scoped tools any persona can call, then composes a workflow on top that runs MarketAnalyst, DataScientist, and LiteratureSpecialist on a schedule and writes the brief with sources cited inline.
Q05Is this overkill if I am a solo angel or a one person syndicate lead?
No. The crew runs as 4 personas on a canvas, not 4 seats on a SaaS. A solo angel typically uses the deck triage workflow and the founder backchannel workflow, skips portfolio KPI and LP letter pipelines, and pays for one tenant. The same canvas grows when you raise a fund vehicle.
Q06How do we keep the memo from sounding like AI?
Drafts cite specific paragraphs from the deck, FRED series ids for macro claims, arXiv or SSRN identifiers for category research, and named operators from the reference list. LiteratureSpecialist must surface one contradicting paper per thesis, so the tone reads as a working partner note instead of a confident summary.
Q07Which models can I run the crew on?
Any. Claude on LiteratureSpecialist and the memo synthesizer where long context and reasoning quality earn the cost, GPT on DataScientist for KPI code drafting, a local Ollama on MarketAnalyst when the data room contents cannot leave your machine. Each persona picks its own model.
Q08How fast can I get the first pipeline running on inbound decks?
With a Gmail inbox and a Google Drive folder connected, the deck triage workflow is a 4 node canvas: ingest deck, score against thesis, draft pass or pursue note, stage for your review. Most investors ship it in a working session and clear the first 20 deck backlog the same day.
Q09Can I audit exactly what the agent decided and why?
Every run logs every tool call, every retrieved chunk, every model invocation, and every approval. Replay any run to see which deck slide, which FRED series, which paper, and which reference call drove the verdict. The audit log is the IC memo trail.
Q10Can I restrict which agents can read the data room?
Yes. agent_tools allowlists are scoped per persona, so MarketAnalyst can read public filings while only the deal lead persona holds the scoped reader for the founder data room. The canvas shows the gate before a run starts.
Q11Why not build deck triage with n8n or Zapier instead?
n8n and Zapier execute predefined trigger-action steps, which works for routing a deck into a folder but not for judging a thesis. Melaya's four persona crew plans across steps on a visual canvas: the Market Analyst decides which comparables to pull from sec_edgar_tools based on what the deck actually claims. Zapier and Make still win on connector breadth for simple linear automations.
Q12Can I reuse one screening workflow for every inbound deck?
Yes. Save any run as a template and every new deck moves through the same four persona pipeline: Market Analyst category read, Data Scientist KPI check, Literature Specialist paper scan, Macro Economist cycle frame. Full run traces make each screening comparable, so partners review a consistent memo format instead of ad hoc notes.
Q13Can deal screening run without sending decks to a third party cloud?
Yes. Melaya runs in the cloud or on your local runner, and per-step model routing across 23 providers lets you keep confidential deck analysis on a local model while public lookups through fred_tools and sec_edgar_tools use cloud models. The knowledge bundle holding past memos and pass notes stays wherever you run the pipeline.
Q14How does the crew put citations in an IC memo?
Each persona writes only from tool output that can be named. The Market Analyst cites the exact filing pulled through sec_edgar_tools, the Macro Economist cites the FRED series id from fred_tools, and the Literature Specialist names papers found through arxiv_tools and openalex_tools, including one that argues against the deal. Run traces record every fetch behind every claim.
Q15How do I control what each screening run costs?
Assign a model per step: route the Market Analyst's category reasoning to a strong model and routine fetches through the scraping bundle to a cheaper one, across 23 providers or your local runner. Melaya reports cost per accepted result on full run traces, so you see what an approved memo actually cost, not just token totals.