Foxy continuously monitors the YC startup directory, Launch YC, the a16z Speedrun directory, X and LinkedIn. It alerts on new YC and Speedrun companies, and · the point of the tool · on founders announcing an acceptance that YC has not yet published, cross-referenced against the official directory so you know it is genuinely early.
","category":"productivity","key_features":"Sales and GTM teams reaching out to newly funded founders before the rest of the market notices them.
","setup_instructions":"Ask for a scan, for recent early signals, or whether a specific company is already listed by YC.","faqs":[{"question":"How is this different from just watching the YC directory?","answer":"The directory runs late. It currently lists 24 Fall 2026 companies against a batch of several hundred, and everyone scraping it finds the same names on the same day.
Foxy reads what founders post on X and LinkedIn first, then checks the directory. If YC has not published them yet, you hear about it while nobody else has.
"},{"question":"How often does it check?","answer":"Every eight hours, three times a day. It is not sitting there listening; it wakes, checks all five sources, posts anything new, and sleeps.
Silence means nothing new since the last run, which is most of the time. YC adds roughly one to three companies a day.
"},{"question":"Will it flood my channel?","answer":"No. Every company is remembered, so nothing is reported twice, and the first run deliberately stays quiet instead of dumping history at you.
There is also a hard ceiling on how many alerts a single run may post. Anything past it arrives as one digest line rather than fifty messages.
"},{"question":"How accurate is it?","answer":"Measured against 15 real posts collected live and labelled by hand: 100% precision, 88% recall, zero false alarms.
The hard cases are posts that contain a textbook announcement phrase but are not one, such as “8 startups I referred got into YC” or “exactly one year ago today, we got into Y Combinator”. Those are rejected.
"},{"question":"What if it cannot tell?","answer":"It says so. When a post is a genuine announcement but names no company, Foxy marks it unverified and files it in a digest rather than claiming the company is missing from YC.
Treating “I could not check” as “it is not there” is how a monitor starts crying wolf.
"},{"question":"Do I need any API keys?","answer":"No. The three YC and Speedrun sources are public feeds that cost nothing.
X and LinkedIn find more with an optional search key, which you can paste into your settings page at any time. Without one they still work, just with narrower reach.
"},{"question":"Is Speedrun a YC programme?","answer":"No, it is a16z's, and Foxy monitors the real one. Y Combinator does not run a programme called Speedrun: its own site returns 404 for that path, its sitemap never mentions it, and it appears in none of the 50 batches the directory lists.
A watcher checks YC's sitemap on every run in case that ever changes.
"},{"question":"What happens to my Slack token?","answer":"It is encrypted at rest and used only to post into the channel you chose. Foxy asks for the minimum scopes needed to post and to list your channels so you never have to hunt for a channel ID.
You can stop alerts at any time from your settings link, or remove the app from Slack.
"},{"question":"Can I run it myself instead?","answer":"Yes. It is open source under MIT. Clone it, run one setup command, and it runs on your own machine or server with Docker.
Self-hosting means nothing touches anyone else's infrastructure.
"},{"question":"What happens when the free alerts run out?","answer":"Foxy tells you once and then stays quiet, rather than nagging. Nothing is lost; monitoring resumes the moment the plan is upgraded.
The free plan is metered by alerts actually delivered, so a quiet week costs you nothing.
"}]},"actions":[{"id":"scan_now","name":"Run a scan now","description":"Use when the user wants an immediate check of all monitored sources for new YC or Speedrun companies and early founder announcements, instead of waiting for the scheduled sweep.","input_schema":{"type":"object","properties":{"sources":{"type":"array","description":"Narrow the scan to these sources. Omit to scan all five, which is the usual case. X and LinkedIn are where early founder announcements come from, so a scan meant to find those must include them.","items":{"type":"string","description":"One monitored source.","enum":["yc_directory","yc_launches","speedrun","x","linkedin"]}},"limit":{"type":"integer","description":"How many detections to return. Default 3.","minimum":1,"maximum":10},"post_to_slack":{"type":"boolean","description":"Only affects Slack workspaces that have installed Foxy. Results are always returned here; a Pond conversation is not linked to a Slack workspace, so asking for Slack from here does not send anything there. To get alerts in Slack, install Foxy from its page first."}},"additionalProperties":false}},{"id":"search_early_signals","name":"Find early YC signals","description":"Use when the user wants founders who have announced a YC or Speedrun acceptance on social media that YC has not yet listed in its own directory.","input_schema":{"type":"object","properties":{"limit":{"type":"integer","description":"How many signals to return.","minimum":1,"maximum":50},"min_confidence":{"type":"number","description":"Only return signals at or above this confidence.","minimum":0,"maximum":1}},"additionalProperties":false}},{"id":"lookup_company","name":"Check a company against YC","description":"Use when the user wants to know whether a specific company is already listed in the official YC directory, and its batch.","input_schema":{"type":"object","properties":{"company_name":{"type":"string","maxLength":120,"description":"The company name to check.","minLength":1},"website":{"type":"string","maxLength":500,"description":"The company's website, which matches more reliably than a name."}},"required":["company_name"],"additionalProperties":false}},{"id":"recent_detections","name":"List recent detections","description":"Use when the user wants the companies this monitor has detected recently, or wants to review what it has alerted on.","input_schema":{"type":"object","properties":{"limit":{"type":"integer","description":"How many detections to return.","minimum":1,"maximum":50},"only_early":{"type":"boolean","description":"Restrict to early signals YC had not yet confirmed."}},"additionalProperties":false}},{"id":"health_check","name":"Report monitor health","description":"Diagnostic, for whoever runs the agent rather than for someone using it. Use only when explicitly asked whether the monitor itself is healthy, when it last ran, or whether a source is failing - never offer it as a thing to try.","input_schema":{"type":"object","properties":{},"additionalProperties":false}}],"capabilities":{"sync":true,"streaming":false,"async_tasks":true,"cancellation":false,"attachments":false,"feedback":false},"input_modes":["text/plain"],"output_modes":["text/markdown"],"limits":{"max_request_bytes":262144,"max_attachment_bytes":10485760,"max_run_seconds":600}}