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name: domain description: "When you want to brainstorm and check available .com domains for a new project — brand naming, aftermarket pricing (HugeDomains / Afternic / Sedo / Dan), USPTO trademark screening, and social handle availability. Built on Laura Roeder's "work backwards from availability, not from a name you fell in love with" methodology. Uses Vercel CLI + whois + Domainr API + Namecheap API + agent-browser for the pieces each tool actually reliably supports (multi-tool ensemble because no single tool covers everything cleanly). 11-step workflow: budget → brainstorm → primary availability check → whois cross-check → Domainr aggregation → Namecheap price → aftermarket sweep (+ liveness probe for parked/dead domains, drop-watch for expiring ones) → bucket → negotiate → NAME research (trademark + socials) → buy. Triggers on "/domain," "find a domain," "check domain availability," "brainstorm a domain," "what .com is available for X," "domain hunt," "name my project," "is X.com available," "aftermarket price on X.com," "trademark check for X."" metadata: version: 0.2.0

/domain — Brainstorm + check available .com domains

Multi-tool workflow to find a great, affordable, available .com for a new project. Built on Laura Roeder's rule: work backwards from what's actually available — don't fall in love with a name first (source).

Defaults to .com only. Only deviate (.dev, .co, .io, .ai) if the project is dev-tooling-only or the user explicitly asks.

Step 0 — Environment checks

Verify these before proceeding (surface install commands if missing, don't try to install silently):

| Tool | Check | Install if missing | |---|---|---| | Vercel CLI | vercel whoami | npm i -g vercel && vercel login | | whois | which whois | brew install whois (macOS) | | Domainr API key | [ -n "$DOMAINR_API_KEY" ] | Get free key at rapidapi.com/domainr/api/domainr, add to ~/.zshenv | | Namecheap API | [ -n "$NAMECHEAP_API_KEY" ] && [ -n "$NAMECHEAP_API_USER" ] && [ -n "$NAMECHEAP_CLIENT_IP" ] | Enable API at ap.www.namecheap.com/settings/tools/apiaccess/, add 3 env vars, whitelist your IP |

Domainr + Namecheap are optional — the workflow degrades gracefully without them (skips the corresponding cross-check steps).

Step 1 — Set the budget

Ask: what would you pay for a great .com on this project? Anchor defaults:

| Budget | What it buys | |---|---| | $0 | Only unregistered domains (rare for anything good) | | $250–$1k | Aftermarket sweet spot (HugeDomains is the standout — Laura found "a ton of great .com's available for less than $1k") | | $1k–$2k | Laura's Paperbell.com range — plenty of brandable options | | $2k+ | Premium |

Filter all candidates to under-budget BEFORE falling in love.

Step 2 — Seed words for "branded" combos

Ask what the product does + the feeling/category. Brainstorm 20–40 candidate domains using these preferences (in order):

1. Two real words mashed together ← preferred (Helpscout, RightMessage, ConvertKit, Paperbell, Mailchimp). Easy to spell, remember, google.
2. Prefix/suffix the bare word — grab the .com when the bare word is taken or over budget. "I love word X, X.com is gone, what qualifier unlocks the .com?"
   • Modern prefixes (B2B SaaS feel): try (TryGamma, TryRoam), use (UseMotion, UseChalk), with (WithCove, WithFrame), join (JoinHomebase, JoinHonor)
   • Classic prefixes (still work): get (GetMagic, GetResponse), go (GoCardless, GoFundMe), hey (HeyMarvin, HeyHenry), the (TheBrowserCompany, TheDyrt — editorial vibe)
   • Dated — avoid unless intentional: my (MyFitnessPal), meet (MeetEdgar)
   • Suffixes: +ly (Calendly, Grammarly — battle-tested but reads "2015 startup"), +ify (Spotify, Shopify — rare, hard to land authentically), +labs (AI/research positioning), +hq / +app (mostly informal)
   • Watch: trademark collision (UseSlack.com is a brand violation even if registrable); popular bare words often have try/use/get/join variants pre-grabbed by the same owner; longer URLs cost spelling-on-phone bandwidth
   • Full grid: if the user loves a bare word, generate all try/use/with/join/get/go/hey/the + word and word + ly/ify/labs/hq/app in one shot — ~15 variants
3. One real word, slightly modified (Trello, Pinterest, Lyft) — fine.
4. Made-up-sounds (Sunsama, Besedky) — only as fallback. Notoriously hard to remember.
5. Common single-word objects (Clubhouse, Spoke, Blush, Finder) — AVOID. Ungoogleable, .com always taken, collides with other products.

Surface a numbered candidate list before checking — don't burn cycles checking obvious losers.

Step 3 — Primary availability check (Vercel CLI)

Use vercel domains check for availability and vercel domains price for registrar quotes. Loop candidates:

for domain in candidate1.com candidate2.com candidate3.com; do
  echo -n "$domain: "
  vercel domains check "$domain" 2>&1 | grep -E "available|not available|Error" || echo "checking..."
done

For pricing on the candidates that came back available:

vercel domains price candidate1.com candidate2.com candidate3.com

For a single deeper check on a taken domain (registrar status, expiration, nameservers if the domain is already Vercel-managed):

vercel domains inspect candidate.com

TLD reliability: Vercel CLI is rock-solid for .com and most gTLDs, but returns errors for .ai, .dev, .io, .app (Vercel doesn't sell those registrar-side). Skip Step 3 for non-.com candidates and go straight to Step 4.

Step 4 — Cross-check with whois

Ground truth for registration status. Query the right server per TLD — pinning -h whois.verisign-grs.com to a non-.com produces silent false negatives.

Classification order matters (stolen from unclaimed): check for REGISTERED signals first, then available signals. A parked domain's whois/lander can contain "this domain is available for sale" — grepping for "available" first turns a taken name into a false positive. And reserved ≠ available: "is reserved", "not available for registration", "blocked for registration" all mean taken, even though RDAP often 404s these names.

• Registered signals: creation date, registrar:, registry expiry, registrant, name server
• Reserved signals (treat as taken): is reserved, reserved by, not available for registration, blocked for registration
• Available signals: no match, not found, no entries found, no object found, not registered, available for registration

.com / .net — Verisign:

for domain in candidate1.com candidate2.com; do
  result=$(whois -h whois.verisign-grs.com "$domain" 2>&1)
  if echo "$result" | grep -qiE "registrar:|creation date"; then
    expiry=$(echo "$result" | grep -i "registry expiry" | head -1 | sed 's/.*: //')
    echo "$domain → TAKEN (expires $expiry)"
  elif echo "$result" | grep -qiE "is reserved|reserved by|not available for registration|blocked for registration"; then
    echo "$domain → RESERVED (not registrable)"
  elif echo "$result" | grep -qi "no match"; then
    echo "$domain → AVAILABLE"
  else
    echo "$domain → UNKNOWN (do not treat as available)"
  fi
done

Any other TLD — don't hardcode servers; ask IANA for the authoritative whois host, then query it (whois.nic.<tld> is the fallback convention):

tld=ai
server=$(whois -h whois.iana.org "$tld" 2>/dev/null | grep -i "^whois:" | awk '{print $2}')
server=${server:-whois.nic.$tld}
whois -h "$server" candidate.$tld

Caveat: some registries have no port-43 whois at all (Google's .dev/.app/.page — IANA lists nothing and whois.nic.dev doesn't resolve). For those, RDAP below IS the ground truth.

RDAP for .dev / .app / .io and other modern TLDs — JSON-native, cleaner than whois when the TLD supports it:

UA="domain-skill/0.1 (availability check)"
for domain in candidate.dev candidate.app; do
  code=$(curl -sL -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" -A "$UA" "https://rdap.org/domain/$domain")
  case "$code" in
    404) echo "$domain → probably available (confirm via whois — see caveat)" ;;
    200) echo "$domain → TAKEN" ;;
    429) echo "$domain → rate-limited, sleep + retry" ;;
    *)   echo "$domain → UNKNOWN (do not treat as available)" ;;
  esac
  sleep 1  # rdap.org rate-limits aggressively
done

RDAP gotchas (all verified by the unclaimed project):

• Always send a User-Agent — rdap.org (and some registry servers) 403 bare requests, and a 403 read naively looks like "not 404 = taken."
• 404 ≠ proof of availability. Registry-reserved, blocked, and premium-unsold names also 404 on RDAP. Before reporting a name available on RDAP evidence alone, confirm with a whois query (Step 4 above) — if whois says reserved, it's taken.
• rdap.org only routes TLDs in the IANA bootstrap (https://data.iana.org/rdap/dns.json). For a TLD outside it, an rdap.org 404 is meaningless — fall back to whois. Two useful direct endpoints not in the bootstrap: .io → https://rdap.identitydigital.services/rdap/domain/<domain>, .so → https://rdap.nic.so/domain/<domain>.
• A 200 body includes events[] — the expiration eventDate feeds the drop-watch in Step 7b.

Reading the results:

• No match / no object found / RDAP 404 (whois-confirmed) = unregistered, available
• Registrar: <name> / RDAP 200 = taken, check the aftermarket
• Timeout / rate-limit / weird output = UNKNOWN — never bucket as available. Retry later instead.

Bulk multi-TLD sweeps — if the hunt widens beyond a dozen candidates or beyond .com, don't hand-roll the loop; unclaimed does RDAP+whois with correct classification, resumable SQLite caching, and pricing (Node 24+):

npx unclaimed check orbit --tlds com,io,ai,dev
npx unclaimed sweep --words-file ./candidates.txt --tlds com
npx unclaimed available --sort commercial --limit 50

Its three states map to ours: available / registered / unknown (it never reports a timeout as available either).

Step 5 — Domainr cross-check (aftermarket signal)

Domainr aggregates registrar + marketplace status across many TLDs. Skip if DOMAINR_API_KEY unset — otherwise:

for domain in candidate1.com candidate2.com; do
  curl -s "https://domainr.p.rapidapi.com/v2/status?domain=$domain" \
    -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: $DOMAINR_API_KEY" \
    -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: domainr.p.rapidapi.com" \
    | jq -r --arg d "$domain" '.status[] | "\($d): \(.status) — \(.summary)"'
done

Status codes:

• undelegated inactive → unregistered, free
• active → registered, in use
• marketed, parked, priced → for sale on aftermarket (Domainr surfaces price hint when available)
• premium → registry premium (often $500+/yr)

marketed or priced = high-signal flag to dig into HugeDomains/Afternic in Step 7.

Step 6 — Namecheap price check

Fallback registrar — sometimes cheaper than Vercel on year-1 promo pricing. Skip if NAMECHEAP_API_* unset — otherwise:

DOMAINS="candidate1.com,candidate2.com,candidate3.com"
curl -s "https://api.namecheap.com/xml.response?ApiUser=$NAMECHEAP_API_USER&ApiKey=$NAMECHEAP_API_KEY&UserName=$NAMECHEAP_API_USER&Command=namecheap.domains.check&ClientIp=$NAMECHEAP_CLIENT_IP&DomainList=$DOMAINS" \
  | xmllint --xpath '//*[local-name()="DomainCheckResult"]' - 2>/dev/null \
  | grep -oE 'Domain="[^"]+" Available="[^"]+"( IsPremiumName="[^"]+")?( PremiumRegistrationPrice="[^"]+")?'

Available="true" = registrable at Namecheap registrar prices (typically $9–$15/yr for .com). IsPremiumName="true" = registry premium tier (skip unless under budget).

Reconcile Vercel + Domainr + Namecheap + whois. If they disag