Find Bark leads worth buying before you spend credits

1. Click Leads in the Bark top navigation and start on the 1st to respond tab, which lists requests no professional has contacted yet; Urgent and Free leads are the other two tabs.
2. Click Filter on the Bark leads page to narrow the view by service, location, credits, contact preferences or when the lead was submitted, and sort by relevance, date or credits.
3. Open each Bark lead to read the customer's answers, the credit cost and how many professionals have already responded, and look for signals such as a verified phone number.
4. Select Not interested on the leads you will not take; Bark charges no credits for that and tells the customer politely on your behalf.
5. Bark resets those leads page filters as soon as you leave the page, so the same narrowing starts over at every visit, and a lead drops off the 1st to respond tab as soon as another professional contacts the customer.

Every morning, check new Bark leads for Web Design, shortlist the ones under 15 credits with fewer than 3 responses, and mark the ones outside my area Not interested after I confirm.

1. 01

   Start from what you actually sell

   The agent reads get_lead_preferences before anything else, so it knows your services and coverage areas. A lead for a service you never listed is reported as a sign your preferences need tightening, and it is not shortlisted.

2. 02

   Pull only the fresh, cheap end of the list

   list_leads runs on the first_to_respond view with your service and credit ceiling, limited to leads submitted since the previous run. If you hold Elite Pro free leads, the agent also checks the free view, because unused free leads vanish at the Monday reset.

3. 03

   Judge each request against your rules

   For every candidate the agent opens get_lead and compares the customer's answers with what you told it: budget, dates, job size, distance. A lead that already has four responses drops to the bottom, since only one more professional can still reach that customer.

4. 04

   Fit the shortlist to your balance

   get_credit_balance tells the agent what you can afford today. The shortlist is cut to that amount, strongest match first, and the report says so when buying every lead on it would empty the account.

5. 05

   Pass on clear misfits, never buy

   Leads that break a hard rule (wrong service, outside your area, a job you never take) go to skip_lead once you confirm. Triage never spends credits; buying is a separate step you approve lead by lead.

7 new Web Design leads since 08:00, 3 worth a look. Balance: 41 credits.
1. Lead 61841930, Manchester M1: Shopify store redesign, budget £1,500 to £3,000, 9 credits, 0 responses, verified phone.
2. Lead 61843315, Salford M5: 5-page site for a dental practice, 11 credits, 1 response.
3. Lead 61843702, Stockport SK1: logo and landing page, 6 credits, 2 responses, urgent.
Marked Not interested after your OK: 2 app development requests, 1 lead outside your 25-mile radius.
Left alone: 1 lead at 18 credits, above your 15-credit cap.

• Bark caps every request at 5 professional responses, and the leads page shows how many professionals have already responded before you buy.
• Elite Pro gives Bark professionals 2 free leads a week, usable only on leads with no responses after 48 hours, refreshed every Monday at 00:01 local time and never carried over.
• Bark credits bought on or after 1 November 2025 expire 3 months after purchase, and Bark does not return expired credits.
• Filters on the Bark leads page are temporary, while the services and locations saved under Settings > Lead Preferences decide which leads you are sent at all.

skip_lead asks for your OK by default. To run it daily without you, switch confirmation off for that tool in your dashboard.

Sources: Bark Help: Managing your leads dashboard · Bark Help: How many responses can a customer receive? · Bark Help: Elite Pro free leads · Bark Help: How Credit Expiration Works on Bark

curl https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/bark/list_leads \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"view":"first_to_respond","service":"Web Design","max_credits":15,"since":"2026-10-12","sort":"credits","limit":20}'

{
  "leads": [
    {
      "lead_id": "61842207",
      "service": "Wedding Photography",
      "location": "Leeds, LS1",
      "credits": 12,
      "signals": [
        "urgent"
      ],
      "submitted": "2026-10-11"
    },
    {
      "lead_id": "61841930",
      "service": "Web Design",
      "location": "Manchester, M1",
      "credits": 9,
      "signals": [
        "first_to_respond"
      ],
      "submitted": "2026-10-11"
    }
  ]
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the tool is bark_list_leads. Example data.

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