Skill: HG Recent Signals
'Current' means verified within 90 days, in every brief, and stale signals get flagged before they ship.
Overview
Make 'recent' mean the same thing in every brief. Claude applies one set of recency thresholds per signal: installs verified within 90 days are current, intent seen within 30 days is active, contracts announced within six months are recent. It treats M&A, restructuring or a new CIO as a reset that ages older signals, so stale data never ships as news.
Use cases
Outreach that doesn't cite last year's activity
An SDR is about to open with an intent spike. Claude checks the last-seen date: a top score last seen months ago is historical, not active, and the email says so or moves on.
'Runs X' only when it's true today
An install verified 11 months ago becomes 'used X as of last spring', not 'currently uses X', and an install verified more than two years ago is never the lead line.
Strategic events reset the clock
When a filing or press report shows an acquisition or a new CIO, Claude treats older installs as historical until a newer verification confirms them, because the new leadership may already be changing the stack.
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HG Recent Signals
When to use
- A workflow is filtering for "recent" or "current" signals and the threshold isn't obvious.
- A prompt is about to write "recently", "currently" or "this year": check the canonical threshold first.
- An author is reviewing output that conflates a 30-month-old install with a 3-month-old one.
Canonical thresholds
| Signal | Field | Current Or Active | Recent | Historical | Stale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Install in use (company_technographic) | product_last_verified_date | within 90 days | 3 to 12 months | 12 to 24 months | over 24 months |
| New install | product_first_verified_date | n/a | first seen within 24 months (a new add) | over 24 months | n/a |
Usage trend (company_install_time_series) | is_active, last loaded month | is_active:true (verified within 90 days) | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Intent topic (company_intent) | topic last_seen_at, summary.latest_signal_date | within 30 days | 31 to 90 days | over 90 days | n/a |
Contract (company_contracts) | announcement_date, start_date | n/a | announced or started within 6 months | older | n/a |
| SEC filing | filedAt | n/a | within 90 days | older | n/a |
| Web or press | publication date | n/a | within 90 days | older | n/a |
These are working defaults. A workflow may tighten them; don't loosen them without stating why.
How to read it
Installs.
- Current (90 days or less) → lead with it: "runs X".
- Recent (3 to 12 months) → "used X as of ", not "currently uses".
- Historical (12 to 24 months) → context only, with the verification month.
- Stale (over 24 months) → don't lead with it; pair with a recent corroborating source or drop it.
Placeholders. A first-verified date of 2000-01-01 means "before tracking began", not a real adoption date. Never count it as tenure or as a new add. Treat 1970-01-01 and -1 as "no value" too.
Time series. The last complete month can be partly loaded (detection stops at product_last_verified_date) and look like a collapse. Drop the current month and any month after product_last_verified_date before reading a recent trend. See hg-momentum-signals.
Intent.
signal_datehas no default window: passsignal_date.from(e.g. 90 days before today) whenever the question is about recent intent, or older signals mix in.- Use each topic's
last_seen_atfor its recency andsummary.latest_signal_datefor the company's most recent signal. - Intent decays fast. A score of 100 last seen over 90 days ago is historical, not active.
- Resolve
topic_idsfirst and passfields:["topics"]withgranularity:"global"; unfiltered topic lists are saturated. Seehg-intent.
Operating signals. Mentions only cover the most recent ~90 days; "no-signal" doesn't mean never.
Cache. Company tools, intent included, are cached for 30 days with no way to force a refresh. A re-call inside the window returns the same payload. Don't promise data fresher than that.
Strategic-signal classification
Some events rewrite the account picture instead of just being "recent". HG tools don't report them: source them from SEC filings (sec_full_text_search, sec_filing_section for US filers) or web_search, and cite that source. company_firmographic can corroborate an ownership change (a new global_hq_id or corporate_parent_id).
| Event | Strategic? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| M&A: acquired | Yes | New parent, procurement integration window |
| M&A: divested | Yes | Standalone now; original tooling may not survive separation |
| Restructuring (org-wide reduction in force) | Yes | Budget freeze likely; champion churn likely |
| Leadership change (CIO or CTO) | Yes | A full roadmap re-evaluation is normal in the first 6 months |
| Funding round (over $50M) | Yes | New spend appetite |
| Local team expansion | No | Noise unless the team aligns with the workflow's category |
| Press release on a partnership | Often no | PR is not active intent; check intent and installs |
A strategic signal resets the recency clock. A leadership change last month makes an install verified 14 months ago effectively stale, because the new leader may already be changing the stack. After a strategic event, treat anything older than the event as historical until a newer verification confirms it.
Common pitfalls
- Calling an install verified 11 months ago "current". Current means verified within 90 days.
- Reading 2000-01-01 as a real first-seen date. It means "before tracking began".
- Reading intent without a
signal_date.from. Old signals mix in silently. - Treating press releases as intent. A partnership announcement is marketing, not a buying signal.
- Ignoring a leadership change as a recency reset. Recommendations built on pre-change installs go stale.
- Sourcing strategic events from HG tools. They come from SEC or the web; cite those.
Reference
- V2 tool docs: https://phoenix.hginsights.com/docs/mcp-tools/v2/company-technographic
- V2 tool docs: https://phoenix.hginsights.com/docs/mcp-tools/v2/company-intent
- Full docs for LLMs: https://phoenix.hginsights.com/docs/llms-full.txt
- Related skills:
hg-mcp-calling-rules,hg-technographic,hg-intent,hg-momentum-signals,hg-fallback-to-web-search