Skill: HG Recent Signals
'Recent' that means the same thing across every brief — and stale signals flagged before they ship.
Overview
Stop AI-generated briefs from leading with stale signals dressed up as fresh news. Claude learns the right recency window for each signal type (intent decays in 90 days, contract renewals in 6 months, technographic installs in 12-24 months) and treats strategic events like M&A or new-CIO appointments as resets that age previously-current signals overnight.
Use cases
Outreach that doesn't reference last year's intent surge
Intent decays fast. Claude downgrades any score-100 reading more than 90 days old to a historical signal — so your outbound opens with current research behavior, not a stale topic that already cooled.
Strategic events reset the recency clock
When a company gets a new CIO, gets acquired, or announces a major restructuring, Claude treats earlier technographic and contract data as potentially-aged — pairs it with a corroborating fresh source, or flags the uncertainty in the brief.
View full skill
HG Recent Signals
When to use
- A workflow is filtering for "recent" signals and the threshold isn't obvious.
- A prompt is about to claim "recently" or "this year" — check the canonical threshold first.
- An author is reviewing a workflow output that conflates a 30-month-old install with a 3-month-old one.
Canonical thresholds
| Signal source | "Recent" means… |
|---|---|
company_technographic (first_verified) | within 24 months |
company_technographic (last_verified) | within 12 months for "fresh", 12-24 for "recent" |
company_contracts (new contract) | signed within 6 months |
company_intent (last_seen) | within 90 days (intent decays fast) |
| SEC filings | filed within 90 days |
| Press releases / web | published within 90 days |
These are working defaults. A workflow can override with a stricter threshold; do not loosen below these without explicit justification.
How to read it
Technographic stale-vs-fresh:
last_verified< 12 months ago → fresh, lead with the signal.last_verified12-24 months ago → recent, mention the verification date.last_verified> 24 months ago → stale, do not lead; pair with a corroborating recent source.
Intent half-life: intent scores decay quickly. A score-100 from 90+ days ago is a historical signal, not an active one. The workflow should re-fetch or downgrade.
Strategic-signal classification
Some events warrant treatment as strategic (rewriting the account picture) rather than just "recent". The classification:
| 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 RIF) | Yes | Budget freeze likely; champion churn likely. |
| Leadership change (CIO/CTO) | Yes | Re-evaluation of the entire IT roadmap is normal in the first 6 mo. |
| Funding round (>$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 ≠ active intent; check intent + technographic. |
The classification matters because a strategic signal resets the recency clock — a leadership change last month makes 30-month-old technographic effectively "stale" because the new CIO may have already changed the stack.
Common pitfalls
- Calling a 28-month-old install "current". It might be; verify before leading with it.
- Treating press releases as intent. A partnership announcement is marketing, not a buying signal.
- Ignoring leadership change as a recency reset. Workflows that ground on a 24-month-old technographic at a company with a 4-month-old CIO often produce stale recommendations.
Reference
hg-insights-api.md#recencyhg-technographic—first_verified/last_verifiedsemantics