Skill: HG Citation Discipline

Briefs that read like an analyst wrote them — every claim cited, no hallucinated emails or revenue figures.

Overview

Hallucination control for AI-generated GTM deliverables. Claude learns the source-priority order (HG → SEC → web), the citation-density rules that keep prose readable instead of footnote-heavy, and the no-fabrication guardrails that stop invented emails, revenue figures, and product versions from landing in your output. Every claim traces to a source.

Use cases

  • Account briefs your CRO trusts on first read

    Every spend figure, install reference, and stakeholder name traces back to HG, SEC, or a web source — and the source frame appears at the top of each section, not buried per sentence. The brief reads as an executive summary, not a research paper with 40 footnotes.

  • Hallucination guardrails for outbound + research

    Claude won't fabricate emails (if contact_enrich didn't return one, the field is omitted), revenue figures (low-confidence numbers get hedged or dropped), or product versions (a name without a verified version stays unversioned). The 'we got an angry reply because the email was wrong' problem disappears.

View full skill

HG Citation Discipline

When to use

  • Authoring or editing a workflow prompt that produces narrative output.
  • Reviewing a workflow output that quotes HG / SEC / web data — check the citation pattern against this skill.

The rules

1. Cite at source boundaries, not per claim

In a paragraph that synthesizes three HG signals, one citation at the end of the synthesis is enough, not one citation per signal. Per-claim citation reads like a footnoted research paper; per-source-boundary reads like a brief.

Per-bullet citation is the exception: when bullets reference different products from different verifications, each bullet carries its own citation.

2. One marker per table

A markdown table that pulls every cell from company_technographic carries one citation in the introductory sentence, not one per row. The reader trusts that the table is internally consistent.

When a table mixes sources (e.g., HG technographic + SEC headcount), use a footnote-style cite per column.

3. Source-priority order

When multiple sources can support the same claim:

  1. HG — primary. Cite as "HG, [month year]" (e.g., "HG, May 2026").
  2. SEC filings — for public-company-specific claims (revenue, acquisitions, executive changes). Cite as "SEC 10-K (FY2025)" or similar; the year matters.
  3. Web search — last resort, only when HG and SEC don't cover the claim. Cite as "web search, [domain.com], [date]".

Never cite "general knowledge" or "industry consensus" — that's a tell for fabrication.

4. No-fabrication guardrails

  • Never invent emails or phone numbers. contact_search returns name + title + location + LinkedIn; if the workflow wants email, call contact_enrich explicitly. Otherwise omit.
  • Never invent revenue figures. If company_firmographic returns a low-confidence revenue, hedge ("approximately") or omit; do not pick a precise-looking number from web sources without re-citing them.
  • Never invent product versions. company_technographic returns a product name, not a version string. "They run Salesforce v59" is a fabrication unless the version came from another tool.
  • Never invent deal values. If company_contracts is the source, it's modeled — say so.
  • LinkedIn URLs only for contacts. Don't invent direct-message Twitter handles or personal blogs.

How this maps to the duplicated caveats

The text "CITATION DENSITY" appears nine times in webapp/src/server/db/blueprint-definitions.ts — every workflow prompt re-encodes some variation of these rules inline. When a workflow references this skill (composition mechanism in follow-up #B), it should drop those inline lines and add: "Follow the citation discipline in the hg-citation-discipline skill."

Common pitfalls

  1. Trying to be helpful and citing every claim. It clutters the output and makes the deliverable feel uncertain. Trust the source boundary.
  2. Mixing citation styles within one document. Pick one (per-paragraph or per-bullet) and stick to it.
  3. Citing HG for things HG doesn't cover. "HG, May 2026" after a claim about company strategy is wrong if the strategy came from web search; that's an SEC or web cite.

Reference