HG Insights

Skill: HG Citation Discipline

Every claim traced to its real source and verification date, with no invented emails or numbers.

Overview

Hallucination control for AI-generated GTM deliverables. Claude cites at source boundaries instead of every claim, follows the HG, then SEC, then web priority order, dates each citation by when the data was verified rather than when it was pulled, attributes contact and CRM data to their real owners, and never invents emails, revenue, product versions or renewal dates.

Use cases

  • Account briefs your CRO trusts on first read

    Install references carry their verification date, spend figures are labelled as modeled estimates, and contact data is cited as third-party, not HG. Stale data can't pass as current because the citation shows when it was last verified.

  • Guardrails for outbound and research

    If contact_enrich didn't return an email, the field is omitted. A revenue band stays a band, placeholder dates never appear as real ones, and web facts cite the result URL, never an AI summary.

View full skill

HG Citation Discipline

When to use

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

The rules

1. Cite at source boundaries, not per claim

In a paragraph that synthesizes several HG signals, one citation at the end of the synthesis is enough. 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 with different verification dates, each bullet carries its own citation.

2. One marker per table

A table that pulls every cell from company_technographic carries one citation in the introductory sentence, not one per row.

When a table mixes sources (e.g. HG technographic and an SEC filing), cite per column.

3. Source-priority order

  1. HG. Primary for company, technology, spend, intent and FAI data.
  2. SEC filings. For public-company claims (revenue, acquisitions, risk factors, executive changes).
  3. Web search. Last resort, only when HG and SEC don't cover the claim.

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

4. Citation formats

SourceFormatDate to Use
HG installs"HG, verified Mar 2026"product_last_verified_date
HG FAI"HG FAI, verified Mar 2026"last_verified_at
HG intent"HG intent, latest signal Mar 2026"summary.latest_signal_date
HG spend, AI spend"HG modeled estimate, retrieved Apr 2026"No verification date: use the retrieval month
HG contracts"Announced Jun 2025 (HG contracts)"announcement_date
Federal awards"Federal award data as of Mar 2026"federal_data_status.data_as_of
TrustRadius activity"TrustRadius activity, Mar 2026"The activity date
Contacts"Third-party contact data, retrieved Apr 2026"Retrieval month
Customer's own record"Your CRM record"As stored
SEC"SEC 10-K (FY2025)"Fiscal year or filing date
Web"acme.com, 12 Mar 2026"publishedDate, else retrieval date

Cite the data's verification date, not the month of the call, wherever the tool returns one. "HG, April 2026" on an install last verified 18 months ago makes stale data look current.

5. Attribute each source to its real owner

  • Contacts aren't HG data. Contact data comes from a third-party provider, not HG; cite it as such. Phone reveal often returns only a main line.
  • customer_data in company_firmographic is the customer's own record, joined from their connected data. Cite it as theirs, never as HG.
  • Contracts are curated, publicly announced deals, not modeled. Deal values are as announced; a $0 value means undisclosed. company_contracts returns no renewal-likelihood or expiry-confidence fields; never infer renewal odds.
  • Web results: cite the result URL's domain, never the answer summary.

6. No-fabrication guardrails

  • Never invent emails or phone numbers. contact_search returns names and titles; email comes only from contact_enrich. Otherwise omit.
  • Never invent revenue or headcount. If firmographic returns only a band, quote the band.
  • Never invent product versions. company_technographic returns a product name, not a version.
  • Never invent deal values or renewal dates. Quote announced values and dates as returned.
  • Never present placeholder dates (2000-01-01, 1970-01-01) or -1 values as real.
  • LinkedIn URLs only for contact profiles. Don't invent other handles.

When a workflow references this skill, drop the inline citation rules from its prompt and add: "Follow the citation discipline in the hg-citation-discipline skill."

Common pitfalls

  1. Citing every claim. It clutters the output and makes it feel uncertain.
  2. Mixing citation styles within one document. Pick per-paragraph or per-bullet.
  3. Citing HG for things HG doesn't cover: strategy from a web page is a web cite.
  4. Using the call month instead of the verification date.
  5. Citing contact data or the customer's own CRM record as HG.

Reference