HG Insights

Skill: HG Government Contracting

Federal awards, teaming partners and open bids, each answered by the right tool and cited to the award record.

Overview

Answer U.S. federal contracting questions with the right HG tool every time. Claude separates signed awards from open solicitations, maps a company's prime and sub teaming network, and checks match status before calling anything 'not registered' or 'no awards', so your public-sector briefs cite real award records instead of guesses.

Use cases

  • Qualify a government IT vendor before the first call

    An AE targeting a federal integrator asks for its award history. Claude pulls the company's federal awards with the exact legal name, reads the awarding agency correctly, and cites dollar figures as obligated amounts from public award records.

  • Find who teams with whom

    A partner manager wants to know which primes sub work to a target. Claude reads the prime and sub network with contract counts, values and agencies, so the partner plan starts from real subaward links, not top-level totals.

  • No false 'none found'

    When a SAM.gov lookup returns no match or zero opportunities, Claude runs one second check before writing 'none', and reports 'no SAM.gov match for this domain' instead of claiming the company isn't registered.

View full skill

HG Government Contracting

Answer U.S. federal contracting questions with the right HG tool: past awards, teaming networks, a company's bid pipeline, or open solicitations.

When to use

  • A target sells to the U.S. federal government and the brief needs its award history, agencies or teaming partners.
  • A user asks which companies win federal work in a NAICS code, PSC code or agency.
  • A user asks which open solicitations a company could bid on, or which RFPs are open in a market.
  • You're qualifying a government IT vendor, defense contractor or public-sector partner.

Tools you'll touch

  • company_contracts with include_federal_contracts:true: one company's federal awards, merged with its announced commercial contracts. Cost: 1 per company (see hg-credit-awareness).
  • search_federal_contracts: federal awards by criteria across recipients. Cost: 1 per call, not cached.
  • company_gov_relationships: one company's prime/sub teaming network. Cost: 1 per call, not cached.
  • company_gov_opportunities: open solicitations matched to one company. Cost: 1 per call, not cached.
  • search_gov_opportunities: open solicitations by criteria. Cost: 1 per call, not cached.
  • search_industries_naics_sic: resolve an industry to a 6-digit NAICS code first. Free.

Availability

All five need the SAM.gov integration. If a gov tool is missing from your tool list, or a call fails naming a missing integration, tell the user federal data isn't available on their plan. Don't retry, and don't substitute web search results as if they were award records.

Which tool answers which question

QuestionToolKey Parameters
"What federal awards has Acme won?"company_contractsdomains:["acme.com"], company_name (exact legal name), include_federal_contracts:true
"Who wins agency X's cybersecurity awards over $10M?"search_federal_contractsawardingAgency, keywords, minAmount, sort_by
"Recent awards in NAICS 541512"search_federal_contractsnaicsCode, sort_by:"date", start_date_after
"All awards to this exact entity"search_federal_contractsrecipientUei (exact) rather than recipientName (fuzzy)
"Who does Acme team with? Which primes sub to it?"company_gov_relationshipscompany_domain, relationshipType (prime, sub, both), minAmount, fiscalYearStart
"What could Acme bid on right now? Is it the incumbent?"company_gov_opportunitiescompany_domain, includeIncumbentOnly, daysUntilDeadline
"Which open RFPs exist for cloud, or closing in 30 days?"search_gov_opportunitieskeywords, naicsCode, agency, setAsideType, postedAfter, responseDeadlineBefore, opportunityType

Awards are past and signed (company_contracts, search_federal_contracts). Opportunities are open and biddable (company_gov_opportunities, search_gov_opportunities). Relationships are subaward links between primes and subs, not top-level award totals.

Rules by tool

company_contracts (federal mode)

  • One company per call. Always pass company_name with the exact legal name alongside the domain.
  • In federal records vendor_name is the awarding agency, not a supplier. Agency detail sits in federal_data.
  • Before saying "no federal awards", check federal_data_status (resolved, contracts_found, errors). Errors mean the lookup didn't complete.
  • See hg-contracts for the commercial side of the same response.

search_federal_contracts

  • Resolve NAICS through search_industries_naics_sic; pass a 6-digit code.
  • keywords match contract descriptions; keep them short.
  • Results rank by sort_by (amount default, or date). Page with limit (max 100) and offset while hasMore is true.

company_gov_relationships

  • Takes company_domain only. Read asSubcontractor.primeContractors[] and asPrimeContractor.subcontractors[]; each partner carries contractCount, totalValue and agencies.
  • fiscalYearStart defaults to the current year minus 5.

company_gov_opportunities

  • Takes company_domain only. Check resolutionStatus first: resolved means the company matched a SAM.gov entity (matchedEntityName); not_found means no match and no search ran.
  • totalOpportunities: 0 on a resolved company is normal. Don't retry.
  • incumbentStatus labels each match incumbent, likely_bidder or unknown. Only incumbent is a strong claim.

search_gov_opportunities

  • keywords match opportunity titles only. Use one short, general word ("cybersecurity", "cloud"), or filter by naicsCode instead.
  • Searches cover recent postings. For older notices pass postedAfter.
  • active_only defaults to true; pass false to include archived notices.

Reading the results

  • "Not found" in SAM.gov doesn't prove a company isn't registered. Matching works from the company's name, and the registered legal name can differ from the brand. Say "no SAM.gov match for this domain", and try search_federal_contracts with recipientName or recipientUei if the question matters.
  • Zero results can also mean an upstream issue. Before you write "none", run one second check: a broader filter, a different tool from the table, or the same question by UEI. If both come back empty, report "no records found in this search", with the filters you used.
  • Federal award data covers roughly the last 5 fiscal years. Don't describe a company as new to federal work because older awards don't appear.
  • Dollar figures are obligated amounts from public award records. Cite them as "U.S. federal award records via HG", with the award id where possible.

Credits

Every gov call costs 1 credit and isn't cached, so a repeat is billed again. Resolve NAICS and the company's domain once, then call each tool with resolved values. For a list of companies, use search_federal_contracts by criteria rather than one federal-mode call per company.

Common pitfalls

  1. Using an opportunities tool to answer an awards question, or the reverse.
  2. Reading federal vendor_name as a supplier. It's the awarding agency.
  3. Retrying company_gov_opportunities when totalOpportunities is 0 on a resolved company.
  4. Reporting not_found as "not registered with the government".
  5. Writing long phrases into keywords on opportunity search. Titles only, one short word.
  6. Concluding "none" from a single empty call.
  7. Omitting company_name in federal mode.
  8. Claiming an absence of older federal history outside the roughly 5-year window.

Reference