{"slug":"signals","domain":"web","title":"Signals: public records that say a company just did something","summary":"Dated filings — money raised, a service stood up, a radio or a device registered, a fleet grown — from the registers that prove them.","help":"signals: dated public filings, as JSON.\n\nRETURNS\n  One JSON object on stdout. `signals` with no arguments prints every study\n  and what it takes.\n\nWHY A DATE IS THE WHOLE POINT\n  \"This company makes medical devices\" is a fact about the world. \"This\n  company registered a facility in March\" is a reason to call them in April.\n  Every record here carries the date it was filed, and a study that came back\n  without one would not be worth running.\n\nABSENCE MEANS \"HAS NOT FILED\"\n  These are registers, not directories. A company appears because it filed\n  something. No Form D does not mean no funding — it means nothing was raised\n  on that instrument; a priced round closes other ways. Read an empty answer\n  as \"nothing of this kind on record\", never as \"no such company\".\n\nWHICH STUDY REACHES A BUYER EARLIEST\n  `certificates` is the freshest: a name appears in the transparency logs\n  within hours of a service going live. `fcc` and `fda` are the earliest in a\n  different sense — both are PRE-SHIPMENT. A company holds a grantee code or\n  registers a facility months before there is a product to sell, which is a\n  better moment to reach them than the week it launches. `funding` is money\n  that was not there last quarter.\n\nA PLATFORM DOMAIN ANSWERS \"WHO JUST JOINED\"\n  `certificates myshopify.com` returns stores that got a certificate this\n  week, because a new tenant gets a name under the platform's domain like\n  anybody else. The same works for any hosted product with per-customer\n  subdomains, and it needs no scraper anywhere near the platform.\n\nTHE FREIGHT STUDIES READ A MIRROR\n  `carriers`, `new-carriers` and `fleet-changes` answer from a local copy of\n  the federal motor carrier census, refreshed weekly. They are instant and\n  cost no upstream call. Every answer carries `mirrored_at` and\n  `carriers_held`, because an answer from a mirror is an answer about the last\n  refresh — \"no new carriers\" read out of a stale mirror is a different claim,\n  and a wrong one.\n\n  `fleet-changes` exists because the source cannot be asked it. The census\n  publishes fleet counts as text and keeps no history, so \"who added trucks\"\n  is only answerable by having watched. That is what the mirror is for.\n\nSELF-REPORTED COUNTS ARE NOT ALL TRUE\n  Nothing validates a carrier's own filing. One claims 1,299,987 trucks\n  against two drivers; 1,208 of them report more than fifty trucks per driver.\n  Those come back with `counts_implausible: true` and sort last — they are\n  marked, never dropped, because the carrier is real and only the number is\n  wrong. Do not rank on `power_units` without reading that field.\n\nCOST\n  The freight studies are free and instant. The other four fetch once and then\n  keep the answer, so a repeat inside the freshness window costs nothing and\n  says `cached: true`. `--refresh true` overrides that; it is for an answer\n  known to be wrong, not for ordinary use.\n\nStudies:\n  funding       \u003ccompany\u003e\n      SEC Form D filings naming this company — a private placement, with its date\n  certificates  \u003cdomain\u003e\n      certificates issued for names at or under a domain — new subdomains, hours old\n  fcc           \u003ccompany\u003e\n      FCC equipment grantee registrations — a company committing to ship a radio, before it has one\n  fda           \u003ccompany\u003e\n      FDA device establishment registrations — who registered a facility, and what is listed in it\n  carriers      \u003ccompany\u003e\n      look a motor carrier up by name — its fleet size, drivers, address and when it registered\n  new-carriers  \u003cregistered_since\u003e\n      every fleet that entered the federal register since a date — new trucking businesses\n  fleet-changes \u003csince\u003e\n      carriers whose fleet changed size since a date — a fleet adding trucks has work it cannot cover\n\nJSON to stdout, so it composes: pipe to `jq` to pick a field, or `\u003e /tmp/…` to keep it.\nRun a study with no arguments — `signals funding` — to see what it takes.\n","example_command":"signals new-carriers 2026-06-01 --state TX --min_power_units 10","example_output":"","cost_class":"upstream-fetch","tier":"metered","billing_items":["signals_form_d","signals_certificates","signals_fcc_grantees","signals_fda_registrations","signals_carriers","signals_fleet_changes"],"price_per_1k_calls":null,"price_is_from":true,"status":"available","commands":["signals"],"studies":[{"call":"funding","about":"SEC Form D filings naming this company — a private placement, with its date","args":[{"name":"company","positional":true,"list":false,"hint":""},{"name":"since","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"filed on or after, YYYY-MM-DD"},{"name":"limit","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"how many filings"},{"name":"refresh","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"true | false — ask the SEC again rather than serve the stored answer"}]},{"call":"certificates","about":"certificates issued for names at or under a domain — new subdomains, hours old","args":[{"name":"domain","positional":true,"list":false,"hint":"a bare domain: acme.com, or a platform's, myshopify.com"},{"name":"since","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"issued on or after, YYYY-MM-DD"},{"name":"limit","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"how many certificates"},{"name":"refresh","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"true | false — read the logs again"}]},{"call":"fcc","about":"FCC equipment grantee registrations — a company committing to ship a radio, before it has one","args":[{"name":"company","positional":true,"list":false,"hint":"partial names match"},{"name":"since","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"registered on or after, YYYY-MM-DD"},{"name":"limit","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"how many registrations"},{"name":"refresh","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"true | false — ask the FCC again"}]},{"call":"fda","about":"FDA device establishment registrations — who registered a facility, and what is listed in it","args":[{"name":"company","positional":true,"list":false,"hint":"partial names match"},{"name":"since","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"registered on or after, YYYY-MM-DD"},{"name":"limit","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"how many listings"},{"name":"refresh","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"true | false — ask the FDA again"}]},{"call":"carriers","about":"look a motor carrier up by name — its fleet size, drivers, address and when it registered","args":[{"name":"company","positional":true,"list":false,"hint":"legal or trading name, partial"},{"name":"dot_number","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"exact USDOT number, if you have it"},{"name":"state","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"two letters, the carrier's physical address"},{"name":"min_power_units","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"trucks — the usual way to skip owner-operators"},{"name":"limit","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"how many carriers"}]},{"call":"new-carriers","about":"every fleet that entered the federal register since a date — new trucking businesses","args":[{"name":"registered_since","positional":true,"list":false,"hint":"YYYY-MM-DD"},{"name":"state","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"two letters"},{"name":"min_power_units","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"trucks — 5 or more is a fleet rather than one driver"},{"name":"limit","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"how many carriers"}]},{"call":"fleet-changes","about":"carriers whose fleet changed size since a date — a fleet adding trucks has work it cannot cover","args":[{"name":"since","positional":true,"list":false,"hint":"YYYY-MM-DD"},{"name":"min_delta","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"trucks gained, default 1; a negative number finds fleets that SHRANK"},{"name":"state","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"two letters"},{"name":"limit","positional":false,"list":false,"hint":"how many changes"}]}],"default_enabled":false,"first_seen":"2026-09-26T16:57:23.301499Z","enabled":false}