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Signals turn what you care about into evidence you can count. Tempo extracts observations from the calls, email, Slack threads, documents, and CRM notes it ingests. A signal draws a boundary around one subject in that context layer, such as consolidation pressure or a security review being required, and records every observation inside it, by account, over time. You describe the subject in plain language. Tempo suggests observation types and uses your definition to find related observations in each type. A cutoff controls which observations count. Widen the cutoff to catch more; narrow it to count only the clearest statements.
Diagram: a definition labeled consolidation pressure at the center of a dashed circle marked your cutoff; filled orange dots inside it count, outlined dots between it and a larger dashed circle marked a looser cutoff count only if the cutoff is widened, and grey dots elsewhere do not count.

A signal draws a boundary on the map of observations. Everything inside your cutoff counts. Widen the cutoff and the near-misses count too.

Most signals start from a theme. Themes shows which subjects are recurring and growing across accounts; when one matters, promote it to a signal and define it on your terms. Signals are also the building block for plays, lists of accounts that show several signals at once for the team to act on. Plays are not available yet. Signals are useful whenever a pattern is worth counting:
  • Each exit criterion in your sales process, so you can see which deals have the evidence and coach the gaps.
  • A competitor or an objection, so you know how often it comes up, in which accounts, and whether it is rising.
  • A buying condition such as a security review or budget approval, counted by account week over week.

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What a signal is

A signal is a name, optional tags, and one or more versions. Each version holds the configuration that was live at the time:

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How a signal works

1

You describe the subject

Write what a customer says when this is happening, in their words. Tempo suggests related themes while you type.
2

Tempo suggests categories

From your definition, Tempo suggests the observation categories to listen in.
3

You tune it

On the Fine Tune pane, read the closest observations per category and move the cutoff until the matches look right.
4

You activate it

Activate Signal saves a version and collects matching observations from your history.
5

You monitor it

The signal page shows activity by accounts, artifacts, and observations, and a table of every observation it recorded, each with a Why it counted explanation.

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Statuses

A signal is Draft until it has an activated version, then Live. There is no pause. To change a live signal, edit it and activate again, which saves a new version. To stop it, delete it. See Lifecycle, versions, and backfill.

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What a signal counts

A signal records existing observations. It does not read artifacts directly and does not create new observations. The observation keeps its own type, deal, date, and source, and the signal stores a pointer to it with its match distance. When you activate a signal, Tempo collects matching observations from your history, back to the backfill start. Conversations processed later are not added automatically yet.

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Where signal observations appear

Signal activity and recorded observations appear on the signal’s own page in the Signals library. Deal pages and Themes do not show signal counts. The observations a signal records are ordinary observations. Your AI tools can search them with search_observations. They can also list live signals and the accounts, deals, and cited observations behind them. See the MCP tool catalog.

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Who can use Signals

Signals are organization-wide and available to organization admins only. The Signals entry under Build is hidden for sellers. See Members, teams, and roles.

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Where to go next

Create a signal

Describe, tune, activate, and read what the signal found.

Write a good definition

How to phrase a definition and set the cutoff so matches are useful.

Lifecycle, versions, and backfill

Draft and Live, every save as a version, backfill, and deletion.

Themes

See what is recurring before you decide what to count.