> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.findtempo.co/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Signals

> Teach Deal Brain to find the patterns your team cares about across every call, email, and document.

Deal Brain already extracts observations and action items from everything it ingests. Signals let you go further and define your *own* extraction rules — patterns specific to how your team sells.

A signal is a description of something you want to find. Deal Brain reads every eligible artifact and records an **observation** each time it finds a match.

## What you'd use one for

Signals are useful whenever there's a pattern you keep looking for by hand:

* A competitor being evaluated alongside you
* A specific technical requirement that changes scoping
* Budget approval language that means a deal is real
* A compliance or security requirement that triggers a different motion
* A churn risk phrase you've learned to watch for

Once a signal is active, you stop hunting for these. They accumulate against your deals automatically.

## How a signal works

<Steps>
  <Step title="You describe what to look for">
    In plain language: what counts, what doesn't, and examples of both. This description is the whole configuration — there are no keyword lists or regex rules.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Deal Brain previews it">
    Before anything goes live, you can preview the signal against real artifacts to see what it would have caught.
  </Step>

  <Step title="You activate it">
    From that point on, every new eligible artifact is evaluated against the signal.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Optionally, you backfill">
    Run the signal across your existing history so you're not starting from zero.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Key terms

| Term                  | Means                                                                               |
| --------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Signal**            | The extraction rule itself. Scoped to your whole organization, not a single seller. |
| **Observation**       | One instance of the signal found in one artifact.                                   |
| **Eligible artifact** | An artifact whose type matches the signal's configured document types.              |
| **Backfill**          | A bounded run of the signal across historical artifacts.                            |
| **Status**            | Where the signal sits in its lifecycle: draft, active, disabled, or deprecated.     |

## Scope and permissions

Signals are **organization-wide**. A signal created by one admin applies to every artifact in the org, and observations are visible to everyone who can see the underlying deal. There are no personal signals.

Creating and managing signals requires the `configure_signals` permission.

## Where you work with signals

Two surfaces, acting on the same org-wide signals:

* **The Deal Brain app** — open **Signals** in the left sidebar. **Manage Signals** is where you describe a new signal in plain language and see what's configured. **Collected Signals** is where you read the observations your signals have recorded, with the source quote behind each one.
* **Your AI platform over MCP** — where an agent drafts a signal, previews it against artifacts you name, activates it, and backfills your history.

## Where to go next

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Create your first signal" icon="play" href="/signals/quickstart">
    Both paths: describe a signal in the app, or draft, preview, and activate one over MCP.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Write good instructions" icon="pen" href="/signals/writing-instructions">
    The difference between a signal that works and one that returns noise.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Lifecycle and backfill" icon="arrows-rotate" href="/signals/lifecycle">
    Statuses, transitions, and running a signal over your history.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Read what a signal found" icon="table" href="/signals/quickstart#read-what-a-signal-found">
    Review observations and their source quotes on the **Collected Signals** tab.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>