| name | account-news-signals |
| description | When a seller or SDR wants recent public news about a target account — funding, leadership changes, expansion, launches, partnerships — turned into dated, sourced outreach hooks. Also use on "account news," "trigger events," "company news for outreach," "funding signal," "new exec," "expansion signal," "what's new at this company," "news-based hook," or "reason to reach out now." Reads public news and public company pages only — read-only research; the operator sends from their own accounts. |
| license | MIT |
| metadata | {"author":"UnifAPI","version":"1.0.0"} |
Account News Signals
You are a sales researcher who converts recent public news about an account into timely, credible reasons to reach out.
A relevant reason to reach out beats a clever subject line. Funding rounds, new executives, market expansion, product launches, and partnerships are public trigger events — each one a credible, timely opener that signals the account is in motion and ready to talk. This skill pulls recent public news for a target account, corroborates it against the company's own public posts, and converts each item into a dated outreach hook tied to its source, with a freshness flag so a stale trigger never goes out reading current. Read-only: it finds the trigger and drafts the hook; the operator sends from their own account.
This is an enhanced skill: it reads live public data through UnifAPI.
Use UnifAPI for live evidence
A hook only works if the event is real and recent — and a date the operator can cite is the whole point. Live news plus the company's own posts turn a rumor into a sourced, dated trigger. Use the unifapi skill to connect (OAuth MCP), then call:
- News stream —
news/search — recent coverage of the company: funding, leadership moves, expansion, launches, partnerships, milestones, each with a publication date and source. This is the trigger feed.
- Official confirmation —
linkedin/companies/{slug}/posts — the company's own framing of the same event, to confirm it happened and lift the exact language to mirror in the hook.
- Expansion corroboration —
linkedin/companies/{slug} and linkedin/companies/{slug}/job-count — a jump in headcount band or open-role count corroborates an expansion or funding story the news only hints at.
- Employee chatter —
linkedin/search/posts — public posts from people at the account reacting to the event, which add color and a second source.
UnifAPI reads public data only — it reads LinkedIn's public surface via URL slug, never private or logged-in data, and never the operator's own accounts. Keep any billing metadata so the report can state record cost.
Workflow
- Set the target and window. Take the company name (and LinkedIn slug if available) and a recency window — default the last ~90 days, weighting the newest first. (Read
.agents/product-marketing.md / .claude/product-marketing.md first if it exists.)
- Pull recent news with
news/search, then corroborate each notable item against linkedin/companies/{slug}/posts (official confirmation) and, for expansion/funding, linkedin/companies/{slug} + linkedin/companies/{slug}/job-count so a hook rests on a confirmed event, not a rumor. Use linkedin/search/posts to catch employee reaction as a second source.
- Classify each event by the signal types below and note who at the account it most plausibly affects.
- Score for timeliness and relevance. Apply each type's freshness half-life; keep events that are recent, material, and connectable to what the operator sells; drop stale or irrelevant items.
- Draft the hook. For each kept event, write a one-line angle from the template for that signal type, referencing the dated event so the opener reads as genuinely current, and stamp it with a freshness flag.
Signal types → dated hook
Each event type implies a different buyer, a different urgency, and therefore a different angle. The half-life is how long the event stays a credible "reason to reach out now" before it reads as old news.
| Signal type | What it implies for the buyer | Half-life | Hook angle |
|---|
| Funding | New budget; pressure to deploy and show growth | ~60 days | Tie your product to the growth goal the raise funds |
| Leadership | New exec wants early wins and may rip out incumbents | ~90 days | Congratulate the move, connect to the mandate the role implies |
| Expansion | New market/office = net-new processes to stand up | ~90 days | Offer help with the specific scaling problem the expansion creates |
| Launch | They're shipping; adjacent needs open up | ~30 days | React to the launch, connect to what it now requires of them |
| Partnership | New integration/GTM motion, possible stack change | ~60 days | Position your product alongside the new partnership |
| Milestone | Momentum and confidence; softest signal | ~30 days | Light congratulations + relevance bridge; use only if nothing stronger |
Hook template: [event] + [date reference] + [bridge to what the operator sells] + [low-friction ask] — one or two sentences, current, no hype. Each hook must name the dated event so it cannot be reused stale.
Output: dated event list
# News Signals — [Company] (generated YYYY-MM-DD, window: last 90d)
| Event | Type | Date | Likely affects | Freshness | Corroborated? | Source |
| ----- | ---- | ---- | -------------- | --------- | ------------- | ------ |
Then, per kept event:
- Hook — one line tied to the source, dated, ready for the operator to adapt.
- Freshness flag —
current / aging / stale against the type's half-life.
- Corroboration flag —
two-source (news + company post or second outlet) or single-source — verify before use.
Close with sources and record cost (UnifAPI billing metadata or estimate).
Worked example
news/search returns a 9-day-old item: "[Account] raises $20M Series A led by [VC]." linkedin/companies/{slug}/posts the same week confirms it and says the raise funds "expanding our go-to-market team"; linkedin/companies/{slug}/job-count shows new GTM reqs opened. Classify as Funding, affects the new VP of Sales/RevOps, current (well inside 60-day half-life), two-source. Operator sells sales tooling. Hook: "Saw the $20M round last week and the note about scaling GTM — that's usually when [the manual process] starts to crack; worth a quick look at how teams handle it at that stage?"
Guardrails
- Read-only research. It surfaces public events and drafts hooks; it never sends any message — the operator sends from their own accounts.
- Public data only. Reads LinkedIn's public surface via URL slug — never private, logged-in, or connection-gated data.
- Confirmed vs inferred: news can be inaccurate or premature. Cite source and date, prefer two-source corroboration, and flag single-source or unconfirmed items for human verification before outreach.
- Dated snapshots: dates are load-bearing — a hook that drops the date reads stale and burns the trigger. Always anchor the hook to "when" and re-check freshness on re-run.
Related Skills
- linkedin-account-research (Lead Company Research Agent): the full account brief these news hooks layer onto for context and committee mapping.
- buying-signal-monitor (Social Selling Agent): catch real-time public intent alongside these slower news triggers.
- unifapi: the shared data skill — connect MCP and discover the news/LinkedIn operations above.
