Monitors
One central watch list, not everyone building their own. The sweep reads 5 trade feeds against the signal book; this page is where you propose an addition.
The signal book
What the sweep is already hunting for, ranked. The full argument for each type, sourcing, criteria, activation, confidence, lives on the Signal Engine. A proposal below only earns a permanent place in this book if it keeps catching things these types miss.
Project award
project_awardA named GC or developer just won, financed, or broke ground on a project. Builder's risk and project casualty for it get placed within weeks, by a broker Shepherd can identify from the firm relationships it already maps.
Permit filed
permit_filedA building permit was filed for a project inside Shepherd's appetite. Earlier in the risk lifecycle than an award, the placement is months out instead of weeks, which makes it the cheapest moment to become the market the broker thinks of first.
Practice hire
practice_hireA brokerage hired or promoted someone into a construction or energy practice. New practice leaders need markets and want early wins; their first ninety days are the cheapest moment Shepherd will ever have to become one of their go-to markets.
Carrier exit or pullback
carrier_appetiteA carrier exited, cut capacity, or tightened terms on construction or energy. Every affected renewal now has a broker actively hunting a replacement market on a deadline, the highest-intent moment that exists in this business.
Jobsite tech adoption
tech_adoptionA contractor adopted Procore, OpenSpace, DroneDeploy, or Samsara. That contractor is now cheaper for Shepherd to write than for any legacy carrier, Shepherd Savings prices on the data, so the next placement for them is winnable on price, not just speed.
Rate environment
rate_environmentConstruction casualty or property pricing is shifting in a way that changes broker behavior, hardening means brokers shop alternatives, softening means incumbents get aggressive and Shepherd's speed matters more than its price.
Brokerage M&A and moves
brokerage_newsA merger, acquisition, or new office changes who controls placements. Books get re-evaluated in the first months after a deal closes, incumbency resets, and a market that shows up early gets considered.
Industry events
eventBrokers gather somewhere at a date. Useful for planning a conference presence or timing a touch, says nothing about any specific placement.
Loss events
loss_eventA notable construction loss made the news. Brokers will be asked about it, but the account involved is mid-claim with a broker defending the relationship, there is no placement to win this week.
A brokerage being sued
Litigation says nothing about where risk gets placed next, and any outreach that references it reads as opportunism aimed at a firm Shepherd wants a decades-long relationship with. No activation exists that isn't awkward, so it never enters the sweep.
Brokerages suing each other over poached producers
Tempting because it looks like practice_hire, but the producer in the middle of a non-solicit fight can't move a book, and emailing them mid-lawsuit is the fastest way to be remembered badly. The hire becomes a real signal after the dust settles, when it shows up as an ordinary practice_hire announcement.
A catastrophic loss making headlines
The account is mid-claim, the broker is defending the relationship, and there is no placement to win this week. Kept in the classifier as context only (loss_event), it appears in the broker brief so an underwriter walks in informed, and it never fires or aims outreach.
9 signal types, the same list the classifier emits, nothing here is aspirational. Act-tier signals raise a broker's Timing axis and can start a cadence; aim-tier signals change the draft and the queue order; context-tier signals appear in briefs and nowhere else.
Propose an addition
An extra feed or a keyword watch, run inside the same centralized sweep. It rescues anything matching your words even when the classifier would have dropped it, which is exactly how a missing signal type proves it deserves a spot in the book.
Describe a monitor
A conversation, not a form: describe the intent, drop files in, push back on what comes out. Each turn calls a model because you asked it to; nothing saves until you look at a proposal and click.
No monitors yet. The sweep reads five trade-press feeds by default. A keyword watch rescues anything matching your words even when the classifier would have dropped it.
Every item the sweep read and dropped, with the reason. If something in here should have been a signal, add a keyword watch for it and the next sweep keeps it.