Skill: HG Credit Awareness
Account research that respects your credit budget — without trading away the depth that makes the brief useful.
Overview
Run Claude-driven account research without burning through your monthly credit budget. Claude learns which tool to reach for at each step (cheap firmographic lookup before expensive full enrichment), pre-filters territory sweeps to the accounts that actually matter, and prefers cached signals when freshness isn't the goal.
Use cases
500-account territory sweeps that don't bankrupt the org's credits
Claude pre-filters by cheap firmographic (0.1 credits/account) to the ~50 accounts worth deeper research, runs technographic + intent on the filtered set, and reserves full enrichment for the top 10. A territory pass that would've cost 10,000+ credits comes in under 1,500.
Re-runs that don't pay for already-known data
When the same workflow already loaded firmographic for an account, Claude reuses it instead of re-fetching. The second time you ask 'is this account in EMEA?' costs zero credits, not one.
View full skill
HG Credit Awareness
When to use
- An author is choosing how to enrich an account list — fresh, cached, or derived.
- A workflow is about to call
company_researchor full enrichment for every record in a list. - A prompt is iterating over a peer cohort and the cost adds up.
per-tool credit costs
These are HG Insights credits charged to the org's plan, sourced verbatim from the tool reference (TOOL_CREDITS). They are distinct from any underlying HG API costs — the HG Insights layer abstracts the upstream metering.
| Tool | Credits | Notes |
|---|---|---|
company_firmographic | 0.1 | Direct lookup, cheap. |
search_companies | dynamic | 1 credit per 100 companies returned (fractional; 50 → 0.5). Identity only — enrich with company_firmographic. |
company_technographic | 2 | |
company_cloud_spend | 2 | |
company_fai | 2 | |
company_intent | 0.1 | |
intent_category | dynamic | 1 credit per 100 categories returned (fractional). |
company_spend | 3 | |
company_contracts | 1 | Per call (the call may return many contracts). |
company_operating_signals | 2 | |
company_install_time_series | dynamic | 3 credits per product returned. |
company_research | dynamic | Sum of requested section costs (~10 for a full profile). EXPENSIVE — prefer the individual tool for a single question. |
contact_search | 2 | |
contact_enrich | dynamic | 0.2 per revealed email + 2 per revealed phone. Phone reveal is opt-in (revealPhone, default false). |
sec_filing_section | 1 | |
web_search | dynamic | 0.05 (basic) / 0.10 (advanced), via MCP _meta.creditCost. |
The truth source is TOOL_CREDITS. If this skill ever quotes different numbers than the file, the file wins.
Decision rules
Prefer cached over fresh when the answer doesn't change quickly.
company_firmographic— refresh weekly at most; this data moves slowly.company_technographic— refresh monthly; intensity bands move quarterly at fastest.company_intent— must be fresh; intent decays in 30-90 days.company_contracts— refresh quarterly unless watching a specific renewal window.
Prefer derived signals over fresh enrichment when both work.
- "Is the company in EMEA?" → use the firmographic record you already have, not a fresh
company_firmographiccall. - "Are they on the cloud?" → check the technographic stack you already loaded, not
company_cloud_spend.
Cap territory sweeps. A workflow that calls company_research for every account in a 500-account territory bursts 500+ credits per call × N tools. Always:
- Pre-filter the territory by firmographic (0.1 credits/account) to ~50-100 candidates.
- Run technographic + intent on the filtered set.
- Reserve full enrichment for the ~10-20 accounts the workflow is actually going to act on.
Common pitfalls
- Calling
company_researchon every record because it's "comprehensive". It's the most expensive call; use it for the final 10, not the initial 500. - Re-pulling firmographic when the same workflow already loaded it. Cache within a single execution.
- Quoting credit costs from memory instead of
TOOL_CREDITS. The numbers change; the file is the truth source.
Reference
- the tool reference —
TOOL_CREDITS(single source of truth) hg-insights-api.md#credit-costs— per-endpoint HG Insights credit notes