Glossary

Activity Trend estimates, from the recent flow of reviewed signals, whether a company is heating up or going quiet. What it does NOT prove: it is not a forecast of success or failure — a busy company is not necessarily a winning one, and a quiet company is not necessarily stalled.

An agent proposal is structured output from one of the platform's named institutional agents — for example, a candidate signal from the Signal Ingestion Agent, a credibility assessment from the Credibility Analyst Agent, or a draft briefing from the Executive Synthesis Agent. Every proposal lands in a review surface and never reaches subscriber-visible data without an analyst accept. Each accepted proposal is audit-trailed with the agent slug, version, prompt signature, and analyst id.

Breakthrough potential is an operator-set flag (and a supporting deterministic score) applied to entities whose combination of cross-source convergence, novel materials/technology, and replication signals merits elevated attention. Every public breakthrough flag has passed operator review. It indicates 'worth watching closely', not 'confirmed'.

Every claim on the platform carries one of six status badges: claimed (someone said it), observed (multiple parties have noted it), disputed (an open challenge exists), verified (independently corroborated by an arms-length source), analyst interpretation (a reading of the evidence, not evidence itself), and hypothesis (a stated possibility, explicitly speculative). The badge is always visible next to the claim text — never hidden.

Claims vs. Evidence measures the distance between what a company says about itself and how much independent corroboration exists. A larger gap means bold claims with comparatively thin outside support. What it does NOT prove: it is not an accusation of dishonesty or a judgment that claims are false — only that independent evidence has not yet caught up to the claims on record.

Commercial Progress estimates, from reviewed signals, how much movement toward market a company shows — partnerships, pilots, deployment language, and commercial announcements. What it does NOT prove: it is not evidence of revenue, a shipping product, or a working deployment — only that commercialization activity has been reported and reviewed.

Commercialization Readiness is derived from Commercial Progress and Funding & Partnerships. What it does NOT prove: it is not evidence of a shipping product, revenue, or a closed deal — only that more late-stage commercial activity has been reported and reviewed.

Commercialization stage is a qualitative, public-safe band derived from commercialization-context activity around a company (pilots, partnerships, manufacturing-readiness language, company↔technology links). It is shown as Pre-commercial, Early-stage, Developing, or Active commercialization. The exact internal score is not exposed publicly; the band is an orientation cue, not a financial or investment judgment.

Confidence Score is a 0–100 measure derived from the platform's source-trust engine and the per-signal evidence weight. Inputs include source class (e.g., peer-reviewed journal vs. ecosystem reporting), replication level, independence of the source from the company, and recency. The score reflects how much weight an analyst should assign the signal — it is not a probability that the underlying claim is true.

Convergence is a deterministic 0–100 score combining six factors: how many independent source types mention an entity, commercialization context, institutional participation, recurrence over time, recency, and relationship-graph density. It is rendered as a tier — watch, emerging, strong, or breakout. Convergence measures how much independent evidence points at the same place; it is explicitly NOT a judgment that the underlying technical claim is correct.

A 0–100 summary of how much reviewed, source-linked material we have assembled on a company. What it does NOT prove: it is not a valuation, a rating of whether the technology works, or a prediction of success — more coverage means more to read, not more that has been validated. See Methodology for how it is built.

Ecosystem reporting refers to third-party publications inside the LENR / advanced-energy ecosystem — sites like E-Cat World, LENR News, and LENR Forum — that report on companies but are not arms-length verifiers. The platform classifies these as ecosystem reporting and weights their independence at 0.3 (vs. 1.0 for arms-length sources). They contribute to ecosystem-attention signals but contribute zero to verification scores.

Funding & Partnerships estimates, from reviewed signals, how much financial and partnership momentum a company shows — funding rounds, grants, and named partners. What it does NOT prove: it is not audited financials, a solvency measure, or confirmation that announced funding closed — only that such activity has been reported and reviewed.

Independent Evidence estimates how much arms-length, third-party corroboration exists for a company's claims — independent testing, peer-reviewed work, and outside references — kept separate from the company's own statements. What it does NOT prove: a higher number is not a declaration that claims are validated; it reflects how much independent material is on record.

Institutional Credibility is derived from Independent Evidence and the involvement of recognized institutions (national labs, universities, agencies) on record. What it does NOT prove: it is not an endorsement by those institutions or a validation of the company's claims — only that institutional involvement has been reported and reviewed.

LENR (Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions), also called CMNS (Condensed Matter Nuclear Science), is a research field that investigates anomalous heat, transmutation, and related effects reported in hydrogen-loaded metal lattices and adjacent systems. The underlying physics is debated; the platform tracks LENR-relevant companies, publications, conferences, and validations without endorsing any specific theoretical mechanism.

Mechanism refers to the proposed physical process — for example, hydrogen-metal lattice loading, nickel-hydrogen surface effects, palladium-deuterium electrolysis, plasma-assisted condensed matter reactions, or hydrino formation. New Fire Signal catalogues recognized mechanism families and connects companies to the families they are publicly associated with. The platform tracks mechanism associations without endorsing any specific theoretical model.

An ontology is a controlled vocabulary plus the relationships between its terms. New Fire Signal uses several: a mechanism vocabulary (nickel-hydrogen, palladium-deuterium, hydrino, etc.); a signal-type taxonomy; a source-class taxonomy (including company-reported claims and ecosystem reporting); and a claim-status ladder (claimed / observed / disputed / verified / analyst interpretation / hypothesis). Ontologies make the platform's outputs comparable across companies and time.

A patent is a legal grant by a national or regional patent office (USPTO, EPO, JPO, etc.) giving the holder exclusive rights to an invention for a limited time. The platform tracks LENR-relevant patent filings and links them to the companies they belong to. Filing or grant of a patent indicates investment in IP and the patent office's procedural acceptance — it is not evidence that the underlying technical claim works in practice.

A primary-source claim is a statement attributable to the covered company or its principals — for example, a Journal of Nuclear Physics post by Andrea Rossi, a Clean Planet press release, or a conference talk by a company-affiliated researcher. The platform records these because the company's stated position is data, but never elevates them to verified status without an independent source. Company-reported claims are never automatically promoted to higher confidence states.

The Briefing is New Fire Signal's unified view of every reviewed update across the covered universe — company updates, verification records, milestones, conference appearances, and reviewed observations in one stream. Filterable by type, verification state, company, time window, and full-text search. Newest-first by design.

A 0–100 measure of how much independent, recent, and consistent sourcing stands behind a company's record. What it does NOT prove: it does not mean a claim is validated or that the technology works — it measures how well-sourced our picture is, not scientific truth. See Methodology for the inputs.

Source credibility on New Fire Signal is a structured profile per source class (peer-reviewed journal, government grant database, conference page, official press release, company-reported claim, ecosystem reporting, etc.). Each has six fields: source trust (0–100), evidence strength (0–100), publication quality (0–100), replication level (none/single/multi), independence (0–100), and commercialization relevance (0–100). Every signal inherits its source's profile, which feeds the confidence score and the ranking model.

Technical Maturity is derived from Technical Progress plus the presence of demonstrated artifacts (prototypes, tests, demonstrations) on record. What it does NOT prove: it is not a certification that hardware works or that results are independently confirmed — only that more mature-stage technical activity has been reported and reviewed.

Technical Progress is a model estimate, drawn from a company's mix of reviewed signals, of how much engineering and technical development is visible on record. What it does NOT prove: it is not an assessment that the engineering is sound or that any device works — only that technical activity has been reported and reviewed.

Verification on the platform means an independent confirmation is on record, attached to an arms-length source (a peer-reviewed paper, a regulator filing, an independent laboratory measurement). It is the strongest claim status the platform recognizes. Every verification record carries a source URL and an attribution. Importantly, verification is NOT derived from a confidence score — a high-confidence company-reported claim is still claimed, not verified, until an independent source corroborates it.

A personal watchlist is your saved set of companies. The Watchlist Pulse widget on your dashboard shows recent activity across watched companies; alert rules can be scoped to the watchlist. Distinct from the platform-wide editorial watchlist at /companies/watchlist, which lists entities the analyst lead has flagged for priority research attention regardless of any individual subscriber's interest.