ST-SI-001 — Scoped Intelligence — Retainer Engagements

Intelligence
that runs
while you sleep.

Q: What exactly is Synterminal?

Synterminal is a physical markets intelligence operation offering invoice forensics, procurement intelligence, document search, reputation forensics, competitor intelligence, custom data investigation, web scraping, NLP and semantic analysis, structured data engineering, and alternative dataset construction for traders and funds. The common thread: if the answer exists somewhere in information — structured or unstructured, numerical or textual, public or proprietary — Synterminal finds it. Every engagement is scoped individually. No software to install. No IT department required.

Q: What does the retainer actually deliver each month?

Every retainer engagement delivers a monthly structured intelligence report with provenance on every data point, anomalies flagged, and patterns surfaced. It also includes continuous monitoring infrastructure — pricing pipelines, platform monitoring, public records tracking, bid award collection, document ingestion — running continuously in the background. Retainer clients also receive ad-hoc research responses between scheduled deliverables when new information surfaces. Every finding is SHA-256 hashed and RFC 3161 timestamped from day one. The scope is reviewed every 90 days and adapts to what your operation actually needs.

You have a problem. A question nobody has answered yet. A market you need to understand. An entity you need to know more about. A dataset that doesn't exist. A gap in your operation that's costing you decisions.

Describe it. We find the needle.

The skills of a data engineer, a research analyst, and an intelligence operator — without the six-figure salary, the onboarding, or the overhead. One-time or ongoing. Whatever the problem requires.

Describe Your Problem → Full Platform ↗

// The Needle In Your Haystack

If it involves a computer, numbers, words, web data, public records, competitor intelligence, bid tracking, data cleaning, document search, or anything research-related — the needle is in there. We find it. NDA standard on every engagement. No IT department required. No software to install. You describe the problem. We scope the work and get to it.

// research@synterminal.com · kelly@scoped-intelligence.com · Response within 1 business day · No automated replies · No sales calls

Describe Your Problem

We read every submission. Response within one business day.

Your Name

Your Operation

The Problem — Describe It

// kelly@scoped-intelligence.com · research@synterminal.com · flat rate or retainer · NDA available

// ST-SI-002 — What People Actually Bring Us

Any problem. Any industry.
If the answer exists in data, we find it.

Every engagement starts with a question. Some are one-time. Some become ongoing. Below is what that actually looks like across the problems we solve.

Competitive Intelligence

"I need to know what my competitors are doing — pricing, positioning, where they're winning business I'm losing."

We map the competitive landscape — pricing from public sources, bid award patterns, positioning signals, market share shifts by geography. Any market where a competitor has a footprint we can read.

One-time or ongoing

Public Records & Entities

"I need to know who I'm actually dealing with — ownership structure, litigation history, related parties."

We trace the entity — registered agents, beneficial ownership, corporate structure, UCC filings, litigation record, related party network. Before you sign a contract, enter a partnership, or wire a deposit.

One-time

Trading & Signal Research

"I trade a specific market. I need research and data infrastructure that gives me a view other participants haven't assembled."

We build the dataset — public procurement patterns as a demand signal, physical flow data, pricing records across verticals. Not a news feed. A custom research and data operation scoped to your market and your edge.

Ongoing

Procurement Intelligence

"My suppliers know what the market is paying. I don't. I need to walk into every negotiation knowing exactly where my pricing stands."

We pull public bid award data in your commodity category — what institutional buyers are actually paying, by region, by supplier, over time. The gap between what you're paying and what the market pays is the negotiation lever.

One-time or ongoing

Data Pipeline & Monitoring

"I need structured data from sources that aren't structured — or I need something watched continuously and reported back on a cadence."

We build the collection layer — scraping, normalization, entity resolution, append-only storage, scheduled delivery. We build it once and run it. You receive findings. You don't operate the system.

Ongoing

Due Diligence

"We're looking at a deal. I need to know what this company, this person, or this asset actually looks like — not the version they put in front of us."

Entity resolution across the full corporate structure. Public procurement history. Litigation and regulatory record. Supplier and customer concentration mapping. Assembled before term sheet — not after you've already committed.

One-time

Document Search & Forensics

"I have thousands of documents and I need to find one clause, one price, one name — in under a second."

Full-text BM25 search plus semantic vector search across any document corpus. Every character of every document indexed. Plain English questions. Page-level results. Under one second. Works on PDFs, scanned docs, anything.

One-time setup + ongoing

Reputation Forensics

"My rating dropped overnight. The reviews don't read like real customers. My competitor opened last month."

Burstiness analysis. Behavioral fingerprinting. Semantic pattern detection. Temporal clustering. We build the documented record that proves the attack happened — for platform dispute, for litigation, or for your own understanding.

One-time

Describe Your Problem

"I don't know exactly what I need. I know something is missing and I need someone who can figure out what it is and go get it."

That is the most common starting point. Describe what you're seeing — or not seeing. We identify the gap, scope the engagement, and tell you plainly whether we can close it. No commitment required to have that conversation.

Start here →

// ST-TRADER-001 — Signal Intelligence Terminal

Bloomberg delivers the price.
Synterminal builds the dataset that
explains why the price moved before it moves.

Alternative datasets, normalized and provenance-anchored, built for your specific signal hypothesis — not for a generic subscriber base.

// COMMODITY INTELLIGENCE — PHYSICAL LAYER SHA-256 ANCHORED

Vertical	Signal	Lead	Strength
COPPER PROCUREMENT DEMAND	↑ ACCELERATING	6–18MO	HIGH
NAT GAS WEATHER BASIS	CONTANGO +$0.18	3–7D	MED
RARE EARTH EXPORT CONTROLS	↓ SUPPLY SHOCK	IMM.	CRIT
LITHIUM PROCUREMENT HEATMAP	+357% DEMAND	12–24MO	HIGH
INVOICE Δ vs COMEX SPOT	+$0.34/lb DRIFT	LIVE	MED

// EQUITY & ALT DATA LAYER RFC 3161 TIMESTAMPED

Dataset	Status	Type	Signal
GOV PROCUREMENT → SECTOR DEMAND	NORMALIZED	LEADING	LIVE
TARIFF IMPACT ON BOM COSTS	BUILDING	STRUCT.	MED
ENTITY SUPPLY CHAIN MAPPING	ACTIVE	ALT DATA	MED
WEATHER × ENERGY DEMAND CORR.	COMPUTING	CROSS-VRT	HIGH
HTS TRADE FLOW NORMALIZATION	COMPLETE	CUSTOMS	HIGH

// Architecture — Every Record

HASHSHA-256

TIMESTAMPRFC 3161

IDENTITYUUID v5

WRITE LOGAPPEND-ONLY WAL

TIME MODELBI-TEMPORAL

INTEGRITYMERKLE TREE

// Procurement Signal Intensity — 12-Month Rolling (Illustrative)

// ST-TRADER-002 — The Distinction

The signal advantage in 2026
is not access to data.
It is the engineering to use it.

Bloomberg Terminal delivers real-time price data, news, analytics, and standardized macro feeds. It is the best instrument ever built for reading the market as it exists right now. What it does not do: ingest a custom alternative dataset, normalize a non-standard source, run pattern recognition against physical market flows, or build a procurement demand signal from 6 million public bid awards.

The advantage in alternative data no longer comes from accessing it — 7,000+ datasets exist. The advantage comes from extracting and operationalizing the right signal at scale. That engineering problem is the engagement.

// Capability Comparison

Capability	Bloomberg	Synterminal
Real-time exchange price	✓ Best in class	— Not the product
Public procurement signal	✗ Not available	✓ Core vertical
Custom alt dataset build	✗ Not available	✓ Primary service
Schema normalization	✗ Your problem	✓ Every engagement
Point-in-time correctness	✗ Not guaranteed	✓ Bi-temporal, day one
Combination asymmetry	✗ No cross-vertical	✓ Core thesis
Cryptographic provenance	✗ Not applicable	✓ SHA-256 / RFC 3161
Per-seat cost	✗ $24–27K/yr/seat	✓ Scoped engagement

// ST-SI-003 — Who Synterminal Serves on Retainer

Operators who need continuous intelligence.
Not one-time reports.

Commodity Distributor

You buy and sell on margin. Every commodity price move that hits your suppliers before it hits your invoices is money you did not have to lose.

Copper, steel, aluminum, lumber, PVC, electrical materials — whatever you distribute, the commodity underneath it moves daily. Your supplier knows the market. You need to know it first. Synterminal monitors commodity markets against your procurement pricing continuously and surfaces the divergence before it becomes a margin problem.

What you receive monthly

Commodity price vs procurement price divergence report. Supplier variance tracking. Anomaly flags when a supplier's pricing moves outside the documented baseline.

Manufacturer

Your input costs changed last quarter. Your invoices haven't caught up. Your supplier knows exactly what the market is doing. Now you will too.

Tariffs moved steel 15% in a single quarter in 2025. The manufacturers who absorbed that hit found out 30–45 days after the invoices were paid. Synterminal builds the monitoring layer so you see commodity price moves before they reach your AP queue.

What you receive monthly

Input cost monitoring across commodity exposure. Tariff and regulatory change tracking. Supplier pricing baseline vs market benchmark. Anomaly detection across procurement spend.

Trader / Fund / RIA

You have a thesis. The dataset to test it against doesn't exist yet. Bloomberg is the price layer. Synterminal is the physical market intelligence layer underneath it.

Custom alternative dataset construction. Procurement heatmap as demand signal — public bid awards structured as a time series 6–18 months before exchange price action. Schema normalization across fragmented public sources. Backtestable historical datasets. Live retainer feeds.

What you receive monthly

One dataset normalized or existing feed updated. One combination signal run per thesis. Corpus integrity verification. Anomaly or opportunity flagged. Full audit trail maintained.

Law Firm — Active Matters

The case is developing. You need a research partner who is continuously watching — not an analyst you brief from scratch every time something new surfaces.

Discovery is not a one-time event. Counterparties file new documents. Public records change. Entity structures shift. Synterminal maintains a continuous intelligence watch — monitoring public records, tracking counterparty entities, updating the document corpus as new materials arrive.

What you receive monthly

Counterparty entity monitoring and public records updates. Document corpus maintenance. Pricing discrepancy documentation updated continuously. Expert-ready findings structured for discovery or deposition.

Private Equity & Deal Operators

You have a pipeline of targets. Each one requires due diligence that goes deeper than what a standard data room provides.

Entity structure and beneficial ownership mapping. Public procurement history and bid award patterns. Counterparty and supplier relationship intelligence. Litigation and regulatory filing tracking. Synterminal maintains a continuous intelligence watch across your active deal pipeline.

What you receive monthly

Pipeline target monitoring across entity, financial, and public records signals. Due diligence corpus maintained and updated. Competitive landscape intelligence on acquisition targets.

Independent Operator — Fractional Intelligence

You do not have an analyst on staff. You do not have the budget for a full intelligence firm. You need the output of one — on the problems that actually matter.

Executives who need competitive intelligence but cannot justify a full-time hire. Independent operators who need a research partner. Researchers who need data infrastructure they cannot build themselves. Business owners who need someone watching their market while they are running their business.

What you receive monthly

Scoped per engagement — whatever continuous intelligence your operation actually needs. Delivered on a cadence that works for your decision-making cycle. No scope creep. No reports nobody reads.

// The Synterminal Retainer Thesis

The second month is more valuable than the first.
That is the entire model.

Every enterprise that runs on physical information generates more signal than any team can manually track. The signal is in the data. The data exists. Nobody is watching it continuously.

Synterminal watches it. Not as a software tool that sends alerts nobody reads. As an operator — a thinking partner with the technical infrastructure to collect, normalize, analyze, and deliver structured intelligence on the schedule your operation requires.

The context that accumulates over a retainer engagement is the asset. It cannot be replicated by a one-time report. Most intelligence vendors sell you a deliverable. Synterminal builds a picture. The picture compounds every month.

// How Continuous Intelligence Differs From a Report

A report tells you what happened. Continuous intelligence tells you what is about to happen.

The commodity price moved three weeks before it hit your supplier's invoices. Continuous monitoring catches the move. A quarterly report documents the damage.

Context is the compound interest of intelligence work.

Month one establishes the baseline. Month three surfaces the anomaly. Month six proves the pattern. The finding that matters is almost never in the first month's data alone.

The right intelligence partner costs less than one bad decision made without it.

A supplier overcharging 8% across a $400K annual spend costs $32,000 a year. Intelligence is not an expense. It is a hedge.

Provenance makes the intelligence defensible.

Every finding Synterminal produces is traceable to its source, timestamped, and hashable. When intelligence needs to become evidence — the chain of custody is intact.

Senior attention on every engagement. Always.

Every retainer engagement is worked directly by the operator who built the system. Your intelligence is not delegated.

// Why Month Six is Worth More Than Months One Through Five Combined

Start — Describe the Problem

You tell us what you are trying to understand, what you already know, what data or documents you have, and what a useful answer would change. We build the research environment around your actual question — not around a predefined report.

Map — Find the Structure

We ingest the information, organize the evidence, and start looking for the underlying structure beneath the question. Entities, timelines, relationships, anomalies, recurring behavior, missing data, and signals that may not be obvious when each source is viewed alone.

Go Deeper — Follow the Signal

The first findings usually create better questions. We follow the strongest leads, test competing explanations, bring in new datasets where useful, and keep an open line with you as the investigation develops. The real needle is often somewhere between your original intuition and the patterns we uncover.

∞

Ongoing — Intelligence Becomes Infrastructure

When the problem is continuous, the research becomes continuous. That may mean monitoring public bids, reviewing monthly COMEX data, tracking weather or supply-chain signals, watching competitors and public platforms, refreshing datasets, investigating new anomalies, or maintaining the intelligence system behind an operating decision.

// What Every Retainer Engagement Includes

Everything built. Nothing delegated.
All of it yours.

Every Synterminal retainer engagement is worked directly by the operator who built the system. There is no junior analyst assigned to your account. There is no account coordinator who passes your questions to someone who answers them three days later.

The intelligence you receive is produced by the same person who built the provenance architecture, the knowledge graph, the search systems, and the monitoring infrastructure underneath it. That is the boutique premium — and it is the only reason the intelligence compounds the way it does.

// Not For Everyone

✓ You need intelligence that runs continuously — not a report delivered once and forgotten.

✓ You operate in a market where commodity prices, competitor moves, or supplier behavior changes faster than a quarterly review cycle.

✓ You want findings that are provenance-anchored, defensible, and usable in a negotiation, a dispute, or a legal matter.

✗ You want a dashboard you can log into yourself. Synterminal is a managed intelligence operation — not a SaaS tool.

✗ You need instant turnaround on everything. The retainer runs on a defined cadence.

Monthly Structured Intelligence Report

Findings documented with provenance on every data point. Anomalies flagged. Patterns surfaced. Every assertion traceable to its source record. Formatted for the decision-maker — not the analyst.

Continuous Monitoring Infrastructure

Pricing pipelines, competitor scraping, public records tracking, bid award collection, document ingestion — running continuously. You receive the output. You do not operate the system.

Provenance-Anchored Record

SHA-256 hash and RFC 3161 timestamp on every record. Append-only corpus. Every finding defensible. When intelligence needs to become evidence — the chain of custody is intact from day one.

Ad-Hoc Research Between Deliverables

A counterparty surfaces in a new filing. A supplier acquisition is announced. A commodity moves. Retainer clients get a response — not a ticket number.

Document Search Access

The document corpus built during your engagement is searchable through Synterminal's document search system. Every ingested document, every source record — searchable by keyword or plain English question.

Scope Review Every Quarter

Every 90 days, the scope is reviewed. What is working. What has changed in your operation. What new intelligence requirements have emerged. The retainer adapts. You are not locked into a scope that no longer fits.

// Frequently Asked Questions

Every question a real person has asked — or should have.

What exactly is Synterminal?+

Synterminal is a physical markets intelligence operation. Invoice forensics, procurement intelligence, document search, reputation forensics, competitor intelligence, custom data investigation, web scraping, NLP and semantic analysis, structured data and SEO, and alternative dataset construction for traders and funds. The common thread: if the answer exists somewhere in information — structured or unstructured, numerical or textual, public or proprietary — Synterminal finds it. Every engagement is scoped individually. No software to install. No IT department required. You describe the problem. We scope the work and get to it.

I have a hunch about a connection between two datasets that seem unrelated. Is that enough to start?+

Yes. That hunch is the engagement. In knowledge discovery research, the hypothesis that two unrelated datasets share a hidden structural connection is called abductive reasoning — formally the starting point of every non-obvious discovery. Swanson's ABC model shows that when A-B and B-C relationships are known, the A-C connection is a candidate signal. You identify A and C. Synterminal finds B. Describe what you're sensing. The engagement scopes from there.

I already have Bloomberg and Refinitiv. What does Synterminal add?+

Bloomberg and Refinitiv are the price layer — real-time exchange data, news, standardized financial analytics. Synterminal is the physical and alternative intelligence layer underneath the price. Public procurement bid award flows. Supply chain concentration and chokepoint monitoring. Cross-domain signal construction connecting datasets that share no common schema or identifier. None of that is available on Bloomberg. Custom dataset construction for a specific thesis is not something any terminal can deliver.

How is this different from buying a dataset on Neudata or Eagle Alpha?+

Neudata and Eagle Alpha list 7,000+ datasets from 4,200+ providers. Those are generic datasets built for a broad subscriber base — priced at $50,000–$200,000+ annually per dataset, regardless of whether the dataset fits your specific hypothesis. Synterminal builds a custom dataset for one specific thesis, normalized to your schema, delivered in a format your model can run against immediately. Every Synterminal dataset is point-in-time correct, cryptographically provenance-anchored, and built with an ontology designed for your specific entities and relationships.

What happens if the signal doesn't hold in the backtest?+

A confirmed null is a finding. You now know — with a provenance-anchored, reproducible dataset — that the A-C connection does not hold over the historical period tested. That is more valuable than intuition-based inaction. It also frees the research budget to test the next hypothesis. In practice: the hypothesis almost always survives contact with the data. The direction is right. The mechanism — the B node — is often not what the trader predicted. That gap between expected mechanism and actual mechanism is where the most durable edges tend to live.

I don't know exactly what I need. Can I still start?+

That is the most common starting point. Describe the hunch — what feels wrong, what triggered it, what you have already looked at, and what you would do with the answer if you had it. Synterminal reads every submission and responds within one business day. The scoping conversation costs nothing. The engagement starts when you are ready and only if the scope makes sense for both sides.

Is my hypothesis and data kept confidential?+

Every engagement is governed by a mutual NDA before any hypothesis or proprietary data is disclosed. The ontology built for your engagement, the custom dataset constructed, and any findings are yours. Synterminal does not aggregate or reuse client-specific datasets across engagements. The provenance architecture actually makes this enforceable — every record in your dataset carries a UUID and timestamp specific to your engagement.

How does retainer pricing work?+

Retainer pricing is scoped per engagement — not a published rate card, because no two engagements cover the same datasets, the same combination complexity, or the same update frequency. The market benchmark for ongoing data science advisory retainers in 2026 runs $3,000–$15,000 per month depending on scope. Synterminal's retainer pricing reflects the actual scope: light maintenance on a single dataset is at the low end; active cross-vertical combination analysis with multiple live feeds is at the high end. The scope document specifies the monthly cost before the retainer begins.

What kinds of problems do you actually work on?+

Competitive intelligence — pricing, positioning, bid award patterns. Entity and public records research — ownership structure, litigation history, UCC filings, related parties. Trading and signal research — custom alternative dataset construction, procurement heatmaps as demand signals. Procurement intelligence — what institutional buyers are paying in your commodity category, by region and supplier. Data pipeline and monitoring — scraping, normalization, entity resolution, scheduled delivery. Due diligence — entity structure, public procurement history, litigation record, supplier concentration mapping. Document search — full-text and semantic search across any corpus. Reputation and platform monitoring — behavioral pattern detection, temporal clustering, documented record for dispute or litigation.

What does the retainer actually deliver each month?+

A monthly structured intelligence report with provenance on every data point, anomalies flagged, and patterns surfaced. Continuous monitoring infrastructure running in the background — pricing pipelines, platform monitoring, public records tracking, bid award collection, document ingestion. Ad-hoc research responses between scheduled deliverables when new information surfaces. Every finding SHA-256 hashed and RFC 3161 timestamped from day one. Scope reviewed every 90 days and adapted to what your operation actually needs.

// ST-SI-INTAKE — Open Intake

Describe
the problem.

You do not need to know what category it fits. You do not need to have it fully articulated. If you have a hunch, a frustration, a data mess, a competitor problem, a reputation crisis, a question nobody on your team can answer — describe it.

Synterminal reads every submission and responds within one business day. Every engagement is scoped individually. No minimum size. No required category. No automated replies.

If it involves a computer, words, numbers, web data, public records, competitor research, bid tracking, data cleaning, document search, or anything research-related — the needle is in your haystack. We find it.

// Submitted to kelly@scoped-intelligence.com · research@synterminal.com

// NDA available on request before any sensitive materials are shared

// Full intelligence platform at synterminal.com

kelly@scoped-intelligence.com ↗ research@synterminal.com ↗

Retainer Inquiry

Tell us what you need to know continuously. We scope the engagement.

Name

Company or Operation

What describes your operation

What do you need to know continuously — or find once

// NDA available · response within 1 business day · no commitment required · no automated replies

Intelligence
that runs
while you sleep.

We don't just answer
the first question.

Any problem. Any industry.
If the answer exists in data, we find it.

Bloomberg delivers the price.
Synterminal builds the dataset that
explains why the price moved before it moves.

The signal advantage in 2026
is not access to data.
It is the engineering to use it.

Operators who need continuous intelligence.
Not one-time reports.

The second month is more valuable than the first.
That is the entire model.

Everything built. Nothing delegated.
All of it yours.

Every question a real person has asked — or should have.

Synterminal is already running.
The retainer relationships are live.

Describe
the problem.

Intelligencethat runswhile you sleep.

We don't just answer the first question.

Any problem. Any industry.If the answer exists in data, we find it.

Bloomberg delivers the price.Synterminal builds the dataset thatexplains why the price moved before it moves.

The signal advantage in 2026is not access to data.It is the engineering to use it.

Operators who need continuous intelligence.Not one-time reports.

The second month is more valuable than the first.That is the entire model.

Everything built. Nothing delegated.All of it yours.

Every question a real person has asked — or should have.

Synterminal is already running.The retainer relationships are live.

Describethe problem.

Intelligence
that runs
while you sleep.

We don't just answer
the first question.

Any problem. Any industry.
If the answer exists in data, we find it.

Bloomberg delivers the price.
Synterminal builds the dataset that
explains why the price moved before it moves.

The signal advantage in 2026
is not access to data.
It is the engineering to use it.

Operators who need continuous intelligence.
Not one-time reports.

The second month is more valuable than the first.
That is the entire model.

Everything built. Nothing delegated.
All of it yours.

Synterminal is already running.
The retainer relationships are live.

Describe
the problem.