Methodology
A short description of how public SEC Form 4 filings become source-backed, agent-readable API responses.
Data source
Headless Records normalizes public SEC Form 4 filings into structured records for agent and developer workflows. The system stores source document URLs, SEC accession metadata, retrieval timestamps, parser/normalizer versions, and SHA-256 hashes of the source bytes processed.
Ticker resolution
Ticker coverage is configured through bounded watched ticker universes for design partners. The system resolves configured tickers to the filing identifiers needed for SEC retrieval and downstream normalization.
SEC Form 4 ingestion
Ingestion fetches public Form 4 filing documents for configured watched tickers, records retrieval metadata, and stores the source references needed for provenance-aware API responses.
Normalization
Normalizer logic converts filing-level transaction details into structured records that can be summarized by ticker and period without requiring every agent or backend job to parse SEC XML directly.
Freshness status
Freshness reports whether configured ticker data has been synced within the expected window. Workflows can route fresh, stale, degraded, failed, or not-yet-synced tickers differently.
Source provenance
Provenance fields preserve filing-level source references, accession numbers, retrieval timestamps, parser/normalizer versions, and source-byte hashes for verification and citation.
Caveat generation
Assessment responses include structured caveats so agents can avoid overclaiming and can tell users when a summary is limited to public filing activity.
What Headless Records does not infer
Headless Records does not infer investment merit, future stock performance, insider intent, or whether a reported transaction is good or bad for a company.
Source-byte hash caveat
The SHA-256 hash verifies the bytes processed by Headless Records. It does not mean the SEC cryptographically signed the data.