Filing timestamps

The five fields

Every row includes all five timestamp fields. visible_by accepts three of them. The response returns event_at and acceptance_at as read-only fields on the row.

acceptance_at is populated only for filings where we fetched the EDGAR header. Most SEC rows have null. Read this field per row. Do not assume an entire partition (one source, one day) contains it.

visible_by

visible_by accepts published_at, available_at, or committed_at. If empty or omitted, it defaults to published_at. Any other value (including event_at and acceptance_at) returns HTTP 400 with invalid_clock.

{
  "status": "error",
  "count": null,
  "error": {
    "code": "invalid_clock",
    "message": "visible_by must be one of published_at, available_at, committed_at. Received: \"acceptance_at\"",
    "param": "visible_by"
  }
}

A row matches when its chosen timestamp is less than or equal to as_of. Both timestamps use UTC and the comparison is inclusive. For example, as_of=2023-03-10T23:59:59Z includes a row stamped 23:59:59 on that day.

Asking for a clock the corpus does not hold

Requesting available_at for a source without availability evidence returns HTTP 409. The response sets count to null and includes an availability. key under coverage.missing that names the source and day.

$ curl -s "https://api.pit.aqx.llc/v1/sample/news?example=svb&as_of=2023-03-10T23:59:59Z&visible_by=available_at"

{
  "visible_by": "available_at",
  "status": "coverage_missing",
  "results": [],
  "count": null,
  "coverage": {
    "touched": ["sec.edgar/2023-03-10", …],
    "missing": ["availability.sec.edgar/2023-03-10"]
  }
}

All 563,594 sec.edgar rows have available_at: null, so every strict cut over SEC data returns HTTP 409 today. Federal Register public inspection and CFTC Commitments of Traders include this timestamp and return normal responses. See Coverage for all refusal rules.

Where available_at comes from

availability_basis describes the evidence behind available_at. Use this field to distinguish an actual receipt timestamp from a published release schedule.

The 08:45 Eastern batch converts to 13:45Z in winter and 12:45Z in summer due to daylight saving time. During the two annual daylight saving transitions, ambiguous wall-clock times fail during ingest instead of guessing the instant.

Dates with no time

When a publisher provides only a date without a time, the system sets the timestamp to the end of that day rather than the start.

If EDGAR lists a filing after its filing date, the dates differ. Across the 204 SEC index files in the corpus, 197 rows have a Date Filed earlier than the index that first listed them. These rows use the index date because that is when the filing appeared in the public feed.

Setting timestamps to the start of the day would make filings visible before publication. For example, 2023-03-10T00:00:00Z is 19:00 on 9 March in New York. The SVB 8-K was accepted at 17:23 Eastern on the 10th, so a day-start timestamp would make it visible 22 hours and 23 minutes early. Because timestamps use the end of the day, treat published_at on date-only rows as an upper bound with day-level resolution.

The upper bound remains within the same UTC day, so partition_date matches the UTC date of published_at. To query an entire day, set as_of to 23:59:59Z or later. Earlier cutoffs exclude all date-only rows for that day. When an intraday timestamp exists, the system uses it instead of the day-end bound. Examples include the Federal Register filed_at, the 08:45 public-inspection batch, and acceptance_at from EDGAR headers.

One filing, three cuts

The SVB receivership 8-K (accession 0001193125-23-067777) has four timestamps and produces three possible query cuts.

visible2023-03-10

You can test these three cuts on the as-of demo or review the 8-K worked example.

Two lanes

The lane field indicates how a row received its timestamp. Each row contains one lane value, and query results never mix lanes. certified_pit rows come from a stored, hashed publisher document. forward_first_seen rows record when our poller first detected the item, which may be later than the publisher release time.

Backfill jobs set available_at to null. This field requires proof of first public availability recorded at ingestion time. A backfill job running in 2026 cannot verify when an item was reachable in 2020.