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Recommendations surface the most relevant contracts and solicitations for your company — no searching required. The AI scores every candidate opportunity against your profile and shows you the results, sorted by fit.
AI Recommendations page showing personalized opportunity matches

How AI Recommendations work

The four-stage pipeline behind every match, plus a troubleshooting checklist for when results look wrong.

Getting your first recommendations

1

Complete your Company Profile

Add positive keywords, NAICS/PSC codes, and a business description in Company Profile. At least one of these needs to be filled in — with none set, generation is skipped even though the run reports success. See the signal gate for details.
2

Refresh recommendations

Click Refresh Recommendations to run a new analysis. Every account shares a daily cap on manual refreshes.
3

Review your matches

Browse recommended opportunities sorted by match score. Each card explains why it’s a fit.
4

Take action

Save it, start a Journey, give feedback, or open the full opportunity.

Tabs

The Recommendations page has three tabs:
  • All — Every recommended opportunity across all sources
  • Profile — Opportunities matched directly against your Company Profile
  • Saved Searches — Opportunities qualified through your saved searches’ scheduled email alerts (see AI Qualification)
The Profile and Saved Searches feeds are generated differently. Clicking Refresh Recommendations only regenerates the Profile feed — Saved Searches results update when that saved search’s scheduled alert runs, not on manual refresh.

Refreshing

Recommendations page activity strip showing counts of opportunities scanned, evaluated, and matched
Click Refresh Recommendations (top right) to trigger a new run against your Company Profile. The button shows status as it runs: Starting… → Recommendations Running → complete. If a teammate already has a refresh running, you’ll see that instead of starting your own. Manual refreshes are capped at 5 per day, and the cap is shared across your whole organization — one teammate’s refresh counts against everyone’s quota. The remaining count is shown below the button as N of N refreshes remaining today, and resets at midnight UTC. An activity strip at the top of the page shows the scale of the latest run — how many opportunities were read, how many were rejected during qualification, and how many were delivered.

Empty states

If the page is empty, the message tells you why:
  • “No opportunities match your filters” — your filters (a match score above 0%, limited sources, or the New-only toggle) are hiding everything. The message names the active filters and offers Clear filters.
  • “Your profile is set up — run a refresh…” — your profile is complete but no run has produced results yet. Click Refresh Recommendations right from the empty state.
  • Update Company Profile — your profile doesn’t have enough to match on yet (see the signal gate).
If recommendations don’t appear after a refresh, contact support@samsearch.co.

Reading your results

Match score

Each card shows a score from 0–100% with a fit label: The score is a weighted blend of four dimensions — strategic fit, structural fit, scope alignment, and value & risk. See the full breakdown for how they’re weighted. You may also see a Needs review badge (the AI couldn’t confirm fit from the available attachments) or a Low fit badge (related to your work, but something is blocking it). Whether you see these at all depends on your Recommendation volume — Low fit results only appear at Everything in my space, and Needs review results are hidden at Strong matches only. Both badges are explained in the pipeline breakdown.

View Analysis

Click View Analysis on any card to expand the full breakdown:
  • Why this matches — every reason the opportunity fits your profile
  • Potential misalignments — reasons it might not be a fit
  • Verify before you bid — a checklist of things worth confirming before you commit
The Verify before you bid checkboxes are local to your current view — they reset when you collapse the card or reload the page. They’re a reading aid, not a saved checklist.

Match score reasoning on opportunity pages

Opportunity pages show the same match score alongside the reasoning behind it — what lines up with your profile, and where it’s a stretch — so you can see why something scored the way it did without leaving the opportunity.
Opportunity page showing match score with fit reasoning, including strengths and stretch areas
If an opportunity was screened out or scored low during qualification, the contract page shows an explanatory banner instead of a match score. See the “not recommended” banner.

Giving feedback

Recommendation card showing thumbs up, thumbs down, save, View Analysis, Start Journey, and Dismiss actions
Click thumbs up or thumbs down on any card. Neither submits immediately — both open a dialog asking you to pick at least one reason:
  • Thumbs up adds the opportunity to Journey Hub and tells the AI what made it a good match.
  • Thumbs down dismisses the opportunity and tells the AI what made it a poor fit.
Feedback is folded into a nightly digest, not applied instantly — and it can only move future scores, never cause an outright reject. See Learned insights for what it does and doesn’t change.

Filtering & sorting

Recommendations filters panel showing Match Score slider and Opportunity Sources
Click Filters (top right) to open the filters panel:
  • Match Score slider — Set a minimum threshold (0–100%); recommendations below it are hidden from view
  • Opportunity Sources — Show only specific sources: Federal, SLED (State/Local/Education), GSA eBuy, DIBBS, Canada, Recompete, Forecasts, Subcontracting, Grants, SBIR/STTRs
Grants, SBIR/STTRs, and Canada are opt-in for recommendations — they won’t appear until you turn them on for recommendations in the Sources & Alerts tab of your Company Profile. GSA eBuy is also off for recommendations by default and has no toggle there.
Sort by — Match Score (High to Low / Low to High), Date Added (Newest / Oldest First), or Title (A–Z / Z–A). Results load 20 at a time; scroll to load more.

Acting on recommendations

For each recommended opportunity:
  • View Analysis — Expand the full AI breakdown
  • Thumbs up / down — Give feedback that feeds the nightly learning digest
  • Save — Add to Saved Opportunities
  • Start Journey — Create a pursuit in Journey Hub
  • Dismiss (✕) — Remove from your list with no reason required — different from thumbs-down, which requires one
Above the list, three page-level buttons manage your feed as a whole:
  • Dismiss all — Archives every recommendation matching your current filters
  • Export — Download the current result set as CSV
  • Archive — Opens a separate page with two tabs: Dismissed (recommendations you dismissed — no restore) and Journey Hub (recommendations you turned into a Journey). See the three dismissed surfaces for how this differs from Search’s Dismissed Opportunities page.

Recommendation volume

Recommendation volume controls how much the AI shows you. Every level draws on the same sources and the same ranked results — it decides how far down that ranking you see, so you can cut the long shots or keep everything relevant. Find it in the Sources & Alerts tab of your Company Profile, between Opportunity Sources and the notification settings.
  • It’s per AI Profile. Each AI Profile has its own setting.
  • It takes effect immediately — on the Recommendations list and in the daily email digest, including recommendations you’ve already been sent. Nothing is thrown away: loosening the setting brings back opportunities that were held below the bar, not discarded.
  • It’s separate from the Match Score slider. The level decides which kinds of matches reach you; the Match Score slider under Filters then hides anything below the score you pick.
  • Changing it requires the owner or admin role, or the Edit company profile permission. Without it, the options are shown but can’t be changed.
Getting too many long shots? Switch to Strong matches only. Seeing too few recommendations, even with filters cleared? Try Everything in my space before rewriting your profile.

Email digest

Recommendations also regenerate once a day as part of a scheduled batch, which emails a digest of your best matches — whether you get it is set in the Notifications section of the Sources & Alerts tab of your Company Profile (see Notifications). How many matches the digest lists depends on your Recommendation volume (up to 5, 10, or 20).
Only recommendations scoring 50% or higher are ever included in the email digest, whatever your volume level. Lower-scoring results still appear in-app — they’re just never emailed. This is by design, not a delivery problem.

Improving your recommendations

Documents uploaded to your Company Profile are used for proposal generation and Sammy context — they do not affect your recommendation results. To improve recommendations, refine your Business Description, keywords, codes, and Deal Makers/Breakers instead.