A time on a reading looks like one simple fact. It is not always the same fact. Sometimes it is the moment the market was observed. Sometimes it is only the moment somebody fetched a file. Sometimes nobody knows. NoVo labels which, in a field called as_of_kind, and it takes one of three values.
Measured
Measured means the time is when the thing itself was observed. A dealer map computed from an options chain at a given minute is measured at that minute. A perp’s funding read from the venue is measured when it was read. This is the strongest kind. The time and the number belong to each other.
Retrieved
Retrieved means the time is when NoVo fetched the data from someone else, and the source did not say when the data itself was true. A published calendar is a good example. get_earnings_dates passes through a public exchange calendar and says so. The fetch time tells you the copy is recent. It does not tell you how recent the facts inside it are.
This is weaker than measured, and it is still worth having. You know the pipe is working. You know the reading was not sitting in a cache for a week. You just cannot treat the fetch time as the time of the market.
Unknown
Unknown means no honest time can be attached. The alternative would be to stamp the reading with the current time, and that would be a small lie on every response. A reading marked unknown is telling you to treat its timing with care. That is more useful than a confident stamp that means nothing.
Why the kind matters to an agent
A model reads as_of and writes as of ten o’clock. If the kind was retrieved, that sentence overstates what is known. The reader hears a measurement and the payload only promised a fetch. So the agent should carry the kind into its wording. Measured at, fetched at, and time not known are three different phrases, and each maps to one value.
This sits beside the wider habit of quoting the age, which is covered in making the agent quote the age of every number. Age tells you how old. Kind tells you how old what.
Mixed responses
Some tools gather several sources in one call. get_ticker_brief returns short volume, an earnings date, House disclosures and retail chatter for one name, and each section carries its own as_of and as_of_kind. An agent should not flatten them into one time. The short volume and the earnings date were not established the same way, and the answer should not pretend they were.
What to ask for
Tell your agent to say measured, fetched or unknown when it quotes a time. It costs two words. It lets you weigh a reading the way you would weigh a quote from a screen against a figure from a press release. The fields are on every tool in the MCP & API, and the background is in how to tell whether market data is stale.