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Get a forecast with Forecast Max

Forecast Max is the plugin skill for Forecasting, the MixShift Intelligence service that sets the expectation a period is measured against. Ask for it in Claude in your own words ("what should I expect from [brand] over the next six months?", "is [brand] forecastable?"). It forecasts one seller account at a time, one to twelve months ahead, six by default, and it needs your MixShift sign-in, not brand setup.

What you get

The skill first checks whether the account has the history to support a forecast: at least 12 complete months with both sales and ad spend. When it does not, that is the answer you get, with how many months the account has, what is missing, and when the history clears the floor if the data keeps arriving.

When the account is ready, you get the forecast in plain language:

  1. What to expect. Next month's figure with its range, and the total across the months served. When the forecast covers fewer months than you asked for, it says so rather than stretching.
  2. Where it comes from. Either the forecast your team published in the MixShift forecasting app, with its corrections, or, when nothing is published, a forecast computed from your warehouse history with the same engine and clearly labelled as computed. A published forecast always takes priority.
  3. How accurate it has been. The measured error one month and a few months out, and whether the forecast beat last year's same month as a guess, in words you can repeat to a client.
  4. What it stands on. The months it was trained on, any months left out and why, and the corrections applied.

Seven months out and beyond, read the figure as a planning level rather than a forecast.

Your sponsored ads budget

A computed forecast moves with ad spend. The first time you forecast an account nobody has shaped yet, the skill asks whether you have a sponsored ads budget for the coming months, and it can read one from your brand context or a budget sheet you point it to. It shows you the months and amounts first, saves them only after you say yes, and runs the forecast again on your numbers. The answer then says month by month whether the spend is your budget or an estimate. You can change or clear a month's budget later by asking.

The budget is the only thing the skill saves, and it stays in MixShift. It is never entered for a published forecast, whose budget lives in the forecasting app, and other corrections, such as a stockout month, are made in the forecasting app too.

Things worth knowing

  • Each readiness check and forecast is a metered Intelligence request. The skill says so before its first call, and an answer already fetched that day is served free.
  • One account per forecast. A brand with several seller accounts gets one answer per account, never a sum across them.
  • The forecast is not your plan. It is the model's expectation. Where you have a plan or a target, the skill compares against it in your words.
  • Monthly Report Max reads published forecasts. Publishing in the forecasting app is what puts a forecast into your monthly report; see Run Monthly Report Max.
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