WORKCAST · Forecast board

AI demand,
forecast before it happens.

Every week we publish a dated, tamper-proof forecast of how much AI the leading apps will use over the next eight weeks, then score it in public against the standard forecasts. Misses stay up.

2 Nov
first forecast publishes
9 Nov
first live score lands
21%
less error one week ahead in the backtest (1,600 forecasts)

This week's call

First forecast publishes
Monday 2 November
as soon as OpenRouter publishes the week, and never more than two days after its cutoff.

Track record

Backtest before the board: 1,600 company forecasts at 16 cutoffs, 2025-07-07 to 2026-08-31. Retrospective, which is why we now publish in advance.

WORKCASTBest standard forecast
1 week aheadbest: no change
25.8% error
32.7%
2 weeks aheadbest: no change
29.0% error
35.0%
4 weeks aheadbest: no change
34.8% error
39.7%
8 weeks aheadbest: no change
43.6% error
45.1%

Head to head: GPT-6 Astra

OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra (knowledge cutoff 2026-04-30) forecast the same apps from the same history at the 5 backtest cutoffs after its cutoff (2026-05-11 to 2026-08-31), so it could not have seen the outcomes. Astra had lower error than WORKCAST at 4 of 4 horizons. Mean of 2 samples per cutoff; protocol fixed before the run. These are retrospective windows, now shown as measured.

WORKCASTGPT-6 AstraBest standard forecast
1 week aheadbest standard: recent trend
25.3% error
23.1%
26.2%
2 weeks aheadbest standard: recent trend
29.2% error
27.6%
28.3%
4 weeks aheadbest standard: recent trend
35.1% error
32.3%
35.4%
8 weeks aheadbest standard: market growth
45.5% error
40.8%
42.2%
How it works

At each Monday cutoff, WORKCAST carries every leading app forward 8 weeks from data before the cutoff: its growth path, whether it stays among the leaders, and the models its workloads move to as new models launch and prices change. The point forecast is the simulation's central path; the range is the 5th to 95th percentile of 20 runs. Standard forecasts are made from the same data: the last four weeks carried forward, each app's recent trend, and market growth. Error is token-weighted across apps (lower is better).

How to verify a forecast

Each forecast is a read-only JSON record carrying the code version and a hash of every input table. Its SHA-256 is anchored in the Bitcoin blockchain with OpenTimestamps before the weeks it predicts. Download a record and its .ots proof, then run ots verify. A forecast published more than two days after its cutoff is skipped, never backdated.