# Fleet Forecast > Estimate — explicitly not a plan — of what a fleet of parallel /loop /auto sessions would ship over a time horizon. Simulates the certified backlog draining across N sessions (blockers resolve and make way for their dependents), reporting the projected pick order as waves, roughly when the Planned/Todo stage burns down and Backlog picks begin, what a given horizon (e.g. 12h) cannot reach, and which candidates are stranded behind blockers the fleet can never ship. Read-only; nothing is launched or written. Use when the user says 'fleet forecast', 'forecast the fleet', 'what would a fleet run look like', 'what order would issues run', 'how many hours to burn the Planned issues', 'what would ship overnight/in 12 hours', or invokes /fleet-forecast. - Skill: `alienfast/fleet-forecast` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add alienfast/fleet-forecast` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/alienfast/fleet-forecast/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Product & Planning - Author: alienfast (https://skillmd.com/u/alienfast) - Updated: 2026-09-10 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/alienfast/fleet-forecast --- # Fleet Forecast Project the *shape* of a fleet run before launching it: which issues go first, which chains gate the middle of the run, when the Planned/Todo stage drains into Backlog, and what a given horizon leaves on the table. The sibling of `/fleet-status` (read-only, one screen) pointed at the future instead of the present, and a companion to `/auto-prep` (which grooms and sizes; this skill projects the drain). **This is an estimate, never a plan.** Pick order is decided at pick time by `next-candidates.sh` against live state; review churn, file collisions, failures, mid-run filings refilling the pool, and 5h-window headroom parking all move the real timeline. Frame every rendering of the output that way — the value is seeing the graph's structure over time, not predicting any single pick. Never persist the output anywhere `/auto` or a fleet session might read it as instructions. ## Workflow ### Step 1: Resolve context - Team: `$LINEAR_TEAM`, or ask. Never scan the workspace. - Run from the **project main checkout** — the script defaults read `tmp/fleet-recommendation.json` (session count and duration from `/auto-prep`) and `tmp/fleet-metrics-history.jsonl` (hours-per-issue calibration from past fleets) relative to the cwd. ### Step 2: Run the simulation ```bash ~/.claude/scripts/fleet-forecast.py --team [--sessions N] [--horizon-h H] ``` Defaults: sessions and horizon from `tmp/fleet-recommendation.json` (horizon falls back to 12h); no count from either source is a hard error — point at `/auto-prep` or ask for one. Useful overrides: `--hours-per-issue X` (replace the history calibration; default 2.0 when no history — a history row above 12 h/issue is ignored with a `NOTE:` on stderr, because a non-fleet session set recorded as a fleet reads as a 70-hour issue, not a slow fleet; surface the note, it means the history needs cleaning), `--flat` (disable estimate-point weighting of per-issue duration). `-h` documents the rest. The script fetches once (states, labels, estimates, relations), classifies fleet-eligibility with the same gate rules as `fleet-blockers.sh` (certified + workable state, unclaimed, non-epic, no `human`/`needs decision`/`solo`/`stalled`, not Triage), then greedily drains the graph: each free session picks the top-ranked available candidate (stage-first — Backlog only when nothing Planned/Todo is available — a Backlog blocker or child of Planned/Todo work counts as Planned, as in `next-candidates.sh`, and under the Planned gate a session with no pickable Planned issue **idles** rather than filling with Backlog until the column drains — `HOLD` events and a `PLANNED-HOLD` line show it; Urgent does not pierce stage), ships it after its estimated duration, and resolves its `blocks` edges. Clean in-flight blockers (In Progress) are assumed to finish within one mean issue duration; `In Review` is completed-in-substance (`standards/linear-workflow.md` § Terminal States) — its blocks are already resolved and its dependents are available at t=0. ### Step 3: Cross-check the first wave Run `next-candidates.sh --label specified` and compare its top ranks against the sim's wave-1 `PICK` lines. The shell script is the pick-time authority (it carries tiers the sim deliberately omits — assigned-to-me, sibling spread, parent weighting); where they disagree, narrate the divergence in the report. Never edit the sim output to match. ### Step 4: Render the report Lead with the headline: the `FORECAST` line (ships / unreached / stranded), the `STAGE` line (hours to burn Planned/Todo and when Backlog picks begin — often the number the user actually wanted), the hours-per-issue basis, and any `THROTTLE-RISK` warning. Then: - **Timeline as waves** — group the `PICK`/`SHIP` events into waves and narrate the unlock chains ("TT-1 ships ≈t=2h → frees TT-2"), with the `LANE` lines rendered as a compact per-session Gantt. - **`POOL-DRAINED`** if present — the certified runway is shorter than the horizon; that gap is the argument for certifying more work before launch. - **Stranded and unreached, with routing** — `STRANDED` rows need keeper action the fleet cannot perform; point at `/auto-prep` (whose `fleet-blockers.sh` FOCUS audit owns the remedies and transitive root-cause walk) rather than re-deriving remedies here. `UNREACHED` rows are the horizon/capacity argument: what a longer run or another session would add. - **Caveats, once, at the end** — one short line restating that this is an estimate of shape, with whatever model simplifications bit this particular run (e.g. many same-file candidates the sim schedules concurrently that collision edges would serialize). ## Error handling - Fetch/parse failure → the script exits non-zero with `ERROR:` on stderr; report it, never render a partial timeline from a broken run. - Zero shippable candidates → the `FORECAST … pool 0 shippable` line is a real result: report it and point at `/spec` (certify) or `/auto-prep` (label repair), not at launching anyway. - Stale `tmp/fleet-recommendation.json` (>24h, same threshold `fleet-launch.sh` warns at) → mention the staleness when its defaults were used.