How it works

From dashboards to automated analysis.

Three steps. Design a tree or two, connect your data, and go live — within a week — on the warehouse and data stack you already have.

Step 01 — Design

01 · Model your business.

Typical timeline ·
1–2 meetings

Templates for every business model — and every domain, from finance to growth, product, and ops.

Start with the KPIs that matter — revenue, retention, margin, engagement — and map the key input metric drivers and segments.

Start small.
Begin with a single metric tree or business workflow. Most customers are live after modeling just one or two critical KPIs.
Start from a template.
25+ editable shapes spanning SaaS, marketplaces, commerce, fintech, healthcare, logistics, media, and gaming.
Fit your business.
Revenue, CAC, loss ratio, account growth, contribution margin — if your business has a driver model, Trace can represent it.
Step 02 — IMPLEMENT

02 ·  Connect to your data.

Typical timeline ·
~1 week

AI dramatically accelerates setup while keeping metric calculations governed and deterministic.

Trace's agent writes the spec — SQL, metrics, entities, attributes — from your schema or existing definitions.

100% accuracy. No hallucinated numbers.
AI never calculates your KPIs. Core metrics run on governed SQL — reviewed, version-controlled, exact.
Trace never creates metrics — only reads them.
Trace is a source of intelligence, not another source of truth.
Open and auditable.
Configurations live in git and ship through PRs.
Step 03 — OPERATE

03 · Automate the analysis.

Live by ·
Week 2

The tedious work of analysis runs automatically — so teams can focus on decisions, not dashboard hunts.

Metric trees provide the model. Encoded analytical skills provide the expertise.

The methods behind the skills.
Each skill combines workflow logic with a library of analytical methods — including anomaly detection, segment scans, driver attribution, variance-to-plan, and more.
AI agents orchestrate the work.
Tree structures guide which methods apply. Business context shapes the end-to-end agentic workflow.
Always on, wherever you work.
Investigate directly in the app, or get robust automated briefings from the Trace AI agent in Slack.
FAQ — From THE demo

Common questions.

the details that matter

Short answers to frequently asked questions.

What exactly is a metric tree?

A metric tree is a computable model of how business metrics relate. It connects KPIs to their underlying drivers, giving both people and AI a structured model of how the business works.

Do I need to model my entire business?

No. Most customers start with 1–2 trees around the KPIs that matter right now, then expand as new workflows and questions emerge.

How is this different from dashboards?

Dashboards monitor metrics. Trace connects them into a model of the business and applies analytical methods — automatically surfacing the key drivers and what matters most.

How is this different from a semantic or metrics layer?

In a sense, Trace is an enhanced semantic layer plus an analytical layer.

Metrics and semantic layers define how numbers are calculated consistently. Trace goes further: metric trees encode the metric relationships, while analytical skills encode the workflows used to investigate them — turning governed metrics into automated analysis.

How is this different from AI copilots?

The industry is working hard to make AI-on-data reliable, but most systems still center on metric retrieval or SQL generation. Trace gives AI richer, more reliable business context — plus analytical methods — so it can run multi-step workflows across metrics and drivers.

Why not just let an LLM analyze the warehouse directly?

For sensitive metrics like revenue, retrieval has to be exact. And deep, useful analysis requires more than a prompt — it relies on repeatable methods and workflows.

Trace keeps metric logic and analytical calculations deterministic, while AI orchestrates the analysis across the business — compressing days of work into minutes.

What are "encoded analytical skills"?

They package the expertise behind an analysis: analytical methods, workflow logic, business-specific nuance, interpretation, and narrative.

Methods include decomposition, attribution, anomaly detection, segment scans, mix analysis, variance-to-plan, and more. AI agents combine them into complete analytical workflows.

How fast can we get started?

Most teams are live within two weeks. In week one, you design 1–2 metric trees and connect them to your existing data. In week two, the trees are live and automated analysis begins.

Do we have to move or restructure our data?

No. Trace reads directly from your existing data platform and works with the data you already have. When needed, our enhanced semantic layer can transform and shape your data into metric-tree models — so you don’t need to provide pre-modeled or structured datasets.

What about dbt or our existing metrics layer?

Trace can consume your existing metric definitions and models, enhance them into metric-tree models, and add the analytical logic needed to power automated analysis.

Who owns the trees and specs?

You do. Configs are clean, read-only, and version-controlled in git. Trace doesn’t become another source of truth — it’s a source of intelligence on top of the datasets you already govern.

What happens when our business model changes?

Add a segment, edit the metric, update the tree — and the analyses automatically follow the new structure, so the methods and workflows stay aligned with how the business now works.

Trees evolve with your business, and every change remains versioned and auditable.

Choose how you want to start.

Get 2–3 metric trees tailored to your business — free, no meeting required. Or book a demo to see Trace in action.

Stay close to what we're building.
Product updates, new templates, and field notes on metric trees, AI, and analytics automation. No noise — a short note when there's something worth your time.
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