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Metaculus

Browse Metaculus community forecasting questions, submit and withdraw forecasts, and track your own prediction record.

Tool Reference: 9 tools with full schemas →

Setup

Connect the Metaculus toolkit by configuring a Metaculus API token. Metaculus is a community forecasting platform; the toolkit lets your AI assistant browse questions, read what the community thinks, and, if you allow it, record forecasts under your own account.

Prerequisites

Before configuring the Metaculus toolkit, ensure you have:

• Configured an MCP server in your toolforest.io dashboard.
• A free Metaculus account.

Configuration Fields

Setup Steps

Prefer video? This 55-second walkthrough covers the whole setup, from the Prediction Markets tab to a configured toolkit:

Step 1: Create the API token

1. Sign in at metaculus.com.
2. Open Settings → Account → API access.
3. Copy your personal API token.

Step 2: Configure in toolforest.io

1. Open Toolforest and go to Toolkits.
2. Select the Prediction Markets tab.
3. Find Metaculus.
4. Click Configure.
5. Paste your Metaculus API token.
6. Submit the form.

The toolkit status will change to Configured, and your assistant can start browsing questions right away.

Once configured, a good first question to ask your assistant is what the token can actually see. The toolkit has a dedicated tool for exactly that, which probes how much community data comes back and whether bulk export works, so you learn your own access level rather than guessing at it.

Step 3: Allow forecasting (only if you want it)

Reading and forecasting are separate permissions on the Metaculus side. Your token covers reading; writing a forecast sits behind a second per-account switch that starts out disabled, and it is not something you can simply turn on in advance.

The switch has to be woken up first:

1. Ask your assistant to submit a forecast once. The attempt will be refused, which flips the setting from disabled to pending.
2. Go to Settings → Account → API forecasting access. Only in the pending state does the page show a one-button confirmation.
3. Confirm, and forecasts submitted through your assistant will be accepted from then on.

If you would rather forecast under a dedicated identity than your own, Metaculus supports bot accounts, created at Settings → Bots.

Managing Your Connection

Reconfigure

To update your API token, click the ⋮ (three-dot button) and select Reconfigure.

Disconnect

To disconnect the toolkit:

1. Click the Disconnect button in your MCP server panel.
2. toolforest.io will delete the stored API token.

Capabilities

Reading Metaculus data

Metaculus works differently from the other prediction-markets toolkits in ways that are easy to misread.

The community prediction is gated per response

Metaculus decides how much community forecast data to return based on your access tier, and it makes that decision response by response on its own side.

The toolkit therefore never guesses where the boundary sits. It asks for the community prediction every time and reports what came back, surfacing cp_access as either available or absent.

Read absent narrowly. It means the community prediction was not included in this response. It does not mean the question has no community forecast.

Your own data is never gated

Personal data is not tier-gated the way community data is. Your own forecast can be present on a question whose community prediction was withheld, which is the clearest illustration of the two being separate systems.

Access widens with use

Coverage is not fixed at signup, and this is unusual enough to be worth knowing:

• Forecasting on a question permanently unlocks that question for your account, including its full text and resolution details.
• The free Bot Benchmarking Access Tier widens community-prediction coverage. You apply through Metaculus’s Data Needs form, which the toolkit links directly from its own error hints when access is the reason a request came back thin. For the human path, Metaculus can be reached at api-requests@metaculus.com.

Posts, not questions

The feed is made of posts. A post may hold a single question, a group of related questions, a conditional pair, or a notebook.

Post ids and question ids coincide often, but not always, which is why the forecast tools accept either. Group and conditional posts have no post-level number of their own, so summaries name the stand-in subquestion they are reporting, in community_prediction_question_id and my_forecast_question_id.

What your own forecast record carries

For each question you have forecast on, your record carries a summary of your latest position rather than its full internal representation:

• start_time is when the latest forecast was made, not your first one on that question.
• end_time is the auto-withdrawal time, if you set one when submitting, or the moment you withdrew.
• withdrawn marks a forecast you have taken down.
• The value itself is compact and matches the question type: probability_yes on binary, option_probabilities on multiple choice, and a median plus a 25/75 interval on numeric, date, and discrete questions, given both raw and in the question’s own units.

The raw 201-value distribution behind a continuous forecast is never returned.

Search and limits are best-effort

• Text search is not a documented feature. Metaculus’s OpenAPI describes no search parameter; the toolkit uses an undocumented one that may change or disappear. Treat discovery as primarily structured: filter by status, type, category, tournament, time range, and ordering.
• Rate limits are undocumented. If Metaculus returns a 429, the toolkit surfaces its message as-is rather than silently retrying.
• CSV export is restricted. When a download is refused, the toolkit returns an access hint explaining why, rather than a generic failure. Do not assume bulk export is available on every account.

Example prompts