How to Use Trace: Your AI Studio Assistant

A handmade business produces a steady stream of practical questions. How much inventory is on hand? Which batch used a particular ingredient? What did a recent sale record? When the answer is already in maker studio, the most useful next step is not a new spreadsheet. It is a clear way to ask the question.

Trace is your studio assistant inside Maker Studio AI. It allows you to ask questions about your studio data and receive a concise answer based on your studio.

What Trace is designed to do

Trace translates a studio question into a focused look at the relevant records, then presents the returned facts in straightforward language. It is designed for questions about inventory, purchases and vendors, saved recipes, batches, stored batch costs and cure details, shows and workshops, sales records, marketing content, molds and equipment, and calendar entries.

For example, a maker might ask:

Studio need	A useful Trace question
Find a material	How much shea butter do I have on hand?
Check a saved record	What is the stored COGS on my Welcome Home batch?
Recall a purchase	How much did I pay for cocoa butter last month?
Prepare for an event	What checklist items are attached to my next workshop?
Locate equipment	Tell me about my loaf mold.

Why Trace was built

Maker Studio AI already keeps many parts of your studio together: inventory, expenses, formulas, batches, events, sales, marketing, and equipment. The challenge is often not whether the information exists. The challenge is retrieving the right record quickly when you are planning a batch, packing for a show, talking with a customer, or standing at a workbench.

Trace was built to reduce that navigation overhead. Instead of opening several screens to locate a known answer, you can start with a plain question. The assistant retrieves a relevant slice of your own records rather than loading your entire studio into a conversation.

A smaller, focused record slice is easier to understand, easier to check, and better aligned with the way makers work: one material, one recipe, one batch, one sale, or one upcoming event at a time.

How to use Trace

1. Open your Dashboard and click Trace.
2. Ask one specific studio question. Include a material name, recipe name, batch name, event, date, or other identifying detail when you know it.
3. Read the answer together with its grounding line. Each answer includes a line such as Trace — based on: 1 inventory item or Trace — based on: 1 workshop and 6 checklist items. This tells you the record slice Trace used.
4. Use a follow-up when it helps. After asking about coconut oil, you can ask, What about olive oil? Trace can use the recent conversation only to understand what you mean, while retrieving fresh current records for the new answer.
5. Make changes yourself in the relevant Maker Studio AI screen. Trace can help you find the record; the existing inventory, recipe, batch, event, or sales screen remains the place to edit it.

Ask questions that are easy to verify

The best Trace questions point to a specific stored record. A question such as What is the stored COGS on Batch 42? asks Trace to read a value the app already has. A question such as Which ingredient do I use most? asks for a new roll-up or calculation, so Trace will honestly explain that it does not have that stored answer rather than inventing a figure.

This is intentional. Trace reads stored facts and narrates them. It does not run the soap engine, redo lye calculations, re-calculate COGS, re-sum ingredient usage, create a finance roll-up, or estimate margins. If an answer is not present in the bounded records it can read, Trace says so.

What the grounding line means

The grounding line is a practical quality check. It helps you see whether Trace looked at one inventory item, a single batch and its related records, a sale with its line items, or another focused set of rows.

Trace — based on: 1 batch and 3 batch details means the answer is tied to that returned record slice, not a general guess.

Use this line as an invitation to verify. If the answer seems incomplete, ask a more specific question or open the underlying record in Maker Studio AI.

Privacy, access, and AI credits

Trace is limited to the currently signed-in maker and reads only that makers own caller-scoped records. It does not expose another makers studio data. It is available to makers with an active paid subscription or an active trial; free, canceled, past-due, and unpaid accounts do not receive a Trace response.

When Trace needs to call the AI to narrate a grounded answer, it uses one existing AI generation credit. Questions that are clearly outside the studio, or questions with no matching records, do not invoke the AI and do not consume a credit. This keeps the tool focused on useful studio work.

A practical way to make Trace part of your routine

Use Trace before you move into an action screen. Ask about a material before placing an order. Ask for a stored batch detail before production. Ask what is attached to an upcoming workshop before packing. Ask for a specific sale record when you need to review it. Then open the existing Maker Studio AI record to make any decision or update.

That rhythm keeps Trace in its strongest role: helping you find and understand what your studio has already recorded, without replacing your judgment or changing your data.

Start with one real question

A good first question is one you can verify immediately, such as How much [material] do I have? or What is the stored COGS on [batch name]? Read the grounding line, compare the answer with the record, and then continue from there. Small, specific questions are the fastest way to make Trace useful in a busy studio.