Formula Reference

Every operator, comparison and function available in the Alphacast formula editor — row, group, rolling window and date functions.

This is the complete grammar accepted by the Alphacast formula editor. It applies to Calculate Variable, the conditions in Filter Rows, and the Apply Formula step.

Regroup Entities does not use this grammar — it offers a fixed list of aggregations instead.

Reference a column with @ followed by its name — @Close, @Date, @sales.

Function names are case-insensitive: SUM, sum and Sum all resolve to the same function.

Operators

Operator	Meaning	Example
+	Add	A + B
-	Subtract	A - B
*	Multiply	A * B
/	Divide	A / B
^	Power	A ^ B

Comparison

Operator	Meaning
>	Greater than
>=	Greater than or equal
<	Less than
<=	Less than or equal
=	Equal
!=	Not equal
<>	Not equal

Logical

Function	Syntax
and	and(conditionA, conditionB)
or	or(conditionA, conditionB)
xor	xor(conditionA, conditionB)
not	not(conditionA)
is_null	is_null(@variable)

Shift and IF

Function	Description	Syntax
SHIFT	Shifts the index by a number of periods, giving access to lagging or leading values.	SHIFT(variable, lags_or_leads)
IF	Returns one value or another based on a condition.	IF(condition, value_if_true, value_if_false)

Daily percent change of @Close
@Close / SHIFT(@Close, 1) - 1

Return 1 if the change is positive, -1 otherwise
IF(@pct_change >= 0, 1, -1)

Row functions

Calculated across all values of the column, using only the current row — unlike the group functions below.

Function	Description	Syntax
power	Power	power(A, B)
exp	Exponential	exp(A)
sqrt	Square root	sqrt(A)
log	Natural logarithm	log(A)
log10	Base-10 logarithm	log10(A)
sgn	Sign: 1 if positive, -1 if negative	sgn(A)
abs	Absolute value	abs(A)
trunc	Truncate to integer	trunc(A)
round	Round to N digits	round(A, N)
floor	Closest integer lower than or equal to the value	floor(A)
ceil	Closest integer higher than or equal to the value	ceil(A)
sin	Sine	sin(A)
cos	Cosine	cos(A)
tan	Tangent	tan(A)
hypot	Euclidean distance — the hypotenuse of A and B	hypot(A, B)
multiply	Multiplies two values, equivalent to A * B	multiply(A, B)
nan_to_num	Replaces NaN with 0, and infinities with large finite numbers	nan_to_num(A)
all	True when every argument is true. Accepts any number of arguments	all(A, B, ...)

Group functions

Calculated within groups. Groups are defined by the columns passed as parameters; by default they are the entities of the dataset, excluding the date column.

Function	Description
rank	Numerical data ranks, 1 through n — rank(@Variable, @entity1, @entity2, ...)
cummax	Cumulative maximum per group
cummin	Cumulative minimum per group
cumprod	Cumulative product per group
cumsum	Cumulative sum per group
cumcount	Cumulative count per group
backfill	Backfills NA values, up to a limit of consecutive values — backfill(@Variable, limit, @entity1, ...)
pad	Forward-fills NA values — pad(@Variable, @entity1, ...)
pct_change	Percent change against N leading or lagging values within the group — pct_change(@Variable, N, @entity1, ...)
quantile	Quantile position within the group — quantile(@Variable, quantile, @entity1, ...)
count	Count of values in the group
nunique	Number of unique values in the group
first	First value of the group
last	Last value of the group
max	Maximum of the group values
min	Minimum of the group values
mean	Mean of the group values
median	Median of the group values
prod	Product of the group values
size	Size of the group
sem	Standard error of the mean of the group
std	Standard deviation of the group
sum	Sum of the group values
var	Variance of the group values

Rolling window functions

Calculated over a rolling window, within groups. Groups are defined the same way as above.

Function	Description
rollingcount	Count over a rolling window
rollingsum	Sum over a rolling window
rollingmean	Mean over a rolling window
rollingmedian	Median over a rolling window
rollingvar	Variance over a rolling window
rollingstd	Standard deviation over a rolling window
rollingmin	Minimum over a rolling window
rollingmax	Maximum over a rolling window
rollingsem	Standard error of the mean over a rolling window
rollingrank	Numerical data ranks over a rolling window — rollingrank(@Variable, window_N, @entity1, ...)
rollingcov	Covariance between two variables over a rolling window — rollingcov(@VariableA, @VariableB, window_N, @entity1, ...)

Date and time functions

Function	Returns
now	Current time — now()
today	Current date — today()
year	The year of the datetime
month	The month of the datetime
day	The day of the datetime
hour	The hour of the datetime
minute	The minutes of the datetime
second	The seconds of the datetime
date	The date part of the datetime
time	The time part of the datetime
dayofyear / day_of_year	The ordinal day of the year
weekofyear / week	The week ordinal of the year
dayofweek / day_of_week / weekday	Day of the week, Monday = 0 to Sunday = 6
quarter	Quarter of the date: Jan–Mar = 1, Apr–Jun = 2, and so on
days_in_month	Number of days in the month of the datetime
is_month_start	Whether it is the first day of the month, as defined by the frequency
is_month_end	Whether it is the last day of the month
is_quarter_start	Whether it is the first day of the quarter
is_quarter_end	Whether it is the last day of the quarter
is_year_start	Whether it is the first day of the year
is_year_end	Whether it is the last day of the year
is_leap_year	Whether the date falls in a leap year

The same grammar is available to AI agents through the get_pipeline_formula_reference tool on the Alphacast MCP server — see Pipeline tools.

Next steps

Calculate variable

How to use these formulas in a pipeline step.

Filter rows

Use comparisons and logical functions as row conditions.