Know how many monthsyou actually have.

Your own numbers: recent monthly revenue and expenses (a few months is enough), plus your cash on hand. You can paste them in, point a Claude Skill at an exported CSV, or wire your accounting tool in — Cash-Flow Sentinel is the read-and-grade layer on top, and it never includes or resells your data. It reads the numbers you connect and never invents any. The included sample ledger and workbook show the exact shape it expects.

On runway and trajectory, not the bank balance. It computes net burn per month (expenses minus revenue), your current burn rate versus the trailing average, revenue coverage, and runway (cash divided by current burn), then returns a verdict — HEALTHY, TIGHT, AT RISK, or CRITICAL. The anti-happy-ears core is two gates: a hard runway floor (under three months of runway is CRITICAL regardless of trajectory) and a trajectory gate (burn rising more than 15% over the trailing average bumps the verdict one level worse, because a static runway number is optimistic while burn is climbing). In the worked sample, $640K and an 8-month runway would read TIGHT — but burn jumped from $50K to $80K, so the trajectory gate bumps it to AT RISK.

Because the balance is the number that makes founders complacent. The same $640K is thirteen months of runway or four, depending entirely on your burn — and the balance never tells you which one you're living in. A sharp CFO reads the months you have at your real burn rate and whether that number is even trustworthy, not how big the number in the bank looks. That's the whole point of the system: see past a comfortable balance and catch the runway turning before it's an emergency.

No — it's read-only. It reads your numbers and delivers the cash read to you; it never moves money, pays a bill, edits your books, transacts, or manages anything. It models the scenarios — the monthly burn that restores a healthy runway, how many months a cut or a raise buys, the path to default-alive — and you decide and execute. The read is the product; the calls are yours.

It flags exactly that. A single month can be lumpy — a tax payment, an annual renewal, a one-off — and a lumpy month masquerading as your run rate would distort the read. Cash-Flow Sentinel reports the current burn against the trailing average so an outlier is visible, and the method (in the included playbook) tells you to normalize one-off spikes so the burn figure is representative. It won't quietly let a single spike — or a single quiet month — set your runway.

They're two sides of the same coin. The Forecast Floor computes the defensible revenue number — the money that has to clear your burn and fund the runway. Cash-Flow Sentinel grades the cash side: how many months that funding actually buys you and whether burn is eating it faster than it looks. Run the Forecast Floor to defend the number; run Cash-Flow Sentinel to know how long it lasts. Both also surface as lines in the Operating Cadence Engine's Monday report — CFS is the cash line, Pipeline Commander is the pipeline line.

No on both. It tells you the honest read on the numbers you give it — but a runway depends on what you actually spend and raise from here, which is on you, so nothing is guaranteed. The HEALTHY/AT-RISK verdicts are cash and runway hygiene, not financial, accounting, investment, or tax advice: a cost cut, a raise, or how you report any of it carries consequences only you own. It never invents numbers, and it grades only the numbers you bring it.