
Forecast First, Ask Later: How DCATS Makes Time Series Smarter with LLMs
When it comes to forecasting traffic patterns, weather, or financial activity, the prevailing wisdom in machine learning has long been: better models mean better predictions. But a new approach flips this assumption on its head. Instead of chasing ever-more complex architectures, the DCATS framework (Data-Centric Agent for Time Series), developed by researchers at Visa, suggests we should first get our data in order—and let a language model do it. The Agentic Turn in AutoML DCATS builds on the trend of integrating Large Language Model (LLM) agents into AutoML pipelines, but with a twist. While prior systems like AIDE focus on automating model design and hyperparameter tuning, DCATS delegates a more fundamental task to its LLM agent: curating the right data. ...