Warehouse Rebalance
by
Stock transfer decisions for ecommerce teams: find where demand and inventory are in different locations, then size the transfer against the margin and shipping cost it recovers.
Multi-location inventory creates a problem single-location businesses never have: stock that exists but sits in the wrong place. The east coast warehouse runs out of a size the west coast has twelve weeks of, so orders either ship long distance at a cost nobody attributes to the decision, or they do not convert at all. Transfers get made by feel, usually too late and usually in round quantities. This skill compares demand and cover per location, prices each transfer against the shipping it saves and the margin it recovers, and returns the transfers worth making with quantity and origin.
What It Does
- Compares demand and stock cover per SKU per location.
- Identifies the imbalances large enough to be worth moving stock for.
- Prices the transfer against the long distance shipping it avoids.
- Estimates the revenue lost to stock-outs at each location if nothing moves.
- Sizes the quantity rather than moving in round numbers.
- Returns the transfers with quantity, origin and destination attached.
Use Cases
- Find the size that is out in one region and overstocked in another.
- Stop absorbing long distance shipping on orders a transfer would have fixed.
- Rebalance before a peak trading period rather than during it.
- Ignore the imbalances too small to justify moving anything.
Example Session
Which stock should move between warehouses this week?
Three transfers are worth making. Two other imbalances are not worth the freight.
- SKU | East cover | West cover | Qty to move | Freight | Recovered
- Trail runner, 9 | 3 days | 11 weeks | 240 West to East | $310 | $4,100
- Base layer, M | 1 week | 8 weeks | 180 West to East | $240 | $2,600
- Rain jacket, L | 9 weeks | 2 weeks | 90 East to West | $190 | $1,450
- Wool sock, 3pk | 4 weeks | 6 weeks | None | | Below threshold
The first transfer is the clearest: three days of cover on the east coast against eleven weeks on the west, and $310 of freight recovers $4,100 of margin that is currently either shipping long distance or not converting. The sock imbalance is real and small, and moving it costs more than the difference it makes, so it stays where it is.
Why This Beats Prompting It Yourself
A Total Stock Figure vs Cover Per Location: The Hidden Risk
A generic prompt looks at total inventory, which says you have plenty of that size. Pooled across locations that is true and useless: the demand is in one place and the stock is in another. What is missing is the cover per location, the freight a transfer would cost, and the shipping premium you are already paying to work around the imbalance.
When You Still Need The Freight Priced Against The Recovery
A transfer is only worth its freight. This skill states $310 of freight against $4,100 of recovered margin on one SKU, and declines a real imbalance on another because the move costs more than it returns. The quantities are sized to the demand rather than rounded, which is what keeps a rebalance from creating the opposite problem next month.
Known Limitations
Recovered margin assumes the demand at the short location continues at its current rate, which holds over a few weeks and breaks across a promo. Freight is estimated from your own transfer history unless a rate card is supplied, and the output says which it used. It recommends the transfers and does not create them in your warehouse system.
Install It
- Download the ZIP.
It is free and there is no account to create. - Unzip it into your agent's skills folder.
Claude Code reads ~/.claude/skills/, which is hidden by default: the command in the folder block opens it. Other agents scan their own directory, so drop the same folder there instead. - Ask your agent to use it.
Restart the agent if it was already running, then it picks the skill up with no config.
skills folder
Copy
~/.claude/skills/warehouse-rebalance/
SKILL.md
references/freight-rates.md
transfers/
# one file per run, transfers priced
# macOS: create the folder and open it in Finder
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && open ~/.claude/skills
# Windows: paste in the Explorer address bar
%USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\Frequently asked questions
How is this different from looking at stock by location?
A location report shows the imbalance. This prices it: what the freight costs, what margin the transfer recovers, and whether the gap is large enough to be worth moving anything. Most imbalances in a catalog are not, and knowing which ones are is the whole job.
Which agents does the skill run in?
Any agent that supports the open SKILL.md format: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Manus, Grok and others load it unmodified. The format is portable, the location is not. Each agent scans its own skills directory, so you drop the same folder into whichever one yours uses. There is no config file to edit and no API key to provision.
What does it need connected to work?
Inventory and demand per location per SKU, plus freight costs between locations. Without a rate card it estimates freight from your own transfer history and labels the figure, which is usually close enough to rank the transfers correctly.
Why does it decline some transfers?
Because a real imbalance can still be too small to move stock for. Freight, handling and the time in transit all cost something, and below a threshold the difference the transfer makes is smaller than what it costs. Those are listed so you can see they were considered.
Does it account for shipping we already absorb?
Yes, and it is often the larger half. Orders shipped long distance to work around an imbalance carry a premium that rarely gets attributed to the stock decision, and including it moves several transfers from marginal to clearly worthwhile.
What is included with the skill?
The skill itself, the freight rate reference, the transfer template, and the thresholds below which a transfer is declined. It is free and security scanned. We re-publish the ZIP when the freight model changes, so download it again if your transfer list shifts.
Stock in the wrong location is stock you do not have.
Polar joins inventory, demand and shipping cost per region in one semantic layer, so a transfer is justified by the margin it recovers.
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