According to CoinMeta, the "Fed mouthpiece" Nick Timiraos states that forward guidance refers to statements made by central banks regarding future planned actions or under what circumstances a certain action will be taken. This is quite different from a reaction function, which is a type of mapping relationship that can be represented, for example, by the Taylor rule and does not require any forecasting. A reaction function does not indicate where the economy or policy will go in the future; rather, it answers how policy should respond in the face of specific economic conditions, policy trade-offs, or other factors.