ShopSignal — DTC competitor intelligence for AI agents

Give Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, or any MCP-compatible agent live eyes on any DTC fashion / beauty / lifestyle brand's catalog, prices, and drops — in one tool call.

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What it does

ShopSignal exposes 4 tools to any MCP-compatible AI agent. Drop it into Claude Desktop, Cursor, n8n, or your own LangGraph agent and ask things like:

"What's currently on sale at Glossier?" "Compare prices at Cuyana, Tibi, and Toteme for a slip dress." "What new products dropped at Glossier and Rhode this week?" "Track this Cuyana dress and tell me when it goes on sale: [URL]"

No scraping setup. No API keys. No selectors to maintain. The agent reads the tool schemas and just calls them.

Quick start (60 seconds)

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "shopsignal": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@apify/actors-mcp-server", "--actors", "kodek/shopsignal-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "APIFY_TOKEN": "YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. Ask: "Use ShopSignal to compare prices at glossier.com and rhodeskin.com for vitamin C serum."

Cursor

Settings → Tools and MCP → New MCP server → paste:

https://mcp.apify.com?actors=kodek/shopsignal-mcp

Set the Authorization header to Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN.

Custom agents (LangGraph, CrewAI, n8n, Mastra)

Standard Streamable HTTP MCP transport at https://mcp.apify.com. See Apify MCP docs.

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Tools

get_store_snapshot

$0.05/call · Returns full catalog with prices, variants, stock for any DTC store.

// Input
{ "url": "https://glossier.com" }

// Output (truncated)
{
  "store_name": "Glossier",
  "platform": "shopify",
  "product_count": 142,
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-04T18:22:00Z",
  "products": [
    {
      "handle": "balm-dotcom",
      "title": "Balm Dotcom",
      "vendor": "Glossier",
      "price_min": 14, "price_max": 14, "currency": "USD",
      "compare_at_price": null, "on_sale": false,
      "available": true,
      "images": ["https://..."],
      "variants": [
        { "title": "Original", "option1": "Original", "price": 14, "available": true },
        { "title": "Birthday", "option1": "Birthday", "price": 14, "available": false }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

track_product_price

$0.05/call · Returns current price + 30-day history + lowest/highest seen.

// Input
{ "product_url": "https://cuyana.com/products/classic-easy-tote" }

// Output
{
  "title": "Classic Easy Tote",
  "current_price": 195, "currency": "USD",
  "available": true,
  "lowest_30d": 156, "highest_30d": 195,
  "recent_drop_pct": null,
  "history": [
    { "date": "2026-04-04", "price": 195, "available": true },
    { "date": "2026-04-15", "price": 156, "available": true },
    { "date": "2026-04-22", "price": 195, "available": true }
  ]
}

compare_products_across_brands ⭐ premium

$0.50/call · The killer tool. Finds matching products across multiple brands using text + image similarity. Replaces 30+ minutes of manual comparison.

// Input
{
  "query": "white slip dress",
  "brand_urls": ["https://faithfullthebrand.com", "https://staudclothing.com", "https://cuyana.com"],
  "max_per_brand": 3
}

// Output
{
  "query": "white slip dress",
  "brands_searched": 3,
  "matches": [
    {
      "canonical_title": "White satin slip midi dress",
      "options": [
        { "brand": "Faithfull the Brand", "price": 198, "url": "...", "similarity_score": 0.92, "in_stock": true },
        { "brand": "Staud", "price": 345, "url": "...", "similarity_score": 0.85, "in_stock": true },
        { "brand": "Cuyana", "price": 295, "url": "...", "similarity_score": 0.81, "in_stock": false }
      ],
      "cheapest_in_stock": { "brand": "Faithfull the Brand", "price": 198, "url": "..." }
    }
  ]
}

detect_drops_and_restocks

$0.20/call · Returns new products, restocks, price drops, and discontinued items in the last N days.

// Input
{ "url": "https://cuyana.com", "days": 7 }

// Output
{
  "new_products": [{ "title": "...", "price": 78, "url": "..." }],
  "restocked": [{ "title": "...", "url": "...", "out_since": "2026-04-12" }],
  "price_drops": [{ "title": "...", "old_price": 88, "new_price": 64, "drop_pct": 27 }],
  "discontinued": [{ "title": "...", "last_seen": "2026-04-28" }]
}

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Pricing

Tool	Price per call	What it replaces
get_store_snapshot	$0.05	~5 min manual browsing
track_product_price	$0.05	~2 min checking + spreadsheet update
compare_products_across_brands	$0.50	~30 min cross-brand research
detect_drops_and_restocks	$0.20	~15 min weekly competitor review

No subscriptions. No monthly minimums. You pay only when the call succeeds. Failed calls (non-Shopify stores, network errors) are not charged. Test on a single store before scaling — most users get a feel for the value within 5–10 calls.

Apify handles billing, taxes, and invoicing. You only pay for successful calls.

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Coverage

✅ Currently supports: 84 verified Shopify-powered DTC brands across fashion, beauty, and lifestyle. Featured brands include:

• Beauty: Glossier, Rhode, Supergoop, Sol de Janeiro, Kosas, Merit, Tower 28
• Women's fashion: Skims, Everlane, Cuyana, Mejuri, Tibi, ThirdLove
• Men's fashion: Kith, Taylor Stitch, Buck Mason, Aimé Leon Dore
• Lifestyle / home: Allbirds, Our Place, Stanley, Therabody, Vuori, Brooklinen

Full seed list of 84 brands is snapshotted daily, so price history is available from day one.

❌ Does NOT currently support:

• Stores using enterprise bot protection (Cloudflare Bot Fight, Akamai Bot Manager) — Aritzia, Lululemon, J.Crew, Rhone, and similar require browser-fingerprint scraping (v2 roadmap).
• Brands that have migrated off Shopify to Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Magento, or custom builds — Reformation, Drunk Elephant, Anthropologie, Free People, and similar enterprise DTC brands.
• Marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, REVOLVE, SSENSE, MR PORTER, Net-a-Porter) — different scrapers needed.
• Stores requiring authentication.
• Some Shopify Plus stores restrict their public /products.json endpoint (Skims is one example). These pass platform detection but return empty or partial catalogs. We'll document the specific stores affected as users surface them.
• A small number of seed-list brands currently return 404 on /products.json (Vuori, Buck Mason, Princess Polly, Alo Yoga, Briogeo, Staud, Mytopicals, For Love & Lemons). We're monitoring these — some may resolve naturally, others will be addressed in a future update.

Adding stores

If you query a store that's not in our seed list, we'll attempt detection on the fly. If it's Shopify-powered, you'll get a result and the store gets added to our daily snapshot rotation automatically. Non-Shopify stores return a clear error.

How it works

ShopSignal uses Shopify's public /products.json endpoint, which every Shopify store exposes by default. No scraping required for v1. Data is structured, fast, and reliable.

For each track_product_price call, ShopSignal stores a daily snapshot in its history dataset. The longer the tool is in use, the deeper the price history becomes — early users automatically benefit from data the tool collected before they showed up.

The seed watchlist (84 verified Shopify-powered DTC stores) is snapshotted daily, so price history exists from day one for the most-asked-about brands.

Why ShopSignal exists

The DTC e-commerce category has dozens of competitor-pricing SaaS tools — Prisync, Particl, Skuuudle, Price2Spy, Intelligence Node — all charging $50–$10,000+/month with dashboards. None of them are accessible to AI agents.

AI shopping agents and DTC-operator agents need this data inside their reasoning loops, not behind a separate dashboard. ShopSignal is the first MCP server purpose-built for this — pay only for what you call, no monthly minimum, agent-discoverable through Apify's MCP marketplace.

Examples (paste these into Claude)

For shoppers: "Use ShopSignal to find me a white slip midi dress under $250 — compare Faithfull the Brand, Staud, Rouje, and Cuyana."

For DTC operators: "Run a weekly competitor scan: what new products dropped at Skims, Wearpepper, and ThirdLove in the last 7 days?"

For agencies: "Build me a snapshot of every product on sale right now at Glossier, Rhode, Kosas, and Merit. Sort by discount %."

For researchers: "Track this Tibi dress for 30 days and tell me how many times it went on sale: [URL]"

FAQ

Is this legal? Yes. /products.json is a public, documented Shopify endpoint that stores deliberately expose. No login walls bypassed, no ToS violations.

Can I use this for my own store's data? Yes, but you have better options — Shopify's Admin API gives you private data ShopSignal can't see (orders, customers, financial reports). ShopSignal is for competitor intelligence on stores you don't own.

What's the rate limit? Apify handles rate limiting and proxy rotation transparently. Practical limit: ~1,000 store snapshots per hour per user.

How do I report a bug or request a feature? Open an issue on GitHub.

What if a store isn't on Shopify? v1 returns { platform: "other", error: "non-shopify store, supported in v2" }. Cookbook for v2 (Playwright-backed) ETA: ~6 weeks post-launch.

Roadmap

• [x] v1.0 — Shopify-only, 4 tools, daily history of seed list
• [ ] v1.1 — webhooks for detect_drops_and_restocks (push to Slack/Discord/email)
• [ ] v1.2 — historical sale-frequency analytics ("how often does Cuyana mark down dresses?")
• [ ] v2.0 — Playwright fallback for non-Shopify (Reformation, Net-a-Porter, etc.)
• [ ] v2.1 — Marketplace expansion (eBay sold listings, Grailed, Vinted) for resale-aware pricing

Built by

kodek — building MCP servers for vertical e-commerce intelligence. Sister tools coming soon for collectibles, watches, and home goods.

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ShopSignal is not affiliated with Shopify, Inc. or any of the brands it tracks. All data is sourced from publicly available endpoints.