Shopify Admin Carrier Performance Comparison

Purpose

Aggregates fulfillments across recent orders, joins them to the shipping line on each order, and compares carriers head-to-head on (a) average transit days, (b) on-time rate (delivered before/at the customer-facing estimate), and (c) shipping cost per order. Surfaces which carrier is the right default per zone, route, or weight class. Read-only — no mutations.

Prerequisites

• Authenticated Shopify CLI session: shopify store auth --store <domain> --scopes read_orders
• API scopes: read_orders

Parameters

Safety

ℹ️ Read-only skill — no mutations are executed. Safe to run at any time. Cost data uses the shipping line price the customer paid, not your negotiated carrier rate; if you want true cost variance you must overlay carrier invoices yourself.

Workflow Steps

1. OPERATION: orders — query Inputs: query: "fulfillment_status:shipped created_at:>='<NOW - days_back days>'", first: 250, select fulfillments { trackingInfo, createdAt, deliveredAt, inTransitAt }, shippingLine { carrierIdentifier, originalPriceSet, title }, totalWeight, shippingAddress, pagination cursor Expected output: Fulfilled orders with shipping line and fulfillment timing; paginate until hasNextPage: false

2. OPERATION: fulfillments — query (per fulfillment ID for any order missing inline data) Inputs: id: <fulfillmentGid> Expected output: Detailed events, deliveredAt, estimatedDeliveryAt

3. Group by carrier (use shippingLine.carrierIdentifier if present, else parse trackingInfo.company). For each carrier compute: avg transit days, p90 transit days, on-time rate (deliveredAt <= estimatedDeliveryAt), avg shipping price, order count.

4. If segment_by is set, repeat the group within each segment (e.g., per shippingAddress.countryCode).

5. Filter out carriers below min_orders and sort by avg transit days ascending.

GraphQL Operations

# orders:query — validated against api_version 2025-01
query OrdersForCarrierComparison($query: String!, $after: String) {
  orders(first: 250, after: $after, query: $query) {
    edges {
      node {
        id
        name
        createdAt
        totalWeight
        shippingAddress {
          countryCode
          provinceCode
          zip
        }
        shippingLine {
          carrierIdentifier
          title
          code
          originalPriceSet {
            shopMoney {
              amount
              currencyCode
            }
          }
        }
        fulfillments {
          id
          createdAt
          inTransitAt
          deliveredAt
          estimatedDeliveryAt
          status
          trackingInfo {
            company
            number
          }
        }
      }
    }
    pageInfo {
      hasNextPage
      endCursor
    }
  }
}

# fulfillments:query — validated against api_version 2025-01
query FulfillmentDetail($id: ID!) {
  fulfillment(id: $id) {
    id
    status
    createdAt
    inTransitAt
    deliveredAt
    estimatedDeliveryAt
    trackingInfo {
      company
      number
      url
    }
    events(first: 50) {
      edges {
        node {
          status
          happenedAt
          message
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Session Tracking

Claude MUST emit the following output at each stage. This is mandatory.

On start, emit:

╔══════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  SKILL: Carrier Performance Comparison       ║
║  Store: <store domain>                       ║
║  Started: <YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM UTC>             ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════╝

After each step, emit:

[N/TOTAL] <QUERY|MUTATION>  <OperationName>
          → Params: <brief summary of key inputs>
          → Result: <count or outcome>

On completion, emit:

For format: human (default):

══════════════════════════════════════════════
CARRIER PERFORMANCE  (<days_back> days)
  Orders analyzed:        <n>
  With delivery data:     <n>

  Carrier        Orders  Avg Days  P90  On-Time%  Avg Cost
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  <carrier>      <n>     <d>       <d>  <pct>%    $<n>
  <carrier>      <n>     <d>       <d>  <pct>%    $<n>
  Output: carrier_performance_<date>.csv
══════════════════════════════════════════════

For format: json, emit:

{
  "skill": "carrier-performance-comparison",
  "store": "<domain>",
  "period_days": 60,
  "orders_analyzed": 0,
  "carriers": [
    {
      "name": "UPS",
      "orders": 0,
      "avg_transit_days": 0,
      "p90_transit_days": 0,
      "on_time_pct": 0,
      "avg_cost": 0,
      "currency": "USD"
    }
  ],
  "output_file": "carrier_performance_<date>.csv"
}

Output Format

CSV file carrier_performance_<YYYY-MM-DD>.csv with columns: carrier, segment, orders, avg_transit_days, p90_transit_days, on_time_pct, avg_cost, total_cost, currency

Error Handling

Best Practices

• Compare carriers only at min_orders >= 10; smaller samples are noise.
• Use segment_by: country for international comparisons — a carrier strong domestically may be weak across borders.
• Pair this skill with delivery-time-analysis for the time-only view; this skill adds cost and on-time dimensions.
• A carrier with great transit time but high cost may still win if your customers value speed (high AOV stores) — overlay this report with customer-facing NPS or review data.
• Run quarterly during contract review windows to bring data, not gut feel, to carrier negotiations.