Apify Ecommerce

E-Commerce Cluster

Answer natural language e-commerce questions by routing to the right Apify Actor and delivering a synthesized answer via the apify CLI.

CLI rules: Always pass --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-ecommerce, --json (or the relevant --format flag on datasets get-items), and 2>/dev/null. The --user-agent flag is critical for telemetry — never omit it.

Prerequisites

(No need to check it upfront)

• Apify CLI v1.5.0+ (npm install -g apify-cli)
• jq (recommended for quick extraction and filtering; brew install jq on macOS, apt install jq on Linux)
• Authentication via one of:
• apify login (OAuth, opens browser)
• APIFY_TOKEN env variable (e.g. export APIFY_TOKEN=... or .env file)
• Token from Apify Console → Settings → Integrations

Verify auth: apify info --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-ecommerce — should show username and userId.

Workflow

Copy this checklist and track progress:

Task Progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Detect intent and select Actor
- [ ] Step 2: Fetch Actor schema
- [ ] Step 3: Ask user preferences (format, result count)
- [ ] Step 4: Run the Actor and fetch results
- [ ] Step 5: Analyze results and deliver synthesized answer

Step 1: Detect Intent and Select Actor

Classify the user's message into an intent, then pick the right Actor.

Intent signals:

If multiple intents are detected, ask: "Do you want [intent A] or [intent B]?"

Actor routing table — always try Primary first, switch to Fallback only if it fails or returns 0 results:

Step 2: Fetch Actor Schema

Fetch the Actor summary, input schema, and README:

# Summary (title, description, pricing, stats)
apify actors info "ACTOR_ID" --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-ecommerce --json 2>/dev/null

# Input schema (required and optional parameters; schema lives in
# .taggedBuilds.latest.build.inputSchema as an escaped JSON string)
apify actors info "ACTOR_ID" --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-ecommerce --input --json 2>/dev/null

# README (capabilities, examples, gotchas)
apify actors info "ACTOR_ID" --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-ecommerce --readme 2>/dev/null

Replace ACTOR_ID with the selected Actor (e.g., apify/e-commerce-scraping-tool).

Step 3: Ask User Preferences

Before running, ask: 1. Output format:

• Quick answer (default) — synthesized answer in chat, no file saved
• CSV — full export saved to disk
• JSON — full export saved to disk

2. Result count — suggest defaults by intent:

Cost safety: Always set a sensible result limit in the Actor input (e.g., maxResults, resultsLimit, maxCrawledPages, or equivalent field from the input schema). Default to the per-intent values above unless the user explicitly asks for more. Warn the user before running large scrapes (1000+ results) as they consume more Apify credits.

Step 4: Run the Actor and Fetch Results

Two steps: run the Actor (blocks until done), then fetch dataset items in the requested format.

Run the Actor — returns run metadata as JSON; extract defaultDatasetId for the next step:

apify actors call "ACTOR_ID" -i 'JSON_INPUT' \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-ecommerce --json 2>/dev/null

From the output use .id (run ID), .status (should be SUCCEEDED), and .defaultDatasetId.

Fetch results — pick the variant based on the user's preference:

# Quick answer: total count + fields + top 5 in chat (no file)
apify datasets info DATASET_ID --json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-ecommerce 2>/dev/null \
  | jq '{itemCount, fields, consoleUrl}'
apify datasets get-items DATASET_ID --limit 5 \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-ecommerce --format json 2>/dev/null

# CSV file
apify datasets get-items DATASET_ID \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-ecommerce --format csv 2>/dev/null > YYYY-MM-DD_OUTPUT_FILE.csv

# JSON file
apify datasets get-items DATASET_ID \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-ecommerce --format json 2>/dev/null > YYYY-MM-DD_OUTPUT_FILE.json

Other --format options: jsonl, xlsx, xml, rss, html. Use --offset N to paginate large datasets.

Tip: for anything more than a quick peek, save the dataset to a local file first (with > file.json / > file.csv) and run further analysis from disk. apify datasets get-items always streams over the network, so piping it straight into jq re-downloads the whole thing every iteration.

Combining with `jq` for quick extraction:

Treat jq as a complement to apify datasets get-items, not a replacement: server-side --limit / --offset / --format keeps cost and bandwidth down. Use jq on a sample item or on a file you already saved.

# Discover real field names from one sample item (Actor outputs vary —
# use this before composing further jq queries)
apify datasets get-items DATASET_ID --limit 1 --format json \
  --user-agent apify-awesome-skills/apify-ecommerce 2>/dev/null \
  | jq '.[0]'

# Quick aggregation from a JSON file you already saved with the commands above
jq '[.[] | select(.rating != null and .rating >= 4.5)] | length' YYYY-MM-DD_OUTPUT_FILE.json

Step 5: Analyze Results and Deliver Answer

After the run completes, deliver a direct synthesized answer — not a data dump:

• Pricing: price range, average, top 5 cheapest with URLs
• Reviews: average rating, top 3 positive and negative themes, recent snippets
• Bestsellers: top 10 by rank with name, price, rating, URL
• Sellers: total sellers, price range per seller, unauthorized seller flags
• Store-scrape: total products, category breakdown, price range, stock summary
• Tech-stack: platform detected, confidence level, notable plugins
• Food delivery: restaurant count, average rating, price tier breakdown
• Ads intelligence: total ads, active/inactive split, top creative formats

Error Handling

• Auth error → run apify login, or set APIFY_TOKEN env var
• Actor not found → check Actor ID spelling in the routing table
• Run status FAILED → open the console URL (.consoleUrl from run metadata) for logs
• Timeout / very long run → pass --timeout <seconds> to apify actors call
• No results → broaden the keyword or switch to a Fallback Actor from the routing table
• proxy is required → add "proxy": {"useApifyProxy": true} to the Actor input
• Platform not detected → default to apify/e-commerce-scraping-tool with generic intent