Have an agent verify live product prices before you buy

Use a chain of page-reading tools to confirm current prices, then manually check the link before spending money.

Done with ChatGPTยท Advanced

What they did
A developer ran into stale camera prices from ChatGPT and responded by wiring together an MCP server that could try several ways to read product pages. It started with cheaper methods first, then moved through reader tools, browser-based fetches, stealth browsing, and optional paid scrapers if the page looked blocked or incomplete. Each result was checked for basic signs of trustworthiness, like a visible price on a product page or actual results on a search page.
How it went
In a preselected 150-site test, the combined setup got the right page information 96% of the time. The strongest single tool they tried, Firecrawl, reached 85%, while free tools alone managed 88%. Some sites, including Shopee and Temu, still defeated every tool in the stack.
Tips
This works best when the agent is allowed to retry with different readers, but it can be slow on difficult sites. The developer still advises opening the page yourself before any expensive purchase.

Try it yourself with ChatGPT

Check the current prices for these product links: [paste URLs]. Try the cheapest page-reading method first, then fall back to stronger tools only if the page is blocked, empty, behind cookies, or redirects to login. For each link, confirm that the page really shows a price, the right search result, or another clear sign that the content loaded correctly. Report the price, seller if visible, availability if visible, and the time checked in a table. If a page cannot be read reliably, mark it as failed and explain why. Stop and ask for my approval before any purchase, checkout, payment, or other irreversible action.

Fill in the [brackets]. Agents can make mistakes, so review anything before it is sent, paid or deleted.

Read the original on reddit.com โ†—

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