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Build an agent that shops the internet to a budget for me

Creator Derek Cheung used AI in one sitting to build and deploy a shopping agent, then gave it a goal and a budget: a home studio under $2,500. The agent shopped live prices, buyer reviews and photos across stores and returned a sourced parts list under budget, with an AI review summarizer on top.

$2,500

How it works

  1. Write a product-requirements doc to keep the build from drifting
  2. The AI builds the agent backend from Anthropic's commerce-agents blueprint
  3. Wire a web-scraping API as its eyes
  4. Deploy live on Railway
  5. Give the agent a goal and a $2,500 budget
  6. Agent compares live prices, reviews and photos
  7. Returns a sourced parts list under budget

Why it’s worth knowing

He didn't use a shopping agent — the AI built him a personal one, deployed it, and it shopped to his budget.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on youtube.com. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be
2The prompt, with the steps
3The check when it’s done
Upgraded prompts are coming soon.

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Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.