Price monitoring with Decodo

A workflow for pricing tasks, built on the Decodo CLI: get a current price, compare across retailers, and track prices over time to catch drops. It assumes the decodo CLI is set up — for installation/auth, see the decodo-web-scraping skill.

When to use

• "What does product X cost right now?"
• "Compare the price of X across retailers / find the cheapest."
• "Tell me if X drops below $Y" / "track this price over time."
• Building a price log, deal alert, or competitive pricing report.

Prerequisites

This builds on the decodo CLI. Quick check:

decodo whoami    # or: npx -y @decodo/cli whoami

If it isn't installed or authenticated, set it up first via the decodo-web-scraping skill (npx @decodo/cli, then DECODOAUTHTOKEN / decodo setup --token). Everything below assumes the CLI works.

Pricing targets

Run decodo targets for the full list and decodo <target> --help for flags — note --parse (structured JSON), --geo (storefront/locale), and --currency (Amazon).

1. Get a current price

Use a parse-enabled target with --parse. Price field paths are target-specific — inspect with jq 'keys' if unsure. Verified examples:

# Amazon by ASIN — price lives at .results.pricing[].price
decodo amazon-pricing B09H74FXNW --parse | jq -r '.results.pricing[].price'

# Cross-retailer via Google Shopping — sellers + prices under .results.results.organic[]
decodo google-shopping-search "logitech mx master 3s" --parse \
  | jq -r '.results.results.organic[] | "\(.price_str)\t\(.title)"'

2. Find the cheapest seller

Show the lowest listings with merchant + title and let the user/agent judge — don't blindly take the global minimum. Google Shopping results mix in accessories (skins, cases, grips), used items, and variants, so the cheapest row is often not the product (e.g. an $18.99 "Skins & Wraps" outranking the $36 mouse).

decodo google-shopping-search "logitech mx master 3s" --parse \
  | jq -r '[.results.results.organic[]] | sort_by(.price) | .[0:5][]
           | "\(.price_str)\t\(.merchant.name)\t\(.title)"'

To narrow to the actual product, filter out accessory titles first:

  ... | jq -r '[.results.results.organic[]
       | select(.title | test("skin|wrap|case|cover|grip|protector"; "i") | not)]
       | sort_by(.price) | .[0] | "\(.price_str) — \(.merchant.name)"'

3. Record a price over time (NDJSON log)

Append one timestamped line per check; the file becomes your time series.

ts=$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)
price=$(decodo amazon-pricing B09H74FXNW --parse | jq -r '.results.pricing[0].price')
printf '{"ts":"%s","sku":"B09H74FXNW","price":%s}\n' "$ts" "$price" >> prices.ndjson

4. Detect a drop

Compare the two most recent records:

tail -2 prices.ndjson | jq -s 'if (.[1].price < .[0].price)
  then "DROP \(.[0].price) → \(.[1].price)" else "no drop (\(.[1].price))" end'

Schedule step 3 (e.g. a cron job) to build history; run step 4 after each append to alert.

Tips & gotchas

• Keep --geo (and --currency on Amazon) fixed across runs so prices stay comparable —

storefront/locale changes both price and availability.

• price is a number; pricestr keeps the currency symbol (e.g. $79.99), priceold is the

pre-discount price when present.

• Out-of-stock or blocked variants may omit price — guard jq with // empty or // "n/a".
• Exit 5 (rate limited) → lower frequency / back off. Exit 3 (auth) → recheck the token (see

decodo-web-scraping). Exit codes are listed in that skill.

Links

• Setup, surfaces, output handling: the decodo-web-scraping skill
• Targets & parameters: <https://help.decodo.com/docs/web-scraping-api-targets>;