Show HN: WhatToBuy – Describe your situation, get AI-curated shopping carts | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: WhatToBuy – Describe your situation, get AI-curated shopping carts

8 pointscrackeddude18 comments

Before reading text please try the app https://www.whattobuy.app (to get great UX feedback)

Shopping research is one of the most challenging tasks and people spend 30-60 min before buying an item. We developed a platform called “WhatToBuy” to save people time. In some cases shoppers are not super aware of what to really order for a trip or occasion. Our app helps them to get a range of products needed for each use-cases hence saving time and money.

App workflow: Describe your situation in plain English. In Fast mode, you get three ready-to-shop carts: Budget, Balanced, and Premium with real products, real prices, and direct buy links. In Deep mode, AI assistant has a conversation with you first and builds a single cart tailored specifically to your answers.

How it works: * You type something like "camping weekend with two young kids" or "setting up a home office on a tight budget" * AI assistant (powered by Claude) parses the scenario and generates a list of specific product search queries. For example, in the above query for camping, product search will be "tent 4-person easy setup" instead of simply "tent". * Those queries hit Shopping API and return real-time results. * A scoring layer ranks by price, rating, and review count to pick one winner per product category per tier.

Two modes: * Deep (default): AI assistant asks a few follow up questions before building a single personalized cart. We default to this because more context means dramatically better picks. Sign in is required for this mode, but you can always drop back to Fast mode with one click. * Fast: Instant three-tier carts, no sign in needed, works right away.

Please take a look: https://www.whattobuy.app No account needed to try the fast mode. Would love feedback on where the recommendations miss or where the UX feels off.

You need to filter out unavailable and obsolete products.

My prompt (in Fast mode, as a guest):

""" I need to take a trip to Turkey for a week. I would like to take a camera with me, but my Nikon Coolpix P1100 is too heavy for that (1.5 kg). I do need some zoom, let's say up to 250 mm but the exact maximum focal length is negotiable. """

The model seemingly failed to realize that the request is about a high-zoom compact camera. Only one of three different suggestions featured a compact camera, "Canon - PowerShot ELPH 360 HS - A Full HD Video 20.2-Megapixel Digital Camera - Black", on BestBuy (https://www.bestbuy.com/product/p/J7C86SHZLX), and it's unavailable there. So, zero success, but the 10-year-old camera suggested does fit the bill if still available from elsewhere.

This is great. thanks for taking your time to try such an ellaborate prompt. Interestingly the recommended bestbuy link is available in my location (California). Fastmode doesn't look at your location unless you are signed in.

Wondering if time permits, can you try completing your profile and try deep mode? Or i can give a try as well if you share your city or country and share you the cart link to validate. Thanks!

"Cebu, Philippines" would be a good-enough approximation.

thanks. will run few queries.

This is what i have: https://www.whattobuy.app/shared-cart/i-need-to-take-a-trip-...

found a bug as we are not having option for your location. Will add that soon.

And that's not useful at all. I asked for a long-zoom (250 mm) compact camera and only got 45 mm.

Tried it for a birthday party setup and got a reasonable list of things I hadn't thought about. Saved me the usual back-and-forth between Pinterest, Google & Amazon.The tier breakdown is actually useful, most of the time I just want the middle option and it's right there.

The Deep mode worked better for me. it asked follow up questions before building the cart and the results were more personalized than quick mode.

Appreciate your time in testing our product. Glad it worked better in deep mode. Will note that feedback. Can you confirm if the fast mode was used after completing your profile?

Generally if the profile is complete and if you signed-in for the fast mode, the results should be reasonably good if you are searching for any family members like "birthday party for my daughter", "beach trip with my kids" etc. Since deep mode gets more context we expect it be far superior in terms of result quality.

Feel free to try more queries.

Use support@whattobuy.app for any direct feedback or post it here. Thanks again!

My fast mode search was without login. For deep, I logged in and provide more context during chat. Will try fast mode with more details added to the profile.

thanks much!

I asked it that I wanted a dildo collection for my sex dungeon and it error'd out. What do you think your approach will be there?

Great question. This question is in the grey area. To allow such we might have to update our terms.

Nice overall!

It would be good if we it can take my location into consideration.. So it suggests items available in the closest place nearby.

Thanks for the feedback. Seems like a bug, if the profile includes the location, it should be used. Let me look into it.

Thanks for the great comments guys. Trying to reply to all. Appreciate all of you using the product.

I would like to know why those combination is recommended, tbh.

Great thought. We initially thought about adding an interpretability view to show users on why they got each products. Will consider adding that.

Really Useful and I recommend

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