samsclub-research

Researches Sam's Club's catalog — department/category navigation, category product grids, product detail with pricing/availability/ratings, related-item shelves, and curated content pages — using the Crawlora API, returning clean JSON. Use when the user asks to browse Sam's Club departments, list a Sam's Club category's products, look up a Sam's Club product's price/rating, or find items related to a Sam's Club product — instead of scraping samsclub.com.

Browse Sam's Club's department taxonomy and category product grids, pull full product detail (price, availability, rating, item number), related-item shelves, and curated content/landing pages — all as normalized JSON from the Crawlora API, with no HTML scraping.

When to use this skill

• "What departments/categories does Sam's Club have?" / "browse this Sam's Club category."
• "What does this Sam's Club product cost, and is it in stock?"
• "What's related to / bought with this Sam's Club product?"
• "What's on Sam's Club's [seasonal savings / New Arrivals] page?"

Setup (one-time)

• Get a free Crawlora API key (2,000 credits/mo, no card) at https://crawlora.net.
• Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY in the environment before running the helper.
• The helper reads CRAWLORA_API_KEY from the environment and sends requests to https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1. Missing/invalid key → 401.

How it works

1. Browse the taxonomy — /samsclub/departments returns every top-level department with its subcategory links; each link's type is "browse" (feeds /samsclub/category) or "cp" (feeds /samsclub/content).
2. List a category — /samsclub/category (id — a bare category id or a full /browse/{slug}/{id} URL, paginated with page) returns the category's product grid: name, brand, pricing, availability, rating, image.
3. Detail — /samsclub/product/{id} (id — the numeric product id from a product page's /ip/ URL) fetches full product detail: name, brand, description, breadcrumb, pricing, availability, images, aggregate rating/review count, and the club's own item number.
4. Related items — /samsclub/product/{id}/related returns the same product's related-item carousels ("Members also considered", "Items you may like") as normalized products.
5. Curated content — /samsclub/content/{id} (id — the numeric content page id from a /cp/{slug}/{id} URL) returns one curated landing/hub page: title, breadcrumb, named product shelves, and a category-navigation tile grid.

Full endpoint list, methods, and params: reference/endpoints.md.

Calling the API

sh

# Full department/category taxonomy:
scripts/crawlora.sh /samsclub/departments | jq '.'

# List a category's products (id from a /browse/{slug}/{id} link or nav result):
scripts/crawlora.sh /samsclub/category id=980029 page=1 | jq '.'

# Product detail (id is a path param, from a /ip/{slug}/{id} URL):
scripts/crawlora.sh /samsclub/product/prod20355602 | jq '.data'

# Related items for the same product:
scripts/crawlora.sh /samsclub/product/prod20355602/related | jq '.'

Use scripts/crawlora.sh for all requests; it keeps the API key out of command-line arguments.

Endpoint reference

See reference/endpoints.md for every Sam's Club endpoint this skill uses (method, path, params, description).

Examples

• Department-to-category sweep: /samsclub/departments to find a department's "browse" link and its category id, then /samsclub/category paginated with page to list products with pricing and availability.
• Product due diligence: /samsclub/product/{id} for price, rating, and availability, then /samsclub/product/{id}/related to see what Sam's Club surfaces alongside it before recommending or comparing.
• Seasonal hub check: /samsclub/departments to find a "cp" link, then /samsclub/content/{id} to pull that curated page's shelves and navigation tiles (e.g. a savings event or "New Arrivals" hub).

Notes & limits

• Credits / pay-on-success: billed only on 2xx; free tier 2,000 credits/mo. Key at https://crawlora.net.
• Public data only — public samsclub.com pages; respect Sam's Club's terms.
• Security: key lives in CRAWLORA_API_KEY only — never hardcode, query-param, or commit it.
• No free-text search endpoint — discovery is department/category-based only: /samsclub/departments → /samsclub/category, not a keyword search.
• id is a query param on /samsclub/category (accepts a bare numeric id or a full /browse/{slug}/{id} URL — only the trailing id is used) but a path param on /samsclub/product/{id}, /samsclub/product/{id}/related, and /samsclub/content/{id}.
• Unknown-id behavior differs by endpoint: an unrecognized /samsclub/category id returns a genuine zero-result page (not an error); an unrecognized /samsclub/content/{id} id returns 404; an unrecognized /samsclub/product/{id}/related id still returns generic fallback shelves rather than an error.
• /samsclub/content/{id} has no pagination — a content page's shelves are a fixed, hand-curated set.