Show HN: Shopal – Custom GPT to help you buy electronics

[kiranp]

Hello Everyone,

I recently wanted to buy a coffee machine and I did spend a awful lot of time watching youtube reviews of coffee machines to finally figure out the right one.

This got me thinking and I created a custom GPT for the exact same purpose(not just for coffee machines).

Introducing shoppal - https://chat.openai.com/g/g-ZDxNktFAM-shoppal

A custom GPT to help you make informed decision while buying electronic gadgets(for now).

Please try it out and let me know if you have any feedback. I am also happy to take any other technical questions you may have.

[samstave]

It just kinda sucks that you also need to be a GPT+ sub to use custom GPTs. Shouldnt I just be able to pay as I go useage of whatever GPTs I hit?

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A GPT I'd like to see is one that can talk to ImportYeti.com and look up the actual suppliers and manufacturers of the products in Asia, then link to their Alibaba, and translate any Chinese...

During the pandemic, there was the bicycle shortage in the supply chain. I was looking at all the bike frame manufacturers, then you can see their top suppliers, and floow the number of shipments (water based bills of lading, not air) and see where all their products are going etc...

Its also cool to look at the shipments certain companies are getting from suppliers in China, you can make some inferences to the health of their sales. (during pandemic, TREK was getting most of the Bike frames at the time

https://i.imgur.com/N6rBJMQ.png

https://i.imgur.com/3ijBXcD.png

[kiranp]

yeah, hopefully OpenAI will launch GPT store or something in the future. I was thinking if I should create a webapp or extension, so that GPT subs dependency will not be needed any longer.

[samstave]

They announced the GPT store already - Dont know when it will be avail, but they are trying to determine a rev share model for GPTs that others pay to access, then share whatever revenue with the GPT creators.

For me, I am having a tough time weeding through whats free and whats not. Which makes analysis paralysis and confusion from "dazzle them with details, baffle them with bullshit"

I need an ELI5 list of the various models, gpts, and their pricing models....

[kiranp]

May I ask, how does this information help you(trying to understand the specific use case here). If you can provide more details of this use case, maybe I can work on something like this.

[samstave]

>>>you can see their top suppliers, and floow the number of shipments (water based bills of lading, not air) and see where all their products are going

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>>>shipments...companies are getting from suppliers in China, you can make some inferences to the health of their sales

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Vision into shipments from OEMs in .CH to USA can provide great insight. What is more interesting is seeing the financual influence that the major importers have over the suppliers.

If you look at a classic example of cars, the Eagle and the Talon, while officially (based on sub-frame) were the same car, but by two different car companies, (hence a diff fairing body).

You can see the supply from .ch/.tw OEMs (Giant, Trek, etc) were largely diverted to their largely .com(USA) vendors, with a large majority of the shipments of bicycle frames going to the east coast - and through the supply tracking of bikes, one could see where that economic heat make laid.. thus - could see where mayhaps one may short/invest?

But now with scrapers, while we dont have personal HFT bots (unless we can afford the next gen investment specific GPTs which will be coming.

Ill take a GPT that learns from others investing strategies from all my clients in my hedgie and optimize models based on all their sentiment and success %....

Yeah - money is going to be the singularity nuke.

/rant :-)

[etewiah]

What is the API behind this?

I get asked for permission to access this but I cannot find out much about it by browsing there: https://shopping-pal.azurewebsites.net/

[kiranp]

This is a custom GPT which is accessible only if you have chatgpt premium subscription. I am just evaluating if there is a need for such a thing, if yes, will think about creating a webapp and making it accessible to everyone.

[sreejithr]

Excellent. I've been looking for something like this when I was getting gifts for Xmas. Can I also ask it for products based on my own preferences? Or are the options pre-determined?

[kiranp]

yeah, options are not pre-determined. you can ask pretty much anything. If things are not clear, it will ask you for more specific details(I have limited it to few question - not to annoy the user). Please give it a try and let me know how it can be improved or changed.