Price a Thrift Find Inside Claude: Our Connector Is Live

Underpriced AI went live in the Claude Connectors Directory this morning. Search "ebay" in the directory and we're there, one tap, next to CompSniper. Here's the listing: https://claude.ai/directory/underpriced-ai

I've wanted this since we shipped the MCP server in September. For a month, the only way to use it was to paste a URL into a settings screen, and the only people who did that were developers and me. Now it's a button.

Here's what it does, in reseller words, and what it won't do.

What the connector does

You're in a chat with Claude. You ask what something is worth. Claude calls Underpriced AI, we look up what that item has actually sold for on eBay, and the answer comes back into the chat with the sales behind it. The comps-backed estimates come from real eBay sold listings, pulled when you ask, with a link to each sale where the source gives us one. Not a number Claude remembers from somewhere.

Five tools sit behind it. price_item is the main one. get_sold_comps is the raw sales table. worth_it is the fee math for a buy decision. get_scan_result reads a saved scan back. list_on_ebay drafts the listing on your account. You never call them by name. You just ask.

Three prompts to try

I'm not going to paste dollar figures here. They'd be stale by the time you read this, and a stale number in a blog post is how bad comps get started. Here's the shape of what comes back.

"What does a Pyrex Butterprint mixing bowl sell for?" You get an estimate with a low and a high, the recent eBay sales that produced it (title, price, date, link), three list prices labelled fast, market and patient, each with its 14-day sell chance, and what you'd keep after eBay fees. That last line is the one I actually look at.

"I can get a Le Creuset 5.5 quart dutch oven for $40 at an estate sale. Worth it?" Same answer plus a verdict: worth it, thin, or pass. It takes the cost I gave, subtracts eBay fees from the expected sale price, and tells me the margin. I've done that arithmetic in a parking lot a hundred times. Claude does it in two seconds and doesn't round in your favor.

"Show me recent sold listings for Levi's 501 made in USA." That one skips the estimate and goes straight to the comps: the most recent real eBay US sales, with the count, the median and the quartiles. Good for arguing with yourself about which pair you're holding.

One tap from the directory

Open https://claude.ai/directory/underpriced-ai and click Add. That's it for the free part. If you want photo pricing, Claude will show a Connect card the first time you ask for it, you sign in to Underpriced AI, and you're done.

It isn't only Claude. In ChatGPT, go to Settings, then Connectors, then Create, and paste https://underpricedai.com/api/mcp. In Claude Code, it's one line in the terminal:

claude mcp add --transport http underpriced https://underpricedai.com/api/mcp

The full guide is at https://underpricedai.com/mcp

What needs sign-in, and why

Without an account you can price from a description and look up sold comps a few times a day. That's deliberate. A text price is our weakest answer by construction, because the model can't see marks, size or condition from a sentence. It's cheap for us to run, so it's free for you.

A photo price is a real scan. It runs the same vision and sold-comps pipeline as the app, it costs us real money per call, and it lands in your scan history so you can list it later. So it needs your account and uses your plan scans or credits, same as scanning in the app. Your first scan is free when you sign up.

Same for list_on_ebay. It writes a draft to your Underpriced AI account, so it has to know which account.

What it will not do

It will never publish a listing from the chat. list_on_ebay prepares the draft (title, price defaulting to the market list price, condition, description) and gives you a link. The draft waits in the app on the Sell tab under Not live yet until you've looked at it and pressed publish yourself. Nobody needs an unreviewed AI listing going live from a conversation.

It will never charge you from the chat either. The directory version has no checkout, no credit purchase, no plan upgrade. If you're out of scans, it tells you and points you at the pricing page. Money happens in the app, where you can see what you're buying.

And it won't price a photo for someone who isn't signed in. It will say so, offer to price from a description instead, and give you the link to scan it in the app.

About CompSniper

They were in the directory before us and they're the other result when you search "ebay". It's a keyword tool: you type the product, it returns up to 240 sold listings with a median and range, and developers build on its API. If you already know exactly what you're holding, it's a good tool. We start from the photo, because at a thrift store you usually don't know the keyword. Different job. I wrote up the side by side at https://underpricedai.com/compsniper-alternative

Why this matters to me

Connectors get ranked by usage, and Claude suggests them in chat when a conversation matches. So every time someone asks Claude what a find is worth and we're the one that answers, the next person is a little more likely to see us too. No ad spend. Just be the answer.

If you use Claude or ChatGPT at all, add it and ask about the next thing you pick up. Tell me what it got wrong. I read every one of those.

Try Underpriced AI on web or mobile: https://underpricedai.com/scan