hinta

name

hinta

description

Find and compare the current price of consumer electronics across Finnish retailers (Verkkokauppa, Power, Datatronic, Jimms, Multitronic, Proshop) using the agent-native `hinta` CLI. Use when the user wants the cheapest price for a specific product, to compare a product across shops, to check stock, or to build a parts list by price — e.g. "cheapest 7800X3D in Finland", "is a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB cheaper anywhere", "65-inch OLED TV under 1500€ in stock". Not for non-Finnish shops or non-electronics.

hinta — Finnish electronics deal-finder

hinta fans one query out to six Finnish retailers and returns the same product grouped across them, cheapest first, at live prices. The fan-out and cross-retailer matching happen inside the binary — you run one command and read the groups. It is query-driven on purpose: prices are volatile, so a fresh search per question beats any cached catalogue.

The binary is on PATH (hinta). If PATH resolution fails, use ~/Dev/hinta/target/release/hinta (repo ~/Dev/hinta). Always pass --json — data goes to stdout, diagnostics to stderr, so piping into jq is safe.

Decide the shape of the request first

• Specific product ("7800X3D", "Samsung 990 Pro 2TB", "LG C4 55 inch") → just run compare. Don't interrogate the user.
• Vague ("a good GPU", "a cheap TV", "a gaming PC") → ask 2–3 clarifying questions before searching: budget ceiling, key spec (size/capacity/model tier), must-haves (in stock now? brand?), and any deal-breaker. Encode the answers as filters. Guessing wastes fan-out requests on the wrong product.

The one command that does the work

hinta compare "<query>" --enrich --json

• compare searches every searchable retailer and groups identical products. Cheapest offer per group is surfaced first.
• --enrich spends up to 12 product-page fetches to fill in missing EANs, which upgrades a fuzzy sku match to a certain ean match and can pull in retailers that couldn't otherwise be grouped confidently (matched_on goes sku→ean, confidence 0.9→1.0). It costs requests and Proshop throttles per IP, so enrich for a real buying decision; skip it for a quick ballpark.
• Add --multi-only to keep only products at least two retailers carry (drops single-shop noise). --threshold F (default sensible) tightens/loosens grouping — rarely needed.

search is the raw, ungrouped variant against one or all retailers (--source S, --limit N) — use it only when the user wants a specific retailer's own listing, not a cross-shop comparison.

Filters (both search and compare)

Applied before grouping, so an excluded listing can't drag an unrelated product into a group and the reported cheapest price always refers to something that passed.

Flag	Meaning
--min-price / --max-price	euro bounds
--in-stock	only confirmed-in-stock; unknown stock is treated as failing (never promise availability the tool can't confirm)
--min-inches / --max-inches	screen size, for TVs/monitors
--brand <b>	brand match (lowercase, e.g. amd, samsung)
--devices-only	drop accessories/services — wall mounts, cables, assembly services that pollute category queries like televisio

--devices-only is essential for broad category searches; unnecessary for a specific model number.

Reading the output

{
  "group_count": 22,
  "enriched": 0,
  "filtered_out": 0,          // listings dropped by filters (distinguishes "filter matched nothing" from "retailers have nothing")
  "errors": [],               // per-source failures — one blocked retailer never masks the rest; report these if a shop is missing
  "groups": [
    {
      "name": "...",
      "cheapest_price_euro": 327.9,
      "highest_price_euro": 365.99,
      "matched_on": "sku",     // "ean" = certain, "sku"/"name" = fuzzy
      "confidence": 0.9,       // 1.0 only when matched on validated EAN
      "attributes": { "brand": "amd",     
                ...   
    
  

• Lead with the cheapest in-stock offer, name the retailer and price, and give the user the URL. If the cheapest is out of stock, say so and point at the cheapest available one — --in-stock up front avoids this.
• matched_on: "ean" / confidence: 1.0 is a certain match. A sku/name match at lower confidence is probable, not proven — if it matters, re-run with --enrich to confirm.
• A single-offer group is often real, not a bug. The matcher deliberately prefers a false split to a false merge — a false split shows one offer too few; a false merge advertises a cheapest price that doesn't exist. So don't assume a lone group means the other shops lack it; they may carry a variant (different capacity / screen size / qualifier like Ti, Pro, Super) that correctly did not merge. Check the attributes and offer names before claiming "only one retailer has it".
• errors is not fatal — surface which retailer failed if the user expected it, but still answer from the rest.

Hand off a browser link with hinta open <id|url> [--source S].

Robots posture — respect it

hinta sources --json reports per-retailer capabilities and a robots field. Search is disallowed by robots.txt for Jimms, Multitronic and Gigantti; permitted for the rest. compare/search are interactive, user-initiated actions, which is the intended use. Do not wrap them in a polling loop or cron against a disallowed source — that crosses from "a user asked a question" into crawling. Product-detail lookups (product, and what refresh uses) are permitted everywhere.

Watching a price (not just a one-shot lookup)

hinta alert <product_id> --source S --below <PRICE>   # implies track
hinta refresh                                          # re-fetch tracked products; reports alerts_triggered
hinta alerts --json                                    # list alerts and whether reached

There is no daemon — alerts are evaluated only when refresh runs. If the user wants ongoing monitoring, they need a cron entry calling hinta refresh plus something acting on alerts_triggered; say so rather than implying it watches on its own.

Gigantti is out of scope

Gigantti can't be searched live (Vercel bot challenge + client-rendered results). Don't try to route around it. Product lookup by id works only when the origin is reachable. The other six cover the market.

Recipes

# Cheapest confirmed-in-stock, ready to buy:
hinta compare "ryzen 7 7800x3d" --enrich --in-stock --json

# Specific capacity/variant — let the matcher keep variants apart, then read attributes:
hinta compare "samsung 990 pro 2tb" --enrich --json

# Broad category, devices only, size + budget bounded:
hinta compare "televisio" --devices-only --min-inches 65 --max-price 1500 --in-stock --json

# Only products multiple shops carry (kills single-listing noise):
hinta compare "rtx 4070 super" --multi-only --json

# One retailer's own listing:
hinta search "logitech mx master" --source verkkokauppa --json

# What each retailer supports + its robots status:
hinta sources --json

Full command reference and design notes live in ~/Dev/hinta/CLAUDE.md. hinta --help and hinta <cmd> --help are authoritative for flags.