export-cart

name	export-cart
description	Read the live AliExpress cart into structured JSON/CSV — items, SKUs, quantities, per-unit and crossed-out prices, sellers, shipping — ready to feed cart-vat-nudge.

Export AliExpress Cart

Pull the actual, current contents of the signed-in AliExpress cart into structured data, instead of retyping line items by hand.

This is the skill that closes the loop: cart-vat-nudge computes the $75 de-minimis position but historically had to be fed items manually. export-cart produces exactly the shape it wants.

When to use

• User says "what's in my AliExpress cart", "check my cart against the VAT threshold", "export my cart"
• Before cart-vat-nudge on a real cart rather than a hypothetical basket
• Price-watching: re-export periodically and diff to catch a Choice price drop or a discount expiring

For a single listing the user hasn't added yet, use fetch-listing. For finding candidates, use search-aliexpress.

How the cart is actually loaded (read this before debugging)

The cart is not server-rendered and not fetched by fetch/XHR. It arrives via JSONP script injection from one signed endpoint:

mtop.aliexpress.trade.cart.render

Consequences that will otherwise waste your time:

• Scraping the cart HTML returns nothing — the markup carries no item data.
• A network panel shows no API call for the cart. This is expected, not a failure.
• The parsed payload is sitting in page memory, which is why Route A below needs no signing at all.

Full protocol notes, including the signing algorithm and the Ultron response layout, are in the companion repo Aliexpress-Cart-Analysis (private). The essentials are reproduced in reference.md next to this skill.

Two routes — prefer A

Route A — read page state in the user's own Chrome (default)

No signing, no cookie handling, no API call. Requires a loaded cart page in a signed-in browser.

Chrome is not merely preferred here, it is the natural fit: the cart only exists for a signed-in session, and the user's own profile already is one. A fresh automation profile has no session at all. See $CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT/reference/browser.md.

1. tabs_context_mcp first — the user may already have AliExpress open. Don't navigate a tab out from under them.
2. Open https://www.aliexpress.com/p/shoppingcart/index.html and let it fully render. The user must already be signed in.
3. Evaluate scripts/extract-cart.js in that page — mcp__claude-in-chrome__javascript_tool, or browser_evaluate under gateway Playwright.
4. It returns {exportedAt, source, summary, items}.

Use this route unless the user explicitly wants unattended polling.

Route B — signed API client (unattended)

For scheduled runs with no browser open. The user exports their cookie string once; the script signs requests locally.

export AE_COOKIE='<value of document.cookie from a logged-in aliexpress.com tab>'
python3 "$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT/skills/export-cart/scripts/ali_cart.py" --format json
python3 "$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT/skills/export-cart/scripts/ali_cart.py" --count   # cheap poll

Requires requests. The cookie string must contain _m_h5_tk.

Never write the cookie string into a file inside a repo, and never echo it back to the user. Read it from the environment only.

Inputs

• currency (optional) — the cart renders in whatever currency the account is set to, not what this skill asks for. Read items[].currency from the output rather than assuming. Israeli accounts are commonly USD or ILS.
• include_invalid (optional, default false) — include sold-out / expired / saved-for-later lines. These carry valid: false.
• format (optional) — json (default), csv, or table.

Output format

AliExpress cart — <N> items, <U> units   (<currency>)

[x]   1 x    10.00  Anti-Slip Tape – Waterproof, Non-Skid Bathroom Floor…
          1PCS/500cm/1mm/100cm
          Shop… Store   free shipping, ~16 days
[ ]   2 x     2.22  Holder Battery Storage Rack For Bosch 18V…
          Total Mart Store   free shipping, ~16 days

gross <G>   net <N>   saved <S>    (<C> selected, <U> unselected)

[x] = ticked for checkout. Unticked items are still in the cart but excluded from AliExpress's own subtotal — say so explicitly, because it is the most common source of "your number doesn't match the site".

Per item the export carries: cartId, itemId, skuId, title, skuInfo, quantity, maxQuantity, selected, currency, unitPrice, crossedPrice, lineTotal, valid, status, storeName, sellerId, freeShipping, deliveryDays, addedAt, productUrl.

Handing off to cart-vat-nudge

The output maps straight across:

export-cart	cart-vat-nudge
title	title
productUrl	url
unitPrice + currency	unit_price + currency
quantity	qty

Decide with the user whether to nudge on selected items only (matches what they'd actually be charged at checkout) or the whole cart (matches what they'd pay if they ticked everything). Default to selected-only, and state which you used.

Prices are per unit, not line totals — cart-vat-nudge multiplies by qty itself, so don't pre-multiply.

Notes & caveats

• unitPrice is the current promo price, crossedPrice the struck-through "was". AliExpress promo prices expire; a cart exported last week may not check out at the same total.
• Quantities have a per-seller ceiling (maxQuantity). Suggesting "buy 2 to hit free shipping" fails if maxQuantity is 1.
• Choice items ship consolidated. For cart-vat-nudge's split-order suggestion this matters: items in one Choice parcel are likely assessed together by customs, so splitting them across orders may not produce two separate consignments.
• freeShipping and deliveryDays are the cart's summary, not the menu. They reflect whichever lane is currently selected, not the options available. To compare lanes on a line, run ship-options-il on its productUrl.
• The cart reflects ship-to country from the account session. An account set to ship elsewhere returns different shipping and availability. Verify shipToCountry is IL before trusting the delivery estimates.
• This is an internal, unversioned API. Field names have already changed several times. Match product nodes on the presence of fields.itemView, never on a component name.
• Read-only by design. Adding, removing and re-quantifying items is deliberately not implemented — see Out of scope.

Out of scope

• Modifying the cart. The sibling endpoints cart.add and cart.async exist but are not wired up here, on purpose: a bug in an automated cart mutation is expensive and hard to undo. If the user wants an item added or removed, tell them and let them click it.
• Checkout / order placement. Never.
• Order history. Different endpoint, not covered.

Validation checklist

1. The page was fully loaded and signed in — an empty result on a cart the user says is non-empty means the page hadn't hydrated, not that the cart is empty. Re-check before reporting "empty".
2. items[].currency was read, not assumed, and is reported to the user.
3. Selected vs unselected is stated explicitly whenever the two totals differ.
4. Recomputed totals were sanity-checked against the on-page Summary panel. They should match "Items total" (gross), "Items discount" (saved) and "Subtotal" (net) for the selected set. A mismatch means the field mapping has drifted — stop and re-verify rather than reporting a wrong number.
5. No cookie or token value was written to disk or echoed into the transcript.