exclude-combo-deals

name

exclude-combo-deals

description

Use when the user wants to search AliExpress and **hide products that carry the `Max Combo` badge** — i.e. exclude bundle/combo deals from the result set so only standalone listings remain. AliExpress provides no server-side filter for this on the listing page (validated — see `research/ui-selectors/listing-page-filters.md` §3); the skill therefore runs the standard search via `search-aliexpress`, then post-filters the visible product cards by reading the `Max Combo` badge text in the card DOM and dropping any card that has it. Trigger phrases — "search aliexpress without combo", "exclude max combo", "no bundle deals aliexpress", "aliexpress single items only", "hide combo deals".

Exclude Combo Deals

Wrapper around search-aliexpress that drops Max Combo bundle listings from the results.

Why this is a separate skill

Max Combo is a per-product badge, not a server-side filter — there is no filterCode:* toggle for it on the listing page. The only way to "exclude combo" is to fetch the full result set and drop badged cards client-side. This skill encapsulates that pattern so callers don't have to know about the badge mechanics.

Inputs

Same as search-aliexpress, plus:

• query (required)
• filters (optional) — same shape: { choice, freeshipping, rating4plus, premium, ship_from }
• max_results (optional, default 20) — applied after combo filtering, so to surface 20 non-combo cards the skill will scrape more than 20 raw cards.
• over_fetch_factor (optional, default 2) — multiplier for how much to over-fetch. With max_results=20 and factor 2, scrape up to 40 raw cards then drop combos and trim to 20.

How

1. Delegate the search to the same flow as search-aliexpress (locale handshake → URL → filter toggles).
2. Scrape raw product cards (more than max_results, see over_fetch_factor).
3. For each card, detect the Max Combo badge.
4. Drop combos. Keep order.
5. Trim to max_results and return.

Detecting the Max Combo badge

Validated in research/ui-selectors/listing-page-filters.md §3:

<span class="lw_an">Max Combo</span>

The class lw_an is hashed and will rotate between deploys — anchor on the text instead, scoped to product card containers.

// On the listing page, after results render:
const badged = new Set(
  [...document.querySelectorAll('span')]
    .filter(el => /^max combo$/i.test(el.textContent.trim()))
    .map(el => el.closest('a[href*="/item/"]'))
    .filter(Boolean)
);

Then when extracting product cards, drop any whose anchor element is in badged.

Locale wrinkle

When b_locale=iw_IL, AliExpress may render the badge in Hebrew. Capture both:

/^(max combo|מקס קומבו|קומבו)$/i.test(el.textContent.trim())

If the Hebrew rendering is ever observed and differs from the regex above, update the research notes and this skill.

Output format

Same shape as search-aliexpress, with one extra line in the header:

Combo cards dropped: <N>   (raw scraped: <R>, returned: <max_results or fewer>)

If R - N < max_results, return what's available and note that the over-fetch wasn't enough — the user can re-run with a higher over_fetch_factor.

Edge cases

• Result page has fewer raw cards than max_results × over_fetch_factor: just process what's there; report the actual counts.
• Page has zero combos: return max_results cards normally; report Combo cards dropped: 0.
• All visible cards are combos: report and return an empty list — the user will want to know that's what AliExpress is currently surfacing for this query.
• Badge text rendered as part of a longer string (e.g. "Max Combo deal"): the regex above is anchored, so it won't match; this is intentional. If observed in the wild, relax to /\bmax combo\b/i and document the change.

Out of scope

• Does not detect generic "bundle" or "set" listings that aren't badged. AliExpress has many multi-pack listings (Pack of 3, Set of 5) with no Max Combo badge — these are not filtered. Add a separate skill if needed.
• Does not alter pagination behaviour beyond over-fetch.

Validation checklist

1. The same locale + filter validation as search-aliexpress passes.
2. Raw-scrape count and combo-dropped count are both reported.
3. No card in the returned list has a descendant matching the Max Combo regex.
4. Returned count ≤ max_results.