About this template
The product was never the problem. The arithmetic was.
A "winning products" list said it was trending. You bought inventory access, built the store, ran ads — and found the product couldn't buy its own traffic. Contribution was $9; the category's CPA is $14.
Nobody did that sum before you spent the money.
Money before product opinion
contribution = price − (COGS + shipping + payment fee + expected refund cost)
breakeven CPA = contribution
required CVR = CPC ÷ contribution
The brief opens with the honest headline:
You need a 4.1% conversion rate at $1.20 CPC to break even.
That tells you more than any product take. Every input is shown, so you can change one and re-reason.
No CPC, no verdict
Leave out a realistic CPC for the category and it returns [CPC NEEDED] and
refuses to give a verdict. A viability call without an ad cost isn't a viability
call — paid traffic is the entire distribution model.
Same for the refund rate. Long shipping windows and cheap goods produce refunds, so
it's a line item in the contribution maths, not an afterthought — and if you don't
supply one it says [REFUND RATE NEEDED] rather than assuming a flattering number.
Four killers, in order
- Shipping time — a 20+ day window drives refunds and chargebacks regardless of product quality. Checked first, because it's the one people discount.
- Contribution under realistic CPA — the product can't buy its own traffic. Fatal, and it's arithmetic rather than judgement.
- Creative saturation — many sellers on the same angle means rising CPMs. It reports observed sameness, never an inferred CPM number.
- Restricted or liability-prone category — electrical, ingestible, child-facing, medical-adjacent, certification-bound. Flagged to you as a legal question, not judged.
The verdict names which killer decided it.
What you supply
Your own Claude Code login, plus candidates in ~/dropship/candidates/ — a product
idea or public URL, supplier price, shipping window, target retail price, and a
realistic CPC.
Where this stops
It researches and briefs. It does not contact suppliers, place orders, create listings, or launch ads.
It won't tell you units sold per month — public pages never expose it, and any tool quoting one is inferring it. It can't see ad platforms, so it won't say a product is trending. And it won't rule on whether a category is legal for you to sell.
Verified on build: the skill, the working tree, the NEVER_SOURCE_OR_ORDER guard, the
contribution formulas, all four killers and the refund line item are present on a
fresh fork. Running it on your own candidates is yours to do.