Scan bestsellers for product gaps
Scan a category's real bestseller list on Amazon through the Browser, not your own sales history, flag what's trending that you don't carry, and set up a recurring scan that alerts when the rankings shift.
Copy this prompt to start your first task:
What is this workflow?
"Scan bestsellers for product gaps" is a recurring research job: pull a category's real bestseller or trending list straight off Amazon (or another target platform) through the Browser, tag every entry with its source URL and collection timestamp, and compare what's trending against your own catalog or inventory when it's connected. Once set up, it becomes a scheduled scan that stays quiet until a tracked category's top rankings shift meaningfully, with every run archived — screenshots included — so a ranking claim from weeks ago still traces back to a real page.
Collection pacing, not optional: a fixed cadence with randomized delays between category and product page reads, the same discipline any real Browser-driven Amazon collection needs to avoid getting an account flagged. If a CAPTCHA or login wall shows up mid-scan, it stops and tells a human rather than pushing through. It never writes a silently empty field: a failed extraction gets a retry, then a flag, because a blank field usually means Amazon changed its page structure, not that there's nothing to report. And this teammate reads bestseller pages, it does not buy, list, or reprice anything on your own storefront; any action that touches your own listings or pricing needs a human to actually do it.
How to use this workflow
Hire a Researcher: write the bio around category discovery, not tracking your own store
Open AI Teammates in the sidebar, click Hire AI Teammate, and pick the Researcher template. The default bio is generic web research. Replace it on the Profile step so the teammate starts out already knowing this job is scanning the market for what's trending, then checking it against your own catalog, not summarizing what you already stock:
Confirm the name and click Create teammate. They land in their own channel, which is where you'll send everything below. More on hiring →
Connect the Browser skill: Amazon has no official monitoring API
Amazon's storefront has no API Helio can connect to natively, and neither do the third-party tools sellers use to track it (Keepa, Helium10, Jungle Scout). What this teammate actually does is install the Stagehand Browser CLI skill (Skills & Plugins → Productivity) and drive a real browser: open the category's Best Sellers or Movers & Shakers page, read the ranked list, and screenshot it as an archive. Skills & Plugins →
Give it a category, and your own catalog if you want gap analysis
The scan itself only needs a category and a platform. Connect your inventory sheet or storefront export as well if you want the trending list checked against what you already carry:
Turn it into a recurring category scan
The alert lands in #merchandising, and a teammate can only post in channels it's a member of — create that channel if it doesn't exist yet and add this teammate to it first. Then open Automations in the sidebar and click Create via Chat. On Home, choose this teammate and send the prefilled scheduled-task starter. When the interview asks what to schedule, use the recurring job below. Once a day is enough for a category scan, staggered and not on the hour:
Nothing here needs your approval by default: reading bestseller pages through the Browser is a read action, and posting a scan alert to a channel is an internal message — neither reaches outside Helio nor is irreversible, so this flow runs on its own. It's the moment this teammate would touch your own storefront (buying, listing, repricing) that would cross into something needing a human to actually do it. See Control for what pauses for sign-off and why.
Tips for Better Results
| Tip | Description |
|---|---|
| Name the exact category and platform | The scan only runs against what you give it — a specific category page on a named platform, not "check what's trending." |
| Connect your catalog for gap analysis | Without an attached inventory sheet or storefront export, the teammate can only report the bestseller list, not what you're missing from it. |
| Ask for shifts only, not daily noise | The recurring scan can log a snapshot every day and only message you when the top 10 shifts meaningfully or an uncarried product breaks in — say so, or you'll get pinged for nothing. |
| Treat a CAPTCHA or login-wall stop as a signal, not a failure | The teammate is designed to stop and tell you rather than push through. That's the collection pacing working as intended, not a broken scan. |
Common Questions
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Back to the Industry & Specialized use case overview.
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