Skill
ebay
Buyer-power-user CLI for eBay. Sold-comp intelligence, true sniper bidding, watchlist intelligence, saved-search feeds, and a local SQLite store for cross-listing analytics.
When to use ebay
Choose if
You're a power buyer wiring eBay intelligence into an agent loop — sold-comp research for valuation, auction-ending radars, saved-search feeds, and local SQLite analytics for cross-listing patterns. Alternative is the official eBay Browse/Marketing APIs, which require developer-account setup, OAuth dance, and don't give you a local history store.
Avoid if
You actually need to place bids programmatically — the bid flow is blocked by eBay's step-up authentication and the README is explicit that users must bid in the browser. Also avoid for seller workflows (listing creation, order management) — this is a buyer-side CLI only, and several read paths (watchlist writes, saved-search CRUD) remain unimplemented stubs.
Risk Flags
- HIGH auth Browser-cookie authentication fails at the bid-placement step due to eBay step-up auth redirects. The README explicitly says users must "bid in the browser" — sniper-bidding flow is non-functional. Forter token TTL for bid flow is unknown.
- MEDIUM rate_limit eBay's Akamai bot manager throttles sustained scraping IPs; symptoms are empty results or HTTP 403. Recovery requires `ebay-pp-cli auth refresh` or a 15-30 minute back-off.
- MEDIUM scope Watchlist writes, bid groups, saved-search CRUD, and offer-hunter are documented as unimplemented stubs. Sold-comp window is capped at 90 days. Bid placement is not implemented end-to-end.
Cost
Type: Unknown
Install
Default
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press install ebay
Estimated time to first success: ~15 min
Dependencies
Minimum runtime: Node.js (npx) or Go 1.26.3+ for source install; Python or Homebrew for cookie-extraction helper
Distribution
- Repository
- https://github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library
- License
- MIT