Product Lifecycle Manager

Purpose

Automate WooCommerce product lifecycle transitions: archive slow-moving products to draft, publish pending products that meet criteria, or move discontinued items to private status. Filters by product age, days since last sale, or zero-sale count. Includes dry-run preview before any status changes.

Prerequisites

• WooCommerce store with REST API enabled
• Consumer Key with Read/Write scope
• Minimum WooCommerce version: 3.5.0

Parameters

Authentication

WooCommerce uses OAuth 1.0a for HTTP and Basic Auth over HTTPS.

For HTTPS stores (recommended):

Authorization: Basic base64(consumer_key:consumer_secret)

For HTTP stores (development only): Use OAuth 1.0a — include oauth_consumer_key, oauth_nonce, oauth_signature, oauth_signature_method=HMAC-SHA1, oauth_timestamp, oauth_version=1.0

Never log or output consumer_key or consumer_secret values.

See docs/AUTHENTICATION.md for full setup instructions.

Safety

Step 3 changes product visibility. Drafting or privatizing published products removes them from the storefront immediately. Always run with dry_run: true first (the default). Verify the product list carefully.

Workflow Steps

Step 1 — Fetch products in source_status

GET /wp-json/wc/v3/products
  ?status=<source_status>&per_page=100&page=1
  [&category=<category_id>]

Filter client-side by date_created for filter_min_age_days.

Step 2 — Check sales for each product (if filter_no_sales_days set)

GET /wp-json/wc/v3/orders
  ?status=completed&after=<now - filter_no_sales_days days>&per_page=100&page=1

Build set of product IDs with recent sales. Exclude these from the transition list.

Step 3 — Preview or execute

If dry_run: true: output transition preview table and stop.

If dry_run: false and confirmed:

PUT /wp-json/wc/v3/products/{id}
  Body: { "status": "<target_status>" }

API Endpoints Used

GET  /wp-json/wc/v3/products         — products in source status
GET  /wp-json/wc/v3/orders           — sales check for filter_no_sales_days
PUT  /wp-json/wc/v3/products/{id}    — update product status

Pagination Strategy

WooCommerce REST API uses page/per_page pagination (not cursor-based).

Standard pattern:

page = 1
while True:
  response = GET /endpoint?per_page=100&page=page
  process(response)
  if len(response) < 100: break
  page += 1

Maximum per_page is 100 for most endpoints. The X-WP-Total and X-WP-TotalPages response headers report totals. Always read X-WP-TotalPages on the first request to estimate job size.

Session Tracking

Claude MUST emit the following output at each stage. This is mandatory.

STARTUP:

╔══════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  SKILL: woo-product-lifecycle-manager    ║
║  STORE: <store_url>                      ║
║  TIME:  <ISO-8601 UTC>                   ║
║  MODE:  <DRY RUN | LIVE>                 ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════╝

PER-OPERATION (emit after each API call batch):

[N/TOTAL] <METHOD> <endpoint> → <result_count> records | params: <key>=<val>

COMPLETION (human format):

╔══════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  COMPLETE: woo-product-lifecycle-manager ║
║  RECORDS PROCESSED: <n>                  ║
║  OUTPUT: stdout                          ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════╝

COMPLETION (json format):

{
  "skill": "woo-product-lifecycle-manager",
  "store": "<store_url>",
  "completed_at": "<ISO-8601>",
  "records_processed": <n>,
  "output_file": null,
  "dry_run": <bool>
}

Output Format

Human format: table listing product ID, name, current status, new status, and filter criteria matched.

Error Handling

Best Practices

• Always run with dry_run: true first (the default). Unpublishing products is immediately visible to customers.
• Use filter_no_sales_days: 180 to archive products that genuinely haven't sold recently.
• Set filter_min_age_days: 30 to avoid archiving newly-listed products that need time to gain traction.