Get Slack Alerts When Competitor Prices Drop Below Yours

The schedule trigger runs every hour at the top of the hour (for example, 9:00am, 10:00am, 11:00am). Each time it runs, it kicks off the entire workflow to scrape the competitor page, analyze pricing, and notify your team if needed. You can adjust the frequency by modifying the schedule—for example, you could change it to every 4 hours, twice daily, or daily if hourly checks seem excessive. The trigger automatically initiates at the configured time with no manual action required.

You'll configure one critical field: the competitor product page URL. This should be the direct link to the specific product you're monitoring—for example, "https://www.competitor.com/products/blue-widget-pro". The scraper visits this URL and converts the webpage into markdown text, which makes it easier for the AI to read and extract pricing information in the next steps. Copy and paste the exact URL from your browser when you're viewing the competitor's product page to ensure accuracy.

The AI receives the scraped webpage content in markdown format and analyzes it to determine if the product shows sale indicators. The prompt asks the AI to respond with only "yes" or "no"—keeping the response simple ensures the next filter step can make a clean decision. The temperature is set to 1 for this binary decision task. You can customize the prompt if your competitor uses unusual sale formatting, but the default prompt handles most common ecommerce sale patterns.

The filter checks if the AI response from Step 3 equals exactly "yes." If it matches, the workflow continues to extract the sale price; if the AI responded "no" (product not on sale), the workflow stops here and waits until the next scheduled run. This is a hard-coded filter comparing against "yes" with no configuration needed—it automatically manages the workflow flow based on whether a sale is detected.

The AI receives the same scraped webpage content and extracts the sale price as a numeric value. The prompt is specifically designed to look for the sale price pattern on the competitor's page and return just the number without currency symbols or text. You may need to customize this prompt based on how your specific competitor formats their pricing—for example, if they show "Sale: $49.99" versus "Now Only $49.99" versus just a strikethrough with new price below. The temperature is set to 1, and the AI is instructed to return a number type for clean comparison.

You'll configure one field: your Shopify product ID. This is the numeric ID of the product you want to monitor against the competitor—you can find this in your Shopify admin by viewing the product and checking the URL (it's the number after /products/). The step retrieves the complete product record including all variants, and the workflow uses the first variant's price for comparison. If your product has multiple variants, make sure the first variant is the one you want to compare, or consider customizing the workflow to specify a particular variant.

The filter compares the competitor's sale price (extracted in Step 5) against your Shopify product's price (retrieved in Step 6) using a "less than" comparison. If the competitor price is lower, the workflow continues to send the Slack alert; if your price is already competitive, the workflow stops here. This is a hard-coded numeric comparison with no configuration needed—it automatically handles the price comparison logic.

You'll configure one field: the Slack channel where pricing alerts should be sent. This could be a dedicated #pricing-alerts channel, your #ecommerce team channel, or wherever your pricing decision-makers actively monitor. The message automatically includes your product title, the competitor's sale price, and the competitor's product page URL for reference. Make sure to invite the MESA Slack app to your chosen channel before selecting it in the configuration.