Price of the Week

A sample graph, using mock data that shows that you may not need to worry about when you buy granola bars.

Inspiration

We bounced our greviences with the world we had off of each other, when the topic of dynamic pricing at Walmart came up. We all had negative opinions about the topic and how exploitative the system felt, so we decided to come up with a project that fights against this anti-consumer practice.

What it does

Based on area (zipcode) and product (UPC number), our progam gives you the a spread of average prices over the week, and then based on the data, tells you the best day to buy it on to get it at it's cheapest. It gathers this data by looking at Target's API, it's list of produce price values, and storing it on an hourly basis in the database.

How we built it

We iterated on the idea for a while until we came up with our main points for what we needed for a minimum viable product, specific pain points and the like, and whether something was feasible or not. Once we had everything planned out, we leveraged Claude Code in order to create the jumping off point for the project, which we then tweaked in order to fit our vision the best.

Challenges we ran into

There were conflicts on the division of labor and scope of the project. We were also unceremoniously cut off from Redsky's API at times, rendering our program inoperable at times. Since there were several different operating systems at play throughout the group, there were some tech issues that took some time to resolve.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We got a minimum viable product that runs. There are also members in the group that really stepped outside of their comfort zone, and I personally think that's something worth commending and that they should feel proud of.

What we learned

Due to the several conflicts we had as a group, we learned to push past them and grow stronger as a result. We also had to learn how to solve the multiple tech issues that arose due to the conflicting operating systems, as well as working under an extreme crunch time. As the project went on, we learned how to implent AI assistance into our workflow more fluidly.

What's next for Price of the Week

If we were to continue working on this project, we'd start by expanding the scope of the stores that we support in the database. We'd also like to grab more data from more unique sources, so we could show that there are usually sales on Friday, like Safeway's $5 dollar friday. Potentially, there are discussions of adding price comparison between store chains, but I didn't tell you that.