# Purchasing Guide Generator > Turn a short parts list into a complete, teacher-ready Purchasing Guide page for a kit — a summary bill of materials with required parts first and optional parts after, then one section per part with a photo, what the part does in the kit, any prep work (soldering 22-gauge leads, cutting a strip to length), single-unit and classroom-quantity-of-20 price estimates, the exact search keywords that find it, and live eBay / AliExpress / Amazon search links. Use this skill whenever the user asks for a purchasing guide, parts list, parts page, bill of materials, BOM, shopping list, sourcing guide, "where do I buy this", "how much does this kit cost", "what do I need to order for 20 students", or wants to add or refresh purchasing information for a kit — even if they never say the words "purchasing guide". Also use it when updating an existing purchasing guide with prices, images, or search links. - Skill: `dmccreary/purchasing-guide-generator` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 8 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add dmccreary/purchasing-guide-generator` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/dmccreary/purchasing-guide-generator/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: dmccreary (https://skillmd.com/u/dmccreary) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/dmccreary/purchasing-guide-generator --- # Purchasing Guide Generator A Purchasing Guide is the page a teacher opens with a district purchase order in one hand. It has to answer three questions without them leaving the page: *what exactly do I order, what will it cost me for a class of 20, and where do I click to buy it.* Everything in this skill exists to make one of those three answers unambiguous. The input is small — usually a handful of part names the user pastes in, or the "Parts" section already sitting in a kit's `index.md`. The output is a long, image-rich, link-rich page. Most of the work is sourcing: finding a clean photo, finding a real price band, and finding the search phrase that actually surfaces the right part instead of forty wrong ones. ## Where the output goes ``` docs/kits/{kit-name}/purchasing-guide/index.md ``` The guide gets its own directory so part-specific photos can live beside it. Images that already exist in `docs/img/` stay where they are and are referenced as `../../../img/name.png` (three levels up from the guide). A model example to match for tone and depth is [`docs/kits/moving-rainbow-base/purchasing-guide/index.md`](../../docs/kits/moving-rainbow-base/purchasing-guide/index.md). It predates the search-link requirement, so it is the right register but an incomplete structure — read it for voice, follow this skill for structure. ## Audience and register Purchasing guides are teacher-facing even though they live under `docs/kits/`. Write them the way `CONTENT-GENERATION-GUIDE.md` describes the Teacher's Guide register: professional, collegial, peer-to-peer, technically precise. **Pixel never appears in a purchasing guide** — nobody wants a mascot cheering while they reconcile a purchase order. Use "we" for house practice ("We buy ours in packs of ten"), third person for students. ## Workflow ### 1. Pin down the parts list and split it Get the list from the user, or read the kit's `index.md` — most kits already have a "Parts" or "What you'll need" section, and reusing it keeps the two pages consistent. Then split it in two: - **Required** — the kit does not function without it. - **Optional** — durability, convenience, or enrichment (screw headers, acrylic bases, battery packs, spare buttons). Required parts come first in both the summary list and the body sections. A teacher on a tight budget should be able to stop reading halfway down the page and still have ordered a working kit. If a part in the list is ambiguous ("LED strip"), resolve it against the kit's code and wiring before writing — 60 pixels/meter and 144 pixels/meter are different orders, and a purchasing guide that gets that wrong costs real money. ### 2. Source a photo for every part Order of preference, best first: 1. **An image already in this workspace.** Run the finder — it searches this repo and every sibling repo's `docs/img/`: ```bash python3 skills/purchasing-guide-generator/scripts/find_part_image.py momentary push button ``` Images from sibling repos are already license-clean and match the house look. Copy the file into the guide's directory rather than linking across repos. 2. **Wikimedia Commons** or another explicitly free source, when nothing local fits. See `references/image-sourcing.md` for the license rules, the attribution line, and the watermark check. 3. **A generation brief.** If you cannot find a high-quality image that is unwatermarked and free of copyright restrictions, do not settle for a bad one and do not silently omit the picture. Write `docs/kits/{kit}/purchasing-guide/{part-slug}-image-description.md` from `assets/image-description-template.md`, and leave a clearly-marked placeholder in the page so it is obvious what still needs art. Never hotlink a product photo from eBay, Amazon, or AliExpress. Those are copyrighted seller assets, they rot within weeks, and a broken image on a purchasing page reads as an abandoned page. ### 3. Write each part section Start from `assets/purchasing-guide-template.md` — it is the page skeleton with one fully worked part section (the WS2812B strip) showing the target depth. Copy it, then replace. Working from the skeleton is faster than assembling the page from the fragments in this file, and it keeps guides consistent across kits. Use the section template below, in order, with no sections skipped. The order matters: a reader scanning for the part they are unsure about recognizes it by the photo, confirms it by the description, and then commits by the price and the link. ### 4. Price it twice Every part gets both a single-unit price and a classroom price. See `references/sourcing-strategy.md` for how to build the bands honestly, and `references/part-catalog.md` for house-observed bands on the parts that recur across Moving Rainbow kits. ### 5. Generate the search links Do not hand-write marketplace URLs; the query syntax differs per site and typos are invisible until a teacher clicks. Run: ```bash python3 skills/purchasing-guide-generator/scripts/make_search_urls.py "WS2812B LED strip 60/m 5V IP20" ``` Add `--sites ebay,aliexpress,amazon,microcenter` for parts where a specialty retailer genuinely beats the marketplaces (the Pico at Micro Center is the standing example), and `--alt "alternate phrasing"` when the part is sold under two different names. ### 6. Wire the page in - Add a link from the kit's `index.md` near the top of its parts section. - Add a nav entry in `mkdocs.yml` under that kit, titled `Purchasing Guide`. - Verify every image path resolves from the guide's directory and that the summary-list anchors match the actual heading slugs. ## Page structure Follow this shape exactly — teachers move between kits, and a predictable page means they learn the layout once. ````markdown # Purchasing Guide for the {Kit Name} Kit ![{Kit name} kit parts laid out](./kit-parts.jpg) {One paragraph: what the finished kit does, the all-in cost for one kit and the per-student cost at a class of 20, and how long the slow-shipping route takes. This paragraph is the whole page in miniature — a teacher who reads only this should know whether the kit fits their budget and their calendar.} !!! note "Prices checked {Month Year}" Component prices move, and marketplace listings turn over constantly. Treat every figure here as a planning estimate, not a quote. ## Summary of Parts List **Required** - [{Part name}](#part-anchor) — {one clause on what it does} ({qty-1 price}) - ... **Optional** - [{Part name}](#part-anchor) — {what it adds} ({qty-1 price}) - ... **Estimated total:** ${X} for one kit · ${Y} per student for a class of 20 ## {Required Part 1} ...one section per part, required parts first, in the order they appear above... ## Purchasing Strategy {The lead-time and bulk-buying guidance — see the section below.} ## Classroom Order Worksheet | Part | Required? | Qty for 1 kit | Qty for 20 kits | Est. cost for 20 | |------|-----------|---------------|-----------------|------------------| | ... | Required | 1 | 20 | $XX | | **Total** | | | | **$XXX** | ```` ## Part section template ````markdown ## {Part Name} ![{descriptive alt text}](../../../img/{image}.png) {Two to four sentences: what the part is, what job it does *in this kit*, and what a buyer needs to get right when choosing between listings — voltage, pixel density, pin pitch, tactile-switch lead spacing. Name the specific failure: "the 12V version of this strip will not work with the Pico's 5V supply" is worth more than "make sure you get the right one".} **Prep work:** {What has to happen between the box arriving and a student using it — soldering 22-gauge solid-core leads to the strip's pads so it seats in a breadboard, cutting a 1-meter strip at the 30-pixel mark, marking rails with a permanent marker, tinning stranded wire. Say roughly how long it takes per kit, since that is prep time a teacher has to schedule. Write "None — it is breadboard-ready as shipped." when there genuinely is none, because the absence of prep work is itself useful information.} **Cost:** ~${X} each in quantity 1 · ~${Y} each in a classroom order of 20+ ({what drives the difference — pack sizes, free-shipping thresholds, origin}). **Search keywords:** `{primary phrase}`, `{alias}`, `{part number}` **Where to buy:** - [Search eBay for "..."](...) - [Search AliExpress for "..."](...) - [Search Amazon for "..."](...) ```` Two judgment calls worth making deliberately: **Alt text.** Describe the part, not the file. `![Momentary push button with four leads](...)` helps a screen-reader user and helps anyone whose image failed to load. `![](...)` helps no one. **Keywords.** The point is to give the reader the phrase that *works*, which is often not the formal name. "WS2812B" finds the strip; "NeoPixel" mostly finds Adafruit-branded product at three times the price; "addressable RGB LED strip" finds a mix. Say so when the distinction costs money. Include part numbers (`2N2222`, `PCF8574`) — they are the highest-signal search term there is. ## Purchasing strategy section Every guide closes with this guidance. Adapt the specifics, keep the substance: - **Lead time is the real tradeoff.** Direct-from-China listings on AliExpress and many eBay sellers run roughly 40–70% cheaper than Amazon Prime for the same commodity part, at 2–3 weeks of transit — sometimes 4–6 weeks around Lunar New Year, when Chinese factories and shipping largely stop for two weeks or more. Order a semester ahead and the savings are free; order the week before the unit starts and you pay the Amazon premium for the privilege. - **Buy one, then buy twenty.** Order a single unit from a seller first, confirm it is the right part, *then* place the classroom order — ideally with the same seller, since listings for commodity parts vary in quality far more than the photos suggest. - **Order spares.** 10–15% over the class count. Buttons get lost, strips get cut short, someone reverses power and ground. Spares are cheaper than a dead station in the middle of a lesson. - **Watch the pack sizes.** Much of the classroom savings comes from pack breakpoints (breadboards in tens, buttons in hundreds) rather than negotiated per-unit discounts. Round the class order up to the pack, not to the roster. - **Check the school's purchasing rules before promising the cheap route.** Many districts cannot reimburse AliExpress or direct international orders and require a domestic vendor with a W-9. If that is the constraint, the Amazon price is the real price — say so rather than quoting a number the teacher cannot actually use. ## Reference material - `references/part-catalog.md` — house-observed price bands, search keywords, prep work, and known images for parts recurring across Moving Rainbow kits. **Read this before pricing anything** — it saves rediscovering the same numbers and keeps guides consistent with each other. - `references/sourcing-strategy.md` — how to build a defensible price band, which marketplace wins for which part class, and the failure modes worth warning teachers about. - `references/image-sourcing.md` — the license rules, the Wikimedia workflow, and when to write a generation brief instead. - `assets/purchasing-guide-template.md` — the page skeleton to copy, with one worked part section showing the target depth. - `assets/image-description-template.md` — the text-to-image brief to fill in when no usable photo of a part exists. ## Before you call it done - Required parts appear before optional parts in the summary *and* the body. - Every part section has all six pieces: image, description, prep work, both prices, keywords, and search links. - Every summary bullet's anchor matches a real heading on the page. - Every image path resolves from `docs/kits/{kit}/purchasing-guide/`. - No image is hotlinked from a marketplace; anything sourced externally carries its license and attribution. - Any part still missing art has a companion `*-image-description.md`. - The page carries a "Prices checked {Month Year}" note. - The order worksheet totals actually add up. - Pixel does not appear anywhere on the page.