Supplier Research

Supplier Research

Researches whether a candidate product can actually be sourced, then records the outcome via hunt supplier-set — the only mechanism in the engine that can move the supplier hard gate off its default UNKNOWN state. Full vocabulary and human-origination rules live in references/supplier-ip.md; read it before using this Skill.

When to use this

For a promising candidate (typically at COMPETITOR_ANALYSIS or later — supplier feasibility matters most once a candidate has survived earlier, cheaper filters; see time-budget-controller.md) where sourcing feasibility is still unknown.

Step 1 — Check what's already recorded

hunt supplier-show <opportunity_id>

NOT_YET_VALIDATED means nothing is recorded yet. Otherwise, review the existing record before deciding whether new research is warranted (time-budget-controller.md Rule 2).

Step 2 — Legitimate research approaches

Treat manufacturer directories (Alibaba, Global Sources, similar B2B marketplaces), trade-show listings, and direct manufacturer/brand websites as research targets — sources to search and read, the same way any web search works. This is not scraping and not automated data extraction; it is using a browser or search tool to find publicly available supplier listings, MOQs, and stated pricing, the same way a human sourcing manager would.

Useful signals to look for:

• Whether multiple suppliers appear to manufacture this product category at all (a complete absence of any listed manufacturer is itself a finding).
• Stated MOQ, unit pricing ranges, and lead times as published by the supplier (these are the supplier's own claims, not verified facts, until a human actually engages and confirms them).
• Stated certifications relevant to the category (e.g. FDA, CPSIA, CE) — note what's claimed, but do not treat a claimed certification as confirmed without evidence.

Step 3 — What counts as which status

Per references/supplier-ip.md SUP-01, only these four literal values are valid for --supplier-status:

CONFIRMED_IMPOSSIBLE is the status that fires the supplier hard gate — it must be reserved for genuinely confirmed dead ends, never for "sourcing looks hard" or "I couldn't find many suppliers in a quick search," which is MANUAL_SOURCING_REQUIRED territory instead.

Step 4 — The hard rule: human confirmation required before recording

hunt supplier-set must only ever be called with a status value that:

1. A human explicitly told this Skill to record ("I got a quote, mark it VALIDATED"), or
2. Claude Browser found in a verifiable primary source AND the human then explicitly confirmed that finding as accurate.

Claude Browser research alone — however thorough, however confident the findings look — is never sufficient by itself to call hunt supplier-set with VALIDATED or CONFIRMED_IMPOSSIBLE. Present the research findings to the human first, and only record the status after the human has confirmed it. This is because supplier_status is the single lever that can move the supplier hard gate (references/supplier-ip.md SUP-03), and no pipeline stage — including this Skill — is permitted to infer it on its own authority.

hunt supplier-set <opportunity_id> \
  --supplier-status <UNKNOWN|MANUAL_SOURCING_REQUIRED|VALIDATED|CONFIRMED_IMPOSSIBLE> \
  [--supplier-name ...] [--unit-cost-quoted ...] [--moq ...] \
  [--lead-time-days ...] [--certifications ...] [--supplier-notes ...]

Never fabricate --unit-cost-quoted, --moq, --lead-time-days, or --certifications — these must be the actual figures a supplier stated (and ideally a human confirmed), never a plausible estimate for the category.

What this Skill must never do

• Never call hunt supplier-set with a status inferred solely from its own research judgment.
• Never invent MOQ, unit pricing, lead times, or certifications not actually observed from a real source.
• Never treat "I couldn't quickly find a supplier" as CONFIRMED_IMPOSSIBLE — that requires a genuinely confirmed dead end, not an inconclusive search.
• Never scrape, bypass access controls, or attempt automated data extraction from supplier sites — this is legitimate research (searching, reading, relaying), not automated harvesting.

See references/supplier-ip.md for the full vocabulary, the documented SUPPLIER_UNKNOWN/UNKNOWN naming mismatch (use the code's actual UNKNOWN), and the rule-preservation table.