Purpose
Scans every variant in the catalog and surfaces those whose inventoryItem.unitCost is missing or zero. Cost of goods sold (COGS) is the foundation for margin reporting, profit-based pricing decisions, and inventory valuation — a single missing cost silently corrupts every downstream calculation. Read-only — no mutations.
Prerequisites
- Authenticated Shopify CLI session:
shopify store auth --store <domain> --scopes read_products,read_inventory - API scopes:
read_products,read_inventory
Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Required | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| store | string | yes | — | Store domain (e.g., mystore.myshopify.com) |
| status_filter | string | no | ACTIVE | Variant product status to audit: ACTIVE, DRAFT, ARCHIVED, or ALL |
| vendor_filter | string | no | — | Optional vendor to scope the audit |
| include_zero_cost | bool | no | true | Treat unitCost = 0 as missing (recommended; zero cost is rarely intentional) |
| only_stocked | bool | no | true | Limit to variants with inventoryQuantity > 0 |
| format | string | no | human | Output format: human or json |
Safety
ℹ️ Read-only skill — no mutations are executed. Safe to run at any time. The skill flags missing data; remediation should happen through a follow-up workflow that you control.
Workflow Steps
-
OPERATION:
productVariants— query Inputs:first: 250,query: <built from status_filter and vendor_filter>, selectsku,price,inventoryQuantity,inventoryItem { id },product { title, vendor, status, productType }, pagination cursor Expected output: All matching variants; paginate untilhasNextPage: false -
OPERATION:
inventoryItems— query Inputs: BatchedinventoryItemIds(≤100 per request) Expected output:unitCost { amount, currencyCode },tracked -
Filter to variants where
unitCost == nullorunitCost.amount == 0(wheninclude_zero_cost: true). Compute potential margin gap asprice - 0 = pricefor the missing-cost variants — this is the fictional margin downstream reports will show. -
Summarize: count missing, % of catalog, total stock-value impact (
sum of inventoryQuantity * priceacross missing rows since you cannot value them on cost).
GraphQL Operations
graphql# productVariants:query — validated against api_version 2025-01 query VariantsForCogsAudit($query: String, $after: String) { productVariants(first: 250, after: $after, query: $query) { edges { node { id sku title price inventoryQuantity product { id title vendor status productType } inventoryItem { id } } } pageInfo { hasNextPage endCursor } } }
graphql# inventoryItems:query — validated against api_version 2025-01 query InventoryItemCosts($ids: [ID!]!) { nodes(ids: $ids) { ... on InventoryItem { id tracked sku unitCost { amount currencyCode } } } }
Session Tracking
Claude MUST emit the following output at each stage. This is mandatory.
On start, emit:
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ SKILL: COGS Completeness Audit ║ ║ Store: <store domain> ║ ║ Started: <YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM UTC> ║ ╚══════════════════════════════════════════════╝
After each step, emit:
[N/TOTAL] <QUERY|MUTATION> <OperationName> → Params: <brief summary of key inputs> → Result: <count or outcome>
On completion, emit:
For format: human (default):
══════════════════════════════════════════════ COGS COMPLETENESS AUDIT Variants audited: <n> Missing unit cost: <n> (<pct>%) Stocked + missing cost: <n> Catalog value at risk: $<amount> (priced, not costed) Top vendors by missing variants: <vendor> Missing: <n> Stocked: <n> Output: cogs_audit_<date>.csv ══════════════════════════════════════════════
For format: json, emit:
json{ "skill": "cogs-completeness-audit", "store": "<domain>", "variants_audited": 0, "missing_cost": 0, "missing_cost_pct": 0, "stocked_missing": 0, "value_at_risk": 0, "currency": "USD", "output_file": "cogs_audit_<date>.csv" }
Output Format
CSV file cogs_audit_<YYYY-MM-DD>.csv with columns:
variant_id, inventory_item_id, sku, product_title, vendor, product_status, price, unit_cost, inventory_quantity, value_at_price, currency
Error Handling
| Error | Cause | Recovery |
|---|---|---|
THROTTLED | API rate limit exceeded | Wait 2 seconds, retry up to 3 times |
inventoryItem is null | Variant has no inventory item (rare) | Skip, note in error count |
unitCost.currencyCode differs from store currency | Multi-currency cost capture | Treat as present; do not flag, surface currency mismatch separately |
| All variants have costs | Healthy catalog | Exit with summary: 0 missing, 100% complete |
Best Practices
- Run monthly; whenever new vendors or product lines are onboarded, run on day one of activation to catch missing costs before margin reports are trusted.
- Filter by
vendor_filterto assign remediation work to the buyer responsible for that vendor's data. - Pair with
inventory-valuation-report— that report will silently treat missing-cost SKUs as worthless inventory unless this audit is clean. - Treat
unitCost = 0as missing by default. Genuine zero-cost SKUs (free samples, GWP) are rare; tag those with azero-cost-intentionalproduct tag and exclude them from the audit viavendor_filteror downstream filtering. - Use the CSV as a worklist: hand it to the merchandising team for cost capture, then re-run weekly until the missing count is zero.


