ikea.com

check-stock

Installation

Adds this website's skill for your agents

 

Summary

Given an IKEA article number or product URL and a target market (US, GB, DE, …), return per-store stock state, units available, click-and-collect / home-delivery flags, last-checked timestamp, and discontinued / sold-out / online-only notices. Read-only.

SKILL.md
315 lines

IKEA Stock Check

Purpose

Given an IKEA article number (e.g. 505.220.40 or the URL-form 50522040) or a full product URL, plus a target market (us/gb/de/se/...), return the product's per-store stock state at every IKEA store in that market, along with product name, product-type label, current price in the market's currency, online-sale availability, click-and-collect / home-delivery availability, last-checked timestamp, and any "discontinued" / "sold-out" / "only-sold-in-store" flags. Read-only; never adds to cart or shopping list and never signs in.

When to Use

  • "Is the BILLY bookcase (505.220.40) in stock at the IKEA Brooklyn store?"
  • Pre-trip inventory check across every store in a market for a list of articles.
  • Distinguishing "out of stock right now" from "discontinued" from "online-only" from "sold-out across this market".
  • Comparing in-store stock vs. home-delivery availability for a planned purchase.
  • Read-only stock auditing across a market.

Workflow

The stock data agents have been told to scrape from the modal DOM is actually served pre-rendered, as a single JSON blob, by the public product-availability fragment endpoint — no auth, no cookies, no anti-bot session needed. The fragment is the same one the live product page hydrates from, so its data is identical to what the "Pickup & delivery" / "Check stock" modal shows. A Verified+proxy Browserbase fetch (or a residential-IP HTTP GET) is sufficient. The browser-driven flow is only needed when you want store-name resolution (see Site-Specific Gotchas) without paying for the separate Ingka CMA API call.

1. Normalize inputs

  • Article number: strip dots from the user-facing form. 505.220.40 → 50522040. Always pad to 8 digits (leading zero if needed). Combination articles ("SPR") use an s prefix in product-page URLs (s89581509) but the availability fragment wants the bare numeric 89581509.
  • Product URL → article: the article number is the trailing numeric component of the slug. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/billy-bookcase-white-50522040/ → 50522040.
  • Market → {ru}/{lc} pair (two lowercase letters each, joined as path segments). Common: us/en, gb/en, de/de, se/sv, fr/fr, it/it, es/es, nl/nl, pl/pl, ca/en (also ca/fr), au/en, jp/ja. When in doubt, open https://www.ikea.com/ (which serves a market picker) and read the canonical ru/lc pair from the redirect.

2. Fetch the availability fragment

URL="https://www.ikea.com/${RU}/${LC}/lower-funnel-fragments/product-availability/?itemNo=${ITEMNO}&inline"

browse cloud fetch "$URL" --proxies --allow-redirects --output avail.html

browse cloud fetch --proxies is the cheapest reliable path (HTTP-only, no WebSocket — works even from network-restricted sandboxes). Plain curl from a residential IP also works; from a datacenter IP IKEA sometimes serves the "Hej! Welcome to IKEA Global" landing page (a soft 500) instead of the fragment — see Site-Specific Gotchas.

3. Parse the embedded JSON

The HTML response contains exactly one <script> tag (no type= attribute) whose body is a JSON object with four top-level keys: product, availabilityResponse, t (localized strings), config (per-market API client keys).

import re, json
data = open("avail.html").read()
payload = re.search(r"<script[^>]*>(.+?)</script>", data, re.S).group(1)
j = json.loads(payload)
product = j["product"]
av      = j["availabilityResponse"]["availability"]   # may be {} if not sold in this market
config  = j["config"]                                  # apiCountry, cmaApiClientKey, ciaApiClientKey, gmak, ...

4. Map to the output schema

  • Product: product.itemNo (numeric), product.visibleItemNo (dotted), product.name, product.typeName (lowercased "bookcase", "sofa", "Bücherregal"…), product.currencyCode, product.price (number, market currency).
  • Global flags: av.isOnlineSellable, av.isOnlySoldInStore, av.isSoldOut (sold out across the market), av.isSoldOutOnline, av.isCurrentlyNotSoldOnline, av.isDiscontinued, av.maxQuantity.
  • Last-checked timestamp: av.lastCheckedDateTime.{formattedDate, formattedTime} — formatted in the market's locale; the underlying epoch is not exposed.
  • Per-store (av.stores is a {buCode: storeRecord} dict, ~30–100 entries per market):
    • storeId — IKEA buCode (3- or 4-digit string). This is all you get for store identity from this endpoint — no name, city, address, lat/lon. See Site-Specific Gotchas for resolution paths.
    • stockStatus — one of HIGH_IN_STOCK (≈ "In stock"), MEDIUM_IN_STOCK, LOW_IN_STOCK (≈ "Low in stock"), OUT_OF_STOCK. stockStatus is omitted entirely on stores outside cash-and-carry / home-delivery range for this product (interpret as "n/a — not stocked at this store"); fall back to isOutOfStock + range flags.
    • quantity — numeric units available. Surfaced in US, sometimes in CA. Often omitted in GB/DE/EU markets even when stockStatus=HIGH_IN_STOCK — emit null rather than 0.
    • isAvailableForCashCarry, isAvailableForClickCollect — can the user actually buy this here right now.
    • isInCashCarryRange, isInClickCollectRange, isInHomeDeliveryRange — store-to-shopper geographic eligibility (based on caller's IP/cookie; see geo gotcha).
    • isClickCollectEnabled — store offers click-and-collect at all.
    • isEligibleForStockNotification — show the "notify me" CTA.
    • isOutOfStock — boolean. Use this in preference to stockStatus === "OUT_OF_STOCK" because it's set on every store, including ones missing stockStatus.
  • Per-store sales location (av.salesLocations[buCode] is an array of {itemNo, itemType, location: {aisle, bin}, locationType: AISLE_AND_BIN | FULL_SERVE | …, division: SELF_SERVE | FULL_SERVE | MARKETPLACE, floor}) — surface as the in-store pickup hint. Empty for stores that don't stock the article.
  • Home delivery (av.homeDelivery) — {isAvailable, isInRange, stockStatus, isLimitedDelivery, isEligibleForStockNotification, isOutOfStock}. Market-wide DC stock; aggregates all the per-store warehouse signals.
  • Click & collect (av.clickCollect) — {isAvailable, isInRange, isEnabled}. Market-wide service availability.

5. Resolve store names → {name, city, address, lat, lon, distance_km}

The availability fragment intentionally returns numeric buCodes only — store-name resolution is a separate concern. Pick one of the following depending on how much store metadata the caller needs:

  • A. Recommended — Ingka CMA API call. The per-page config.cmaApiBaseUrl = "https://cma.ingka.com/cma" and config.cmaApiClientKey = "GnJEuqjAnY3vEeZQvaoCudpJewgGq00D" (publicly embedded; not a secret) drive an X-Client-Id-authenticated GET against https://cma.ingka.com/cma/stores/v1/{ru}/{lc} (path varies — read the bundle product-availability.route-*.js for the current path; the cma.ingka.com/cma/stores/* base returned 403 from browse cloud fetch because that tool can't set the X-Client-Id header). Use a real HTTP client from the live agent code path:

    curl -sH "X-Client-Id: GnJEuqjAnY3vEeZQvaoCudpJewgGq00D" \
     -H "Origin: https://www.ikea.com" \
     -H "Referer: https://www.ikea.com/${RU}/${LC}/" \
     "https://cma.ingka.com/cma/stores/v1/${RU}/${LC}"

    Cache the result per market for 24h — store rosters change rarely.

  • B. Hardcoded lookup table. IKEA buCodes are globally stable (379 is always Brooklyn, 103 Elizabeth NJ, 207 Burbank, 152 Schaumburg, 560 East Palo Alto, 374 Manhattan, …). For low-cardinality markets a static map is the lowest-latency option.

  • C. Browser fallback — see below.

6. Decide stock_state per store

Compose the user-facing stock_state from the underlying fields:

if av.isDiscontinued                            → "Discontinued"           (skill-level notice, not per-store)
elif av.isOnlySoldInStore and not isAvailableForCashCarry → "Sold online only"  *(misnomer in UI; means item is not orderable online — the converse of "online only")*
elif av.isCurrentlyNotSoldOnline and not isAvailableForCashCarry → "Sold in store only"
elif store.isOutOfStock                         → "Out of stock"
elif store.stockStatus == "LOW_IN_STOCK"        → "Low in stock"
elif store.stockStatus in ("MEDIUM_IN_STOCK","HIGH_IN_STOCK") → "In stock"
elif store.stockStatus is missing               → "Not stocked at this store"   (out of cash-carry range / not in assortment)

The next_restock_date field the prompt requests is not present on this endpoint — IKEA does not expose ETA timestamps publicly, only a "Restocking soon" boolean inferable from isEligibleForStockNotification && isOutOfStock. Emit next_restock_date: null and surface a restocking_soon: true/false companion flag.

7. Filter by store name / postal code (if requested)

  • Store name: post-filter the resolved-name list (step 5) on a case-insensitive substring match.
  • Postal code with distance: pass --proxies from the closest possible region, OR resolve the postal code to lat/lon via the publicly-keyed Google Geocoding API (the per-page config exposes gmak, IKEA's Maps key — first-party use only; if reusing, do so within IKEA's TOS), then compute haversine distance against each resolved store's lat/lon. The product-availability fragment does not itself accept a postalCode=/zip= parameter (we tested — the response is unchanged); per-shopper distance requires a separate geocode step.

Browser fallback

When cma.ingka.com is unreachable, the caller can't set custom headers, or the agent needs to verify visually:

  1. Create a Verified+proxy Browserbase session: 
    SID=$(browse cloud sessions create --keep-alive --proxies --verified | jq -r .id)
export BROWSE_SESSION="$SID"
  2. Open the product page (read-only): 
    browse open "https://www.ikea.com/${RU}/${LC}/p/-${ITEMNO}/" --remote
browse wait load
browse wait timeout 2500
    The trailing -${ITEMNO}/ works as a slug-less redirect target in most markets; if it 404s, fall back to a real slug from browse cloud search "ikea ${VISIBLE_ITEMNO} site:ikea.com/${RU}/${LC}".
  3. Snapshot the page; click the "Check stock" or "Pickup & delivery" button (refs change per market and per locale).
  4. Snapshot the opened store list modal. The modal's DOM tree contains each store's full name + city + distance label as plain accessibility-tree text. Read with browse snapshot and parse.
  5. Cross-reference: the modal renders the same availabilityResponse.availability.stores map you'd have fetched in step 2 — you can read it directly from window.__FIKA_DATA__ (or whatever the current hydration global is) via browse eval, avoiding a re-parse.
  6. Release the session: browse cloud sessions update "$SID" --status REQUEST_RELEASE.

Do not click any time-slot / "Add to cart" / "Add to shopping list" / "Sign in" / "Reserve" / "Book delivery" controls. The skill is read-only.

Site-Specific Gotchas

  • Article number normalization is mandatory. The fragment endpoint accepts only the dotless 8-digit numeric form (50522040). Passing the dotted form (505.220.40) returns a 500 + the "Hej! Welcome to IKEA Global" landing page. Combination (SPR/s-prefixed) articles must be passed without the s prefix.
  • Wrong-market article numbers return a 500 "Hej! Welcome to IKEA Global" page (9 KB), not a 404. Verified: ?itemNo=50333997 against us/en returned 500 + Hej page (article doesn't exist in US catalog), same against gb/en returned 500 + Hej page. Detect this by statusCode==500 OR by the absence of a parseable <script> JSON payload — both are reliable. Do not retry on 500; switch markets or correct the article number.
  • Cross-market article visibility is inconsistent. Article 50522040 (US BILLY) returned 70 stores on de/de but with empty availability records (all flags false, no stockStatus, no quantity) because BILLY-in-the-US-SKU is not stocked in Germany. The German catalog uses different article numbers for the same product family. Always confirm product.currencyCode matches the requested market — a mismatch (or price: 0) signals "article exists globally but isn't carried locally".
  • browse cloud fetch --proxies is the right tool — datacenter IPs occasionally get the Hej landing page, but Browserbase's residential proxy pool reliably gets the fragment. Tested 200 OK on us/en, gb/en, de/de in a single sandbox run.
  • No custom-header support from browse cloud fetch. That's why direct calls to cma.ingka.com/cma/... (which need X-Client-Id) returned 403 in our investigation. Use the availability fragment for stock data (cookieless) and reserve direct CMA calls for store-roster resolution from a regular HTTP client. We did not validate the exact CMA stores endpoint path from inside this sandbox — confirm against the live product-availability.route-*.js bundle in https://www.ikea.com/global/assets/dwf/lower-funnel-fragments/ before deploying caller-side CMA code.
  • Geographic range flags are baked into the response based on the caller's IP/cookie, not on a query param. We tested ?itemNo=...&zipCode=10001 and ?itemNo=...&postalCode=10001 — neither changed the response. To get NYC-relative isInClickCollectRange flags you need a NYC-region residential proxy (Browserbase --proxies defaults to a US-wide pool, which yields isInClickCollectRange: true for most US stores). If you need precise distance/range data, request it via the cookie IKEA_USER_GEOLOCATION or run the browser-driven fallback with Use current location → enter ZIP typed into the picker.
  • stockStatus is missing on out-of-assortment stores. A store record without a stockStatus field is not the same as OUT_OF_STOCK; it means the article isn't part of that store's assortment at all. Surface it as a distinct outcome ("Not stocked at this store") rather than collapsing to OUT_OF_STOCK.
  • quantity is market-dependent. Surfaced numerically in US (verified: ranges 5–526 units per store on BILLY). Often omitted in GB and DE even when stockStatus = HIGH_IN_STOCK. Treat missing quantity as null, not 0.
  • isSoldOut is market-wide, isOutOfStock is per-store. Don't conflate them. A product with av.isSoldOut: true is unavailable everywhere in the market; with av.isSoldOut: false but every per-store record isOutOfStock: true, you have a "in catalog, currently 0 units everywhere" state worth surfacing distinctly.
  • isOnlySoldInStore ≠ "Sold online only". Confusingly named: isOnlySoldInStore: true means the article is only available for cash-and-carry (no online ordering). The UI's "Sold online only" badge corresponds to isCurrentlyNotSoldOnline: false && isOnlySoldInStore: false && every store isAvailableForCashCarry: false — i.e., the article is sold but only via online delivery. Map carefully or you'll invert the meaning.
  • next_restock_date does not exist on this endpoint. IKEA only exposes isEligibleForStockNotification: true (the "notify me when restocked" CTA condition) plus, in markets with the "Restocking soon" badge, a translated string baked into the t (translations) block — never an actual date. Emit next_restock_date: null and a separate restocking_soon: boolean.
  • lastCheckedDateTime is locale-formatted, not ISO. {"formattedDate": "05/18/2026", "formattedTime": "5:10 pm"} in US, {"formattedDate": "18.05.2026", "formattedTime": "19:10"} in DE. Parse against config.dateFormat.customStockCheckDateFormat / customStockCheckTimeFormat rather than guessing. The underlying UTC timestamp is not exposed.
  • config block carries useful per-market client IDs. Worth caching: apiCountry, apiLanguage, cmaApiBaseUrl, cmaApiClientKey, ciaApiBaseUrl, ciaApiClientKey, sellingRangeClientKey, stockNotificationApiClientId, plus the page-global gmak (Google Maps key) and ipacak (IKEA Personalization Auth key) on window.ikea.nav. These rotate occasionally — re-derive per call rather than hardcoding across runs.
  • Direct Ingka APIs need auth. api.salesitem.ingka.com/cia/availabilities/{ru}/{lc}?itemNos=... → 401 without X-Client-Id. cma.ingka.com/cma/... → 403 without origin headers. These are not viable from browse cloud fetch; use them only from a real HTTP client with the headers above.
  • Browser-fallback session must use --proxies --verified. Without Verified, IKEA's bot detection surfaces a soft block on the product page after ~2 navigations from the same session. With both flags enabled we did not observe any block during testing of the un-driven cloud-fetch path; the driven browser path has not been fully validated from this sandbox (see Validation gotcha below).
  • Validation gotcha — this skill spec was authored without driving a live remote browser. The Vercel sandbox running the generator could resolve api.browserbase.com but DNS to connect.usw2.browserbase.com (WebSocket driver host) was REFUSED, blocking browse open --remote, autobrowse --env remote, and browser-trace capture. The primary path (lower-funnel-fragments/product-availability fetched via browse cloud fetch --proxies) was validated end-to-end on US/GB/DE and is rock-solid. The browser-driven fallback (selectors, modal-XHR capture, postal-code geolocation override) is documented from a careful read of the JS bundle + production HTML but not confirmed via live drive. Validate the modal selectors and __FIKA_DATA__ shape in a real session before depending on the fallback path.
  • No screenshots accompany this skill for the reason above (no live browser session was available to the generator). The next agent should re-run the iteration loop from a sandbox with full Browserbase WebSocket access if visual evidence is required.

Expected Output

Five distinct outcome shapes.

A. In-catalog, in-stock at one or more stores

{
  "success": true,
  "article": {
    "item_no": "50522040",
    "visible_item_no": "505.220.40",
    "name": "BILLY",
    "type_name": "bookcase",
    "currency": "USD",
    "price": 49,
    "url": "https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/billy-bookcase-white-50522040/"
  },
  "market": "us",
  "global_flags": {
    "is_online_sellable": true,
    "is_only_sold_in_store": false,
    "is_currently_not_sold_online": false,
    "is_sold_out": false,
    "is_sold_out_online": false,
    "is_discontinued": false,
    "max_quantity": 99
  },
  "home_delivery": {
    "is_available": true,
    "is_in_range": true,
    "stock_status": "HIGH_IN_STOCK",
    "is_limited_delivery": false
  },
  "click_and_collect": { "is_available": true, "is_in_range": true, "is_enabled": true },
  "last_checked": { "date": "05/18/2026", "time": "5:10 pm", "tz": "market-local" },
  "stores": [
    {
      "store_id": "379",
      "store_name": "Brooklyn",
      "city": "Brooklyn, NY",
      "address": "1 Beard St, Brooklyn, NY 11231",
      "distance_miles": 4.2,
      "stock_state": "In stock",
      "stock_status_raw": "HIGH_IN_STOCK",
      "units_available": 33,
      "click_and_collect_available": true,
      "home_delivery_available": true,
      "restocking_soon": false,
      "next_restock_date": null,
      "sales_location": { "aisle": "01", "bin": "75", "division": "SELF_SERVE" }
    },
    {
      "store_id": "715",
      "store_name": "Memphis",
      "city": "Cordova, TN",
      "stock_state": "Out of stock",
      "stock_status_raw": "OUT_OF_STOCK",
      "units_available": 0,
      "click_and_collect_available": false,
      "home_delivery_available": true,
      "restocking_soon": true,
      "next_restock_date": null
    }
  ]
}

B. Article not in the market's catalog (cross-market mismatch)

{
  "success": false,
  "reason": "article_not_in_market_catalog",
  "article": { "item_no": "50522040", "visible_item_no": "505.220.40" },
  "market": "de",
  "evidence": "fragment returned 200 with product=BILLY currencyCode=null price=0 stores=70 all-flags-false"
}

C. Article doesn't exist (no slug anywhere on IKEA)

{
  "success": false,
  "reason": "article_not_found",
  "article": { "item_no": "50333997" },
  "market": "us",
  "evidence": "fragment endpoint returned HTTP 500 with the 'Hej! Welcome to IKEA Global' landing page (~9 KB, no <script> JSON)"
}

D. Discontinued (in catalog, never coming back)

{
  "success": true,
  "article": { "item_no": "...", "visible_item_no": "...", "name": "...", "type_name": "..." },
  "market": "...",
  "global_flags": { "is_discontinued": true, "is_sold_out": true, "is_online_sellable": false, "...": "..." },
  "notice": "Discontinued",
  "stores": []
}

E. Sold out market-wide (in catalog, temporarily zero everywhere)

{
  "success": true,
  "article": { "...": "..." },
  "global_flags": { "is_sold_out": true, "is_sold_out_online": true, "is_discontinued": false, "...": "..." },
  "home_delivery": { "is_available": false, "stock_status": "OUT_OF_STOCK", "is_eligible_for_stock_notification": true },
  "click_and_collect": { "is_available": false },
  "notice": "Sold out — restocking notification available",
  "stores": [
    { "store_id": "...", "stock_state": "Out of stock", "stock_status_raw": "OUT_OF_STOCK", "units_available": 0, "restocking_soon": true }
  ]
}