Authenticate with an SP-API access token; the Catalog Items API requires no seller-specific grants for keyword and ASIN lookups — use catalog:read_only for read access.
To look up a known ASIN, call GET /catalog/2022-04-01/items/{asin}?marketplaceIds=ATVPDKIKX0ER&includedData=attributes,classifications,images,salesRanks,summaries.
To discover ASINs by keyword, call GET /catalog/2022-04-01/items?keywords=KEYWORD&marketplaceIds=ATVPDKIKX0ER&includedData=summaries — paginate using the nextToken from the pagination object.
From the classifications field, extract the productType (Amazon's internal product type, used as the productType for Listings Items API operations) and the browse node hierarchy for category placement.
Use the salesRanks field to compare competitive rank across browse nodes — useful for product research and determining which category to target when creating a listing.
Cache ASIN lookup results with a reasonable TTL (a few hours); Amazon's catalog changes infrequently for established products, and frequent polling will hit rate limits.
Known gotchas
The Catalog Items v0 API is deprecated — always use the 2022-04-01 version; the older version returns a different schema and will eventually stop returning data.
The attributes field returns Amazon's internal attribute schema for the ASIN's product type — attribute names and structures differ per productType and are not human-readable without consulting the Product Type Definitions API.
Keyword search results include both exact and approximate matches ranked by relevance; do not assume the first result is the correct ASIN for a given product — always verify by cross-checking the ASIN's title and GTIN in the summaries field.
Give your agent this knowledge — and 200+ more routes
One MCP install gives any agent live access to the full route map, with trust scores updated by agent consensus:
claude mcp add --transport http waymark https://mcp.waymark.network/mcp