Target via Scavio

Search Target.com, the US retailer: browse a category, read a product by its TCIN, and pull reviews with the rating breakdown, per-attribute averages and guest photos. All endpoints return structured JSON and cost 1 credit each.

Target calls are slow. See the latency table below and set your client timeout accordingly.

When to trigger

Use this skill when the user asks to:

• Search Target.com for products by keyword
• Browse the products in a Target category
• Look up a Target product by TCIN (Target's catalog id)
• Check a Target product's price or availability at a specific store
• Read Target reviews, the star breakdown or per-attribute ratings for a product
• Compare Target pricing against another retailer (pair with scavio-walmart, scavio-amazon or scavio-ebay)

Setup

Get a free API key at scavio.dev (50 free credits to get started, no card required):

export SCAVIO_API_KEY=sk_live_your_key

If you do not have a key yet

An agent running this skill without SCAVIO_API_KEY set will get 401 on every call below. The whole path from nothing to a working key is self-serve:

1. Sign up at dashboard.scavio.dev - email or Google, no card required.
2. A key is created for the account automatically at signup. It is on the dashboard under API Keys, ready to copy.
3. A new account starts with 50 credits. Endpoints in this skill cost 1 credit each unless the table below says otherwise.

When the balance runs out the API answers 402 with a JSON body carrying billing_url. Topping up needs no code change - the same key keeps working. The smallest purchase is 2,500 credits for $25, and monthly plans work out cheaper per credit if the usage is steady rather than one-off.

Every request is a POST with a JSON body and:

Authorization: Bearer $SCAVIO_API_KEY

Endpoints

Base URL: https://api.scavio.dev. Every endpoint costs 1 credit.

Latency, not cost, is the thing to plan around. A 502-then-retry has been observed taking 105 seconds. Set a client timeout of at least 120 seconds, and prefer async or background execution if the user is waiting on a response.

Workflow

1. Find products: call /target/search with keyword. Read the TCIN off each row.
2. Browse a category: call /target/category with category_id, which is the segment after N- in a target.com /c/ URL.
3. Read a product: call /target/product with tcin.
4. Reviews: call /target/reviews with the same tcin.
5. Store-specific prices: pass store_id on any of the four endpoints. It defaults to 3991. Unlike Walmart, this is a real request parameter here: prices and availability are the caller's choice.

search and category paginate with page plus count. product and reviews do not paginate.

Parameters

Search (/search)

Category (/category)

Product (/product)

A child TCIN is answered by its variation parent, with the child present in variants.

Reviews (/reviews)

Examples

import requests

BASE = "https://api.scavio.dev"
# Your key from https://scavio.dev. Load it from your environment or secret
# store in real code - keep it out of source control.
API_KEY = "sk_your_key_here"
HEADERS = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"}
# Target calls are slow: give the client room.
TIMEOUT = 120

# 1. Search (~9s)
results = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/target/search", headers=HEADERS, timeout=TIMEOUT,
    json={"keyword": "airpods", "sort": "price_low", "count": 28}).json()

# 2. Category browse (~37s) - category_id is the segment after N- in a /c/ URL
category = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/target/category", headers=HEADERS, timeout=TIMEOUT,
    json={"category_id": "5xtg6", "page": 1}).json()

# 3. Product detail by TCIN (~4s), priced at a specific store
product = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/target/product", headers=HEADERS, timeout=TIMEOUT,
    json={"tcin": "1010453160", "store_id": "3991"}).json()

# 4. Reviews (~40s). Returns 8 bodies maximum, whatever review_count says.
reviews = requests.post(f"{BASE}/api/v1/target/reviews", headers=HEADERS, timeout=TIMEOUT,
    json={"tcin": "1010453160"}).json()

Response

Every response uses the envelope { data, response_time, credits_used, credits_remaining }.

• search returns the product rows with prices, ratings, badges and promotions.
• category returns the same row shape as search, plus the category breadcrumb.
• product returns price, rating, images, specifications, variants, return policy and fulfillment.
• reviews returns the review bodies with the rating breakdown, per-attribute averages and guest photos.

seller_id and seller_name are null for first-party stock, which is most of Target. Null there means "sold by Target", not missing data. Only Target Plus marketplace rows name a vendor, and how many of those appear varies enormously by query: in testing, 22 of 24 rows for "office chair" carried a vendor and 0 of 24 for "patio furniture" did.

Guardrails

• Never fabricate product names, prices, TCINs, ratings or review text. Only return data the API returned.
• Do not overpromise speed. Product is roughly 4s, search roughly 9s, category roughly 37s and reviews roughly 40s. If the user is building something interactive, tell them to run these in the background.
• /reviews returns 8 review bodies maximum, regardless of what review_count on the product says. limit only trims that set further. There is no page and no offset parameter. Never tell the user they can page through all reviews, and never present 8 bodies as the complete review corpus. The rating breakdown does cover all reviews.
• A null seller_id / seller_name means the item is sold by Target itself. Do not report it as missing or unknown data.
• count is capped at 28. Target rejects anything higher outright.
• Concurrency, not credits, is the real ceiling. Simultaneous requests are capped per plan and shared across Target, eBay, Walmart, Amazon and Google -- 1 on free and pay-as-you-go, up to 50 on Growth -- and a single Target call can hold a slot for 40 seconds. Do not fan out dozens of Target calls in parallel.
• Prices and availability are store-dependent. If the user cares about a specific store, pass store_id; if you did not pass one, say the numbers are for the default store.
• Always include the product URL so the user can verify.

Failure handling

• 400 means an invalid or missing parameter, e.g. a count above 28. Fix and retry.
• 401 means the API key is invalid or missing. Check SCAVIO_API_KEY.
• 404 means the TCIN or category id was not found. Check that category_id is the segment after N- in the /c/ URL, not the whole path.
• 429 means a rate or usage limit was exceeded. Wait before retrying. See rate limits.
• 502 / 503 mean the upstream is temporarily unavailable. Retry once after a few seconds; a 502-then-retry has been seen to complete at 105 seconds total, so do not abandon the request too early.
• A client-side timeout is far more likely than an API error here. Raise the timeout before assuming the endpoint is broken.
• If SCAVIO_API_KEY is not set, prompt the user to export it before continuing.

Docs

• Target search
• Target category
• Target product
• Target reviews