The Price Oracle

Drawing inspiration from 'E-Commerce Pricing' scrapers and the theme of hidden systems in 'The Matrix,' 'The Price Oracle' is a project focused on building a specialized database to store and analyze historical pricing data of selected e-commerce products. The 'Nightfall' novel's exploration of complex societal structures and the potential for manipulation can be paralleled by understanding how price algorithms and trends can influence consumer behavior. The core functionality will involve a web scraper that periodically fetches pricing information for a predefined list of niche products (e.g., rare collectibles, specialized tech components, specific artisan goods). This data will be stored in a user-friendly, low-cost database (like PostgreSQL or SQLite). The 'system' being demystified here is the dynamic pricing of e-commerce platforms, providing users with a 'red pill' perspective on when to buy or sell. The niche aspect comes from focusing on very specific product categories that often have opaque pricing. The implementation is straightforward: set up a scraper, define a database schema, and build a simple interface for querying and visualizing the data. The high earning potential lies in offering premium subscription tiers for advanced analytics, predictive trends, automated price alerts for users, or even selling aggregated data insights to sellers looking to optimize their strategies.