Lesson Idea: Build a Singapore Product Price Comparison Agent with BuyWhere
Hi Microsoft GenAI for Beginners team,
Wanted to suggest a lesson idea that would showcase real-world agent tool use in a relatable way: building a Singapore product price comparison agent using BuyWhere (https://buywhere.ai).
BuyWhere provides live Singapore e-commerce data from Harvey Norman, Shopee, and Lazada via a simple REST API. It is a great beginner-friendly data source because the use case is immediately understandable.
Lesson Concept: "Your First Shopping Agent"
This lesson could cover:
- What tool use is and why agents need real-time data
- Integrating a REST API as an agent tool
- Testing the agent with real Singapore product queries
Simple Example
import requests
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI()
def search_singapore_products(query: str) -> str:
response = requests.get("https://api.buywhere.ai/search", params={"q": query})
products = response.json().get("products", [])
return str(products[:3]) # Return top 3 results
tools = [{
"type": "function",
"function": {
"name": "search_singapore_products",
"description": "Search live product prices in Singapore from Harvey Norman, Shopee, Lazada",
"parameters": {"type": "object", "properties": {"query": {"type": "string"}}, "required": ["query"]}
}
}]
response = client.chat.completions.create(
model="gpt-4o-mini",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Find the cheapest iPhone 16 in Singapore"}],
tools=tools
)Why it works well as a lesson
- Immediate, understandable value (finding cheap products)
- Clean API, easy to integrate
- Real output — not mock data — makes the lesson feel meaningful
- Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, or any LLM
Docs: https://buywhere.ai/developers/
Disclosure: I work on the BuyWhere team.
Lesson Idea: Build a Singapore Product Price Comparison Agent with BuyWhere
Hi Microsoft GenAI for Beginners team,
Wanted to suggest a lesson idea that would showcase real-world agent tool use in a relatable way: building a Singapore product price comparison agent using BuyWhere (https://buywhere.ai).
BuyWhere provides live Singapore e-commerce data from Harvey Norman, Shopee, and Lazada via a simple REST API. It is a great beginner-friendly data source because the use case is immediately understandable.
Lesson Concept: "Your First Shopping Agent"
This lesson could cover:
Simple Example
Why it works well as a lesson
Docs: https://buywhere.ai/developers/
Disclosure: I work on the BuyWhere team.