This is a record of an earlier version of Elusive. The site and the way I build it have changed since I wrote this.
The work combined a Shopify storefront with scripts for product data. I used Ruby while working on the site, and Python to send product records through Shopify’s GraphQL API. Automating that step mattered because entering each item manually took time away from the actual work of finding and checking products.
I learned that the product data pipeline was as much a part of the shopping experience as the pages people saw. A good storefront doesn’t help much if the inventory behind it is slow to update.