Prep

A preparation site for merchants who want to claim a business in ChatGPT. It checks public pages and an optional product spreadsheet against the official profile fields and the OpenAI discovery product feed, shows a free audit, and — after a verified PayPal capture — downloads a prep pack the merchant submits themselves.

This tool does not claim the business, sign in to ChatGPT or Business Hub, collect identity documents, or promise ranking or approval.

Run locally

npm install
npm run dev

Open http://127.0.0.1:43123.

npm test
npm run lint

Where config lives

Prices, SKU allowance, crawl caps, retention, PayPal, and storage are environment variables. Copy .env.example to .env.local. Do not put real secrets in the repo.

Variable	Default	Meaning
PREP_TRIAL_DAYS	7	Free trial length in days.
PREP_TRIAL_PRICE_CENTS	0	Trial price in cents. 0 = free trial, no charge.
PREP_MONTHLY_PRICE_CENTS	4990	Pro price after the trial, in cents. $49.90 USD / month. Not auto-charged — see below.
PREP_BASE_PRICE_CENTS	0	Old one-time pack price. 0 while paid checkout is off.
PREP_CURRENCY	USD	ISO currency shown next to the amount and sent to PayPal.
PREP_INCLUDED_SKUS	50	Product rows included in the paid pack.
PREP_OVERAGE_BLOCK_SIZE	50	Extra rows per overage block. Unused while the overage price is 0.
PREP_OVERAGE_BLOCK_PRICE_CENTS	0	No SKU overage charge. Larger catalogs still pay the base price.
PREP_MAX_PRODUCT_PAGES	30	Product detail pages fetched per audit.
PREP_MAX_INFO_PAGES	8	About / policy / contact pages.
PREP_MAX_VARIANTS_PER_PRODUCT	40	Variants kept per product. The rest are reported, not dropped silently.
PREP_MAX_FEED_ROWS	1000	Uploaded sheet rows kept for the audit. The omitted count is shown.
PREP_AUDIT_BUDGET_MS	110000	Stop crawling and return the finished part.
PREP_FETCH_TIMEOUT_MS	12000	Per-request timeout.
PREP_RETENTION_DAYS	30	Then the audit, crawl extract, and packs are deleted.
PREP_ALLOW_LOOPBACK	on locally	Lets local fixture stores be crawled. Forced off when PAYPAL_ENV=live or when a production deploy has a price.
PREP_DATA_DIR	./data	Local filesystem store only. Gitignored. Not used on Vercel.
PAYPAL_CLIENT_ID	empty	PayPal REST app client id. Public in the browser. The secret never is.
PAYPAL_CLIENT_SECRET	empty	PayPal REST app secret. Server only.
PAYPAL_WEBHOOK_ID	empty	Id of the webhook registered in the PayPal app. Required before checkout can start.
PAYPAL_ENV	sandbox	sandbox or live. Only live talks to the live API.
BLOB_READ_WRITE_TOKEN	empty	Private Vercel Blob read/write token.
BLOB_STORE_ID	empty	Private Blob store id when the deployment uses Vercel OIDC instead of a token.
DATABASE_URL	empty	Optional. Audits and pack files are stored in private Blob. Postgres is not required.
PREP_PUBLIC_URL	empty	Optional origin for PayPal return and cancel URLs.

Official field names, availability enums, excluded Ads/Checkout columns, claim steps, and the legal sentences live in lib/official/spec.ts. Update that module when OpenAI's docs change. The checkout amount is computed in lib/pricing.ts and stored on the order. PayPal is created with that same amountCents and currency. The webhook accepts the capture only when the amount and currency still match.

Pricing — Free vs Pro, 7-day free trial

Like ChatGPT's Free vs Plus page (/pricing): one product in two stages. Free — 7-day free trial for USD 0.00, full prep pack for 7 days, no card, nothing charged. Pro — USD 49.90 / month after the trial, only if the merchant explicitly continues. The free audit summary on the homepage stays free to run; it is what the trial starts from.

• Trial: POST /api/audits/:id/trial with the owner cookie set when the audit was created (HttpOnly, not an email verification). A blank contact_email keeps the address already stored on the audit. No card, no PayPal order, no charge during the trial. Code: lib/offer.ts (server prices), lib/subscription.ts (trial state), lib/audit/checkout.ts (startFreeTrial), components/trial-panel.tsx, components/pricing-cards.tsx.
• The browser that creates the audit is the only one that can start the trial or download the pack. A shared audit link still shows the free summary. Audits created before this cookie have no owner hash: they cannot start a trial or download, and the server does not mint a replacement credential for whoever opens the link. Start a new audit in this browser. Losing the cookie means the same thing: the summary remains, the pack does not.
• One trial per audit. A second slot is stored for the normalized store URL (www, trailing slash, and tracking parameters folded together) and for the email string. Those slots survive the 30-day audit retention. An expired trial cannot be restarted on the same audit, the same normalized store, or the same email string.
• Remaining limits: the email is not verified, so a different email string is a different slot. A different domain is a different store. The first owner who starts a trial for a store consumes that store's slot, including someone who audits a public URL they do not operate. There is no admin reset in this version.
• After the trial, a paid month only starts if the merchant explicitly starts it. This code does not auto-charge. PayPal Subscriptions (plan + BILLING.SUBSCRIPTION.* webhooks) is not wired up yet — the current PayPal code is one-time Orders only, and paid checkout stays off. PREP_MONTHLY_PRICE_CENTS is the price shown for that future month. It is not sent to PayPal.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗