Research with Claude Code: Validate Your App Idea in 70 Minutes

Building for weeks only to discover the idea already exists, or the data is locked down, is the nightmare. But validation feels too hard to prioritize: time-consuming, unclear what to check, easy to skip. I didn’t skip it. This is a Claude Code case study: I validated a deal aggregator in 70 minutes before building anything. This guide walks through the full validation process: 16 sites researched, 7 goldmines found, 6 blocked sources avoided, the traps I sidestepped, the AI stack (Perplexity + Notion + Claude Code), 9 copy-paste prompts for parallel agents, and the framework you can use to validate any idea.


Before you build anything, a tool, a product, an aggregator… you need to answer: Is there accessible data? What’s the competition doing? Which sources are open, which are locked down? Is this even worth building?

Most people spend weeks clicking through sites, taking notes, guessing. Or worse, skip validation entirely and build blind.

I compressed this into 70 minutes using AI. I’ve done this kind of research before with Cursor, and the methodology works for any industry. Deal sites, API marketplaces, job boards, newsletter platforms, SaaS directories, any ecosystem where you need to map the landscape fast.

Here’s the exact process, applied to deal-finding sites: 16 sites researched, 7 goldmines found, 6 blocked sources avoided, 1 working app shipped. Same 70-minute framework. Same AI research stack. Replicable for any niche.

If you’re new to Claude Code, start with the beginner’s guide. Once you’ve validated your idea with this process, here are 15+ projects you can build.

What you’ll go through with me:

• What I Found: The Deal Site Landscape in 70 Minutes — research results from 16 sites, 7 goldmines vs 6 blocked sources

• What This Taught Me (And Why It Applies Everywhere) — universal insights about RSS, WordPress APIs, and data accessibility

• This Works for Any Ecosystem — apply the same process to SaaS, jobs, newsletters, APIs, research tools

• How I Researched Deal Sites in Minutes — the AI research stack and 9 copy-paste prompts for parallel agents

• Building the App: Key Decisions and Challenges — deduplication, translation, timezones, and what almost broke

• Apply This to Your Next Project — the framework, data access hierarchy, and 30-minute action plan

• Next Steps — beginner, intermediate, and advanced starting points

🎁 The 9 Claude Code research prompts, complete research kit (Notion template + Perplexity prompts + full results), and framework for validating any idea, all included.


Hi, I’m Jenny 👋
I build AI systems and tools, then share how I did it. I run the Practical AI Builder program — for people who already use AI and want to build real things with it. Check it out if that sounds like you.

Practical AI Builder Program

If you’re new to Build to Launch, welcome! Here’s what you might enjoy:

• Vibe Coding Production-Ready Guide

• Claude Code Beginners Guide

• SEO for AI: LLM Discoverability Guide



What I Found: The Deal Site Landscape in 70 Minutes

After relocating cross-country, I needed a deal aggregator that didn’t exist. Before building it, I had to know: Which sites have accessible data? Which are blocked? What are the business models?

Using Perplexity, Notion, and Claude Code in parallel, I mapped 16 sites and found 7 with working RSS feeds or APIs.

Notion database with research results


The Four Categories of Deal Sites

The deal-finding world breaks down into four distinct categories, each with different business models and (critically for builders) different levels of data accessibility.

1\. Deal Aggregators

They are the sites that actually curate deals.

Slickdeals, Hip2Save, Ben’s Bargains, Dealnews, Southern Savers, Duoshou, and Dealmoon. Some are community-driven (Slickdeals), others are editorial (Ben’s Bargains proudly claims “100% human-sourced”). Duoshou and Dealmoon target Chinese-speaking shoppers in the US with deals from American retailers.

The surprise?

Most of these run on WordPress and expose their content through RSS feeds or REST APIs. Hip2Save’s WordPress API returns structured JSON with titles, prices, images, and categories. Slickdeals has an RSS feed with 25 curated deals, including their famous “thumb score” ratings.

This was the goldmine I was looking for.

2\. Cashback Platforms

Rakuten, TopCashback, and Ibotta negotiate commission splits with retailers—getting 5-15% on purchases—and share a portion with users. For builders, these are essentially closed ecosystems. No public APIs, no RSS feeds.

They guard their retailer relationships carefully.

3\. Coupon Extensions

Sites like Honey (owned by PayPal) and RetailMeNot auto-apply coupon codes at checkout. These sites are increasingly hostile to scrapers. RetailMeNot has extensive anti-bot measures. Honey is facing class-action lawsuits over affiliate commission attribution—allegedly replacing creators’ tracking tags with its own.

The browser extension model seems to be hitting some turbulence.

4\. Price Trackers

Such as CamelCamelCamel and Keepa focus specifically on Amazon price history. CamelCamelCamel is free but now has Cloudflare protection on its RSS feeds. Keepa has a paid API starting at €19/month.

These are complementary to deal aggregators, not competitors—they track prices over time; aggregators find current deals.

What Actually Works (And What’s Blocked)

Here’s the practical breakdown for anyone thinking about building in this space:

Working Sources (7 RSS feeds + 5 WordPress APIs)


Blocked or Inaccessible (6 sites)

• RetailMeNot: Extensive anti-bot measures, legal warnings in robots.txt

• Honey: No public data access, anti-bot measures

• Brad’s Deals: No feeds, extensive blocking rules

• Dealnews: RSS endpoint returns JavaScript instead of XML

• CamelCamelCamel: RSS feeds protected by Cloudflare

• Dealmoon: Explicitly blocks AI crawlers in robots.txt, no public API

The takeaway: Plenty of high-quality sources are open and accessible. You don’t need to scrape protected sites. The deal blogs want you to access their data, it drives affiliate revenue for them.