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Amazon listings — what Clione changes, and how to undo it

Plans: Amazon listings is a paid add-on on every plan. Ask support to turn it on for your organisation; it is not yet available to buy yourself.

Clione reads your Amazon listings, scores how complete each one is against the attributes Amazon asks for in that product type, proposes better content, and — only after you approve it — writes that content back to Amazon.

This page is the contract: what we change, what we will never touch, and how to put a listing back the way it was.

What Clione changes​

Clione writes listing attributes — the descriptive content Amazon uses to understand and display your product:

  • the item title
  • bullet points
  • the product description
  • generic keywords (your search terms)
  • descriptive attributes your product type defines, such as colour, material or intended use, when we have a sourced value for them

Every write is one PATCH per SKU against Amazon's Listings Items API, in one marketplace. If you sell the same SKU in several marketplaces, each one is a separate listing with its own content and its own approval.

What Clione never touches​

Price, stock and offers. Not by default, not under a setting, not by mistake.

Those attributes are on a deny list inside Clione, and the list is enforced twice: once when the proposed content is assembled, and again when the write is built. An attribute on that list is dropped and reported as refused, so a write that tried to include one would come back telling you it had been removed rather than quietly changing what a customer pays.

Clione also never creates a listing. It only corrects the content of listings Amazon already has: if a SKU is not on Amazon, nothing Clione does will put it there.

Nothing is written until you approve it​

The order is always the same:

  1. Import. Clione reads your listings, their current attributes, their product types and any issues Amazon already reports on them.
  2. Score. Each listing gets a completeness percentage — the share of the attributes Amazon requires and recommends for that product type that are actually filled. A listing we cannot score reads Not scored, with the reason; it never reads 0% or 100% on a guess.
  3. Propose. Clione writes a candidate version. It is stored, not sent.
  4. Approve. You read the candidate and approve it. Until you do, the Write to Amazon button stays disabled.
  5. Write. Clione asks Amazon to validate the change first — Amazon's own validation preview, which checks nothing and persists nothing. If Amazon reports an error, or if the validation could not be made at all, the write does not happen and you are told why.
  6. Verify. After the write, Clione reads the listing back from Amazon and compares it with what it sent, so "published" means "we read it back", not "we sent it".

Large catalogues​

Below about 1,500 approved SKUs in one go, Clione sends one request per SKU. Above that, it sends a single bulk feed instead — Amazon's own recommendation for batches that size.

Two things to know about the bulk path:

  • The content is identical. Crossing that line changes how the request travels, not what it says. The same approved content, with the same attributes refused, is sent either way.
  • Amazon validates every SKU first, just the same. A bulk feed gives no validation preview, so Clione still runs the per-SKU validation before building the feed and leaves out any SKU that failed it.

A bulk feed reports back asynchronously. If Amazon's report cannot be read, or the feed has not finished when Clione stops waiting, those listings are marked unknown, not published. Amazon may well have applied them; we have not confirmed it, and we will not tell you we did. Verify those listings before writing to them again.

How to roll back​

Every listing has a Roll back action.

Clione keeps a frozen copy of each listing's attributes as they were before it ever wrote to that listing — captured on the first import, and never updated afterwards. A rollback puts those original values back for the attributes Clione wrote, through the same validate-then-write path as a normal write.

Two consequences worth knowing:

  • A rollback restores the pre-Clione content, not the previous Clione version. If Clione has written to a listing three times, rolling back returns it to how it was before the first write.
  • A listing with no frozen copy cannot be rolled back, and Clione will say so rather than approximate it. That happens when the listing was already past its first write before this safeguard existed. The original values cannot be recovered after the fact, so Clione refuses rather than writing something it has guessed.

Changes you make yourself in Seller Central always win: Clione writes only when you ask it to, so your edit stands until you approve another version.

Disconnecting​

Disconnect Amazon from Store settings → Integrations. That deletes Clione's stored access token, so Clione stops reading and writing immediately.

It does not revoke the authorisation itself — Amazon gives no way for an application to do that. To remove it completely, also open Seller Central → Apps and Services → Manage Your Apps and remove Clione there.

Nothing Clione already wrote is undone by disconnecting. Roll back the listings you want reverted before you disconnect, while Clione can still reach them.