01
Where imported text enters
Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid
Description text enters a resale catalog through a small number of doors: a supplier spreadsheet, a previous owner’s notes, a scraped reference page, a bulk template, or a cross-listing tool copying an existing listing onward. Each is a point where the text is handled once, before anything downstream has a copy of it.
The counts differ on either side of that point. A description reviewed before publication is one action. The same description corrected after it has reached four surfaces is four edits, four review delays, and any cached copies held elsewhere. Where a third-party tool has already copied it onward, the correction reaches the seller’s own records and not those copies.
02
A three-way sort at the point of entry
Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid
Incoming text sorts into three groups, and one of them is the only group that requires a person to look at it.
| Group | What is in it | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Strip | Markup, styling, hidden elements, tracking parameters, embedded links | Removed automatically, in every case |
| Hold | Text phrased as an instruction, an address, a promise, or a claim about condition | Routed to a person before publication |
| Carry | Plain descriptive prose about the object itself | Kept, subject to being true of the unit in hand |
The strip group requires no assessment, which is what allows it to be unconditional. Hidden text does not survive a rule that discards formatting, and a description that relies on white-on-white styling to convey something is a description whose visible text does not convey it.
03
What is not carried forward
Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid
A short list applied without exception can be applied at any hour, which a longer conditional one cannot.
- Hidden or invisible text of any kind, in any encoding.
- Text addressed as an instruction to a reader, a system, or an assistant, including politely phrased instructions.
- Contact details, external URLs, and off-platform purchase directions.
- Condition or authenticity claims about the specific unit that the seller did not verify.
- Any sentence the seller would not repeat as their own statement.
The fourth item is the one that changes hands at import. A supplier’s description asserting that an item is original, unrestored, or fully working is a statement about a physical object the supplier no longer holds and the seller now does. Republished, it appears in the seller’s listing under the seller’s account, and the person able to check it is the one holding the item.
04
Why the rule runs without a per-item decision
Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid
A rule that depends on reading each description carefully holds at a low listing rate and not at a high one, and a cross-listing tool exists to raise the listing rate. Read-it-carefully and publish-in-volume are the two halves of the same workflow.
Security guidance for systems that consume external content describes the same division. It states that external data is treated as untrusted, sanitized before it enters context, and kept behind a clear boundary between instructions and data.1 Those are described as structural controls, applied by the system rather than by an operator’s attention on a given day. The merchant equivalent is a rule that runs on every import.
05
A level per source
Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid
Sources differ in what can be established about their text. A trade supplier sending structured data monthly and a spreadsheet inherited with a house clearance carry different amounts of information about who wrote each sentence and whether they can be asked about it. One level applied to both either over-processes the first or under-processes the second.
- List every source that has put text into the catalog in the last year.
- For each, record who wrote the text and whether they still hold the goods.
- Assign a level: carry with strip only, carry with human review, or retype from scratch.
- Record the level beside the source in whatever list the tooling reads, and apply it without exception.
Completed for the four sources feeding the camera’s storefront, the list reads as follows.
| Source | Who wrote it | Level assigned | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trade supplier, structured monthly file | The supplier, who still holds identical stock | Strip only | The claims describe goods the writer can still inspect |
| The job-lot spreadsheet | A previous owner, via a deceased estate | Retype from scratch | No one can be asked what a given sentence referred to |
| Cross-listing tool copying the seller’s own listings | The seller, at various dates | Human review on relist | The text describes the item as it was on the date written |
| A bulk template inherited with the storefront | Unknown — no author, no date, no record | Retype from scratch | No source exists to check a claim against |
The fourth row shows what unknown authorship resolves to. It is a level rather than an open question, and it is the strictest one, because the check that the other levels rely on has no input.
The retype level applies where a source has produced text that cannot be checked against anything. What the inherited spreadsheet supplies in that case is the item numbers, and those are kept.
06
The seller as a source
Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid
Published text becomes an input somewhere else — to a cross-listing tool, a marketplace’s own copy, an aggregator, or a shopping surface that retrieves the page. Text carried forward unread is then text the seller supplies, under the seller’s name, to systems the seller does not operate.
That is the part of the problem the seller can act on directly. Whether a downstream system treats incoming text as data or as instruction is a property of that system. What the seller controls is the content of the record leaving their catalog.
07
What the ingest rule records
Applies to marketplace onlyown storefronthybrid
The cited security guidance covers systems that consume external content: untrusted external data, sanitization before the data enters context, and a boundary between instructions and data.1 It is written for the party operating such a system.
It does not describe an ingest procedure for a merchant catalog, name the sources a reseller receives text from, or state which of them require review. Those are recorded per source by the seller, and the record is what makes the level applicable at volume.
08
Practice
Exercise
Write and apply one ingest rule
- List your text sources and assign each a level: strip only, human review, or retype.
- Apply the strip rule to your ten most recent imported descriptions and record what it removed.
- Read the not-carried-forward list against one live listing whose text you did not write.
Check yourself
Why is the point of entry the place for this work?
Because a decision there is one action. After publication the same correction is one edit per surface plus any cached copies, and where a third-party tool has copied the text onward the correction does not reach those copies.
A supplier’s description states an item is unrestored and fully working. Is it carried?
Not as an inherited claim. It describes a physical object the supplier no longer holds; republished it appears as the seller’s own statement, and the person able to check it is the one holding the item.
Why assign a level per source rather than judging per listing?
Because a per-listing decision holds at a low listing rate and not at a high one. A source-level rule runs at whatever rate the tooling publishes at.
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09
Common questions
Does stripping formatting affect listings?
Venue templates generally supply their own presentation. Where a description depends on inherited styling to be understood, that describes the description rather than the rule.
What about images arriving with imported text?
They are a separate decision on the same basis. A supplier photograph that is not of the specific unit describes something other than what is being sold.
Can the hold group be automated?
Partly. Flagging imperative sentences, URLs, and contact patterns is mechanical. Deciding whether a claim is one the seller can stand behind is the step a person performs.
Does this apply when only relisting the seller’s own old listings?
In one respect. A condition note describes the item as it was on the date it was written, and relisting republishes it as current, which is what the human-review level on that source covers.
10
Research and sources
Rules and platform policies change. These primary sources were reviewed on ; confirm the current position for your jurisdiction and account before acting.
Claim evidence
- Security guidance for parties building agents holds that all external data should be treated as untrusted and sanitized before entering context, with a clear boundary kept between instructions and data.
- technical requirement. Supported by AI Agent Security Cheat Sheet .
- The recommended controls are structural — least privilege, scoped permissions, explicit authorization for sensitive operations — rather than per-item attention, which is the property that lets them survive volume.
- technical requirement. Supported by AI Agent Security Cheat Sheet .