Icecat Release Notes 239: Enhancements in Product Data Retrieval, Smarter Search, and Platform Stability

Release 239 brings a set of important improvements across the Icecat platform, focusing on product data accessibility, search efficiency, and platform reliability. Users will benefit from new tools on the MCP server that simplify access to product galleries and safety documentation, smarter search suggestions that help quickly filter by brands or categories, and foundational back-end updates that prepare the platform for asynchronous processing, long-running operations, and overall system stability. In addition, maintenance and technical debt work ensure a more secure, clean, and scalable environment for all users. For additional details, please refer to the previous Icecat Release Notes.

MCP Server: New Tools for Product Data Retrieval

In sprint 239, we enhanced the MCP server by introducing two new tools that improve how users access product information:

• Product Safety Documentation Tool
• Product Gallery Tool

These tools are designed to make product data retrieval more efficient, structured, and comprehensive.

Product Safety Documentation Tool

The Product Safety Documentation Tool allows users to retrieve key regulatory and environmental documents for each product. This ensures compliance tracking and sustainability evaluation is easier than ever.

The tool provides information for the following document types:

• Carbon Footprint – Environmental impact of the product.
• Repairability Index – How easily a product can be repaired.
• Durability Index – Estimated product lifespan.
• CE Marking – Compliance with EU safety, health, and environmental requirements.
• EU Energy Label – Energy efficiency rating within the EU.
• UK Energy Label – Energy efficiency rating within the UK.
• EU Product Fiche – Detailed product performance and energy information for EU markets.
• EU Declaration of Conformity – Manufacturer’s compliance declaration for EU directives.
• UK Declaration of Conformity – Manufacturer’s compliance declaration for UK regulations.
• Safety Data Sheet – Information on safe handling, storage, and disposal of products.

This tool ensures that users have quick access to essential safety and compliance information.

Product Gallery Tool

The Product Gallery Tool provides structured access to all product images, enhancing visual presentation and e-commerce integration. Each gallery entry includes:

• Type – e.g., Product, Lifestyle, Annotated, etc.
• Order – Numeric order for display sequencing.
• Image URLs by resolution – High, medium, low, and thumbnail versions for flexible usage.
• Main Image Indicator – Marks the primary image.

This tool enables consistent presentation of product visuals and supports multiple display contexts.

Summary

The addition of the Product Safety Documentation Tool and the Product Gallery Tool significantly enhances the MCP server’s capabilities. By providing structured, easy-to-access information, these tools empower users to ensure compliance and improve the overall quality of product presentation.

Smarter Search Suggestions for Brands and Categories on Icecat.biz

To improve search efficiency and reduce the number of manual filtering steps, we have enhanced the Icecat.biz search experience with intelligent brand and category suggestions. This update helps users refine their search results faster when their intent is clear.

When a user enters a search query, the system now evaluates whether the entered keywords fully match an existing brand or category name in the Icecat database.

If a 100% match is detected, Icecat presents a contextual suggestion that allows the user to narrow the search scope immediately.

Contextual Filter Suggestions

When a full match is found, a clickable suggestion is displayed above the search results, such as “Limit search to the brand/category name?”

These prompts are designed to be clear, non-intrusive, and action-oriented, helping users confirm their intent with a single click.

By clicking the suggestion the corresponding brand or category filter is applied automatically, and search results are instantly refreshed. This reduces friction in the search process and speeds up access to the most relevant products.

Summary

Search is often the starting point of a product discovery journey. By recognizing clear user intent and proactively offering precise filtering options, Icecat.biz helps users move from query to results with greater confidence and efficiency.

Platform Stability, Scalability, and Maintenance Updates

In this sprint, we strengthened the platform’s technical foundation to support future growth, improve system reliability, and reduce operational risks. The work spans asynchronous ETL processing, back-end scalability improvements, and ongoing maintenance and technical debt reduction.

These changes may not all be directly visible to end users, but they significantly improve performance, security, and long-term stability.

Asynchronous ETL Processing and Back-End Improvements

Preparing the Platform for Scalable Background Processing

We continued preparatory work to introduce asynchronous ETL processing. The completed back-end improvements lay the groundwork for more stable background execution and more efficient handling of large-scale data operations.

This foundation is critical for supporting future data growth without compromising system responsiveness.

Support for Long-Running Operations Across APIs

Key APIs have been enhanced to better support longer and more complex operations:

• Features
• Gallery
• Multimedia
• Reasons to buy

These improvements ensure that demanding processes can be handled more reliably, reducing the risk of timeouts or instability as data volumes increase.

ETL Processing Isolated from Brand Cloud Usage

Intensive ETL operations are now separated from regular Brand Cloud activity. This architectural change ensures that heavy background data processing no longer impacts the Brand Cloud interface.

Resulting benefits:

• Improved day-to-day performance for Brand Cloud users
• Reduced risk of user interface slowdowns during large ETL runs
• Clear separation between background processing and user-facing workloads

Maintenance and Technical Debt Reduction

Alongside strategic improvements, we addressed multiple maintenance tasks and long-standing technical debt to improve security, performance, and system hygiene.

Security and Access Improvements

• 2FA required for password reset in Icecat Brand Cloud: Enhances protection of user accounts and sensitive data.
• Resolution of a critical security vulnerability in React server components: Reduces exposure to known security risks.

Data Quality and Storage Cleanup

• Removal of the MySQL table for legacy Editor Journal: At the time of removal, the table had no active dependencies, making this a safe cleanup that reduces storage footprint and simplifies the overall data model.
• Cleanup of unused data in Cassandra table: This cleanup improves data hygiene, reduces unnecessary storage consumption, and helps maintain predictable performance over time.
• Deduplication of Kafka queue messages: Improves operational efficiency and reduces the risk of data inconsistencies.

System Reliability and Infrastructure

• DC maintenance and power unit installation: Power units successfully installed, and Data center maintenance completed with no service impact
• Investigation and fix of recurring Redis socket read errors: Improves stability of console scripts and background jobs.

Editorial and Media Improvements

• Improved product mapping functionality: Helps editors detect and handle invisible characters more effectively.
• Media pipeline fixes: Fixed a video encoder issue that prevented video imports and resolved missing video preview images in Live.
• Image delivery optimization: Continued migration of get-image.cgi by removing product ID from the URL when a product gallery ID is provided, reducing coupling and improving consistency.

Front-End and Styling Improvements

• Organization of global CSS variables: Improves maintainability, consistency, and future scalability of the user interface styling system.

Summary

In this release, Icecat has delivered value across three key areas:

• MCP Server Enhancements: Two new tools provide structured access to product gallery images and detailed product safety documentation, enabling faster, more reliable data retrieval.
• Smarter Search: Full keyword matches with brands or categories now trigger clickable suggestions, allowing users to filter search results and improve navigation efficiency instantly.
• Platform Stability and Maintenance: Preparatory work for asynchronous ETL processing, isolation of heavy data operations from Brand Cloud, improved long-running API support, storage cleanups, security enhancements, and bug fixes ensure the platform is more stable, scalable, and secure.

These updates collectively improve user experience, data reliability, and system performance, setting the foundation for future growth and feature expansion.