Sprint 245 brings a range of improvements across the Icecat platform to enhance partner integrations, expand MCP server capabilities, and improve product data visibility and content distribution.
This release introduces new MCP tools, enhanced catalog-quality reporting for channel partners, improved Expert Reviews onboarding insights, and additional product content available through PCF/CSV integrations. Alongside these updates, we also delivered improvements to image classification, internal product search capabilities, and several platform-level enhancements designed to strengthen the Icecat ecosystem.
Together, these updates help partners better understand their catalog quality, access richer product content, and integrate Icecat services more efficiently. For additional details, please refer to the previous Icecat Release Notes.
In Sprint 245, we continued expanding the capabilities of the Icecat MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, focusing on improving product data accessibility for AI integrations and making the MCP toolset clearer and more intuitive for both AI agents and Icecat partners who are onboarding the MCP server.
This sprint introduces two new MCP tools and two tool renaming aimed at removing ambiguity and aligning the API semantics more closely with the data being delivered.
A new MCP tool has been introduced to provide brand contact information related to a specific product, supporting compliance with the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) in the European Union.
Under GPSR legislation, products sold within the EU must provide clear contact information of the responsible economic operator (such as manufacturer, importer, or authorized representative).
This new MCP tool allows AI agents and partner systems to retrieve brand contact information required for GPSR compliance, ensuring that ecommerce platforms and AI-powered applications can present legally required product responsibility data.
Typical Use Cases:
The tool returns structured brand contact information associated with the product, enabling systems to display or process the responsible operator details required under GPSR.
This capability is particularly important for ecommerce platforms operating in the European market, where regulatory compliance increasingly requires clear identification of product responsibility.
Icecat product data includes a 360-degree product view, which is highly valuable for modern ecommerce experiences and AI-driven product presentations. The new MCP tool enables the retrieval of product 360° view images, allowing AI assistants and applications to display immersive product visualizations.
Typical Use Cases:
The tool returns an ordered array of product images that represent the 360° rotation sequence, available at multiple image resolutions.
During the MCP server adoption by partners, we identified that several tool names could create ambiguity for both AI agents interpreting tool capabilities and developers integrating with the MCP server.
To address this, two MCP tools have been renamed to better reflect the content they deliver.
| Previous Tool Name | New Tool Name | Reason |
| product_safety_docs | product_certificates | The tool provides compliance and certification documentation rather than general safety documentation. |
| product_texts | product_description | The tool returns structured product descriptions rather than a generic collection of product texts. |
The updated naming improves:
These changes help ensure that MCP tools remain self-descriptive and predictable, which is critical for both AI-driven workflows and developer usability.
The next major step in MCP server development is introducing a Product Search MCP tool. This tool will allow AI agents to discover products dynamically, rather than relying solely on known product identifiers.
The feature is currently in the discovery and design phase, where we are evaluating:
The goal is to enable AI assistants and partner systems to search Icecat’s product catalog directly through MCP, unlocking new use cases such as:
The MCP server plays a key role in enabling AI-native access to Icecat product data. Each release focuses on improving:
Sprint 245 represents another step toward building a comprehensive MCP ecosystem that supports both AI agents and partner integrations. More MCP capabilities will follow as we continue expanding the server with new tools and improved functionality.
In the latest sprint, we released new functionality designed to help Icecat channel partners evaluate the quality and completeness of Icecat products connected to their product catalogs.
This feature enables partners to receive regular insights into the quality of their catalog coverage, helping them identify missing or incomplete product data.
The functionality is based on the existing integration flow between partner product catalogs and Icecat product data.
Channel partners provide a product catalog feed that Icecat uploads into its system. The feed can operate in two modes:
Once processed, the Icecat system stores the connections between products in the partner catalog and in the Icecat database, enabling quality evaluation across the entire partner assortment.
Icecat evaluates product completeness using its Data Health Score framework, which measures how well a product is described across attributes, images, multimedia, and other content.
Partners have two options:
Partners interested in aligning their own product quality standards with Icecat can work with their Icecat account manager to configure these rules.
The newly released functionality allows partners to configure regular quality reports that provide insights into the current quality level of the products connected to their catalog.
These reports help partners quickly identify:
The reports are designed to support continuous monitoring and improvement of catalog data quality.
Partners can configure multiple reports depending on their monitoring needs. The reporting functionality includes several parameters:
Partners can select how the report is generated:
Reports can be scheduled at different intervals:
This allows partners to monitor catalog quality either continuously or periodically, depending on their operational workflow.
To focus on products that require attention, partners can define a score range threshold.
This allows reports to include only products within a specific Data Health Score range, helping teams prioritize improvements where they are most needed.
Partners can also choose to exclude products with undefined quality scores, allowing reports to focus only on products with Icecat or Supplier quality.
Reports generated by the system can be delivered only to registered Icecat users. This ensures secure distribution and allows organizations to control which users receive catalog-quality insights.
If you are a channel partner interested in gaining deeper insights into the quality of your product catalog, Icecat can help you configure the catalog feed integration and reporting setup.
Please contact your Icecat account manager to learn more about enabling catalog quality reporting and aligning your product data quality standards with Icecat.
In this sprint, we continued improving the Expert Reviews distribution workflow for Icecat channel partners. As part of these improvements, we enhanced internal tools used by the Icecat account management team to provide more accurate insights into review coverage across partner catalogs.
A key update in this sprint is the modernization of the Coverage from File functionality, which now supports Icecat’s new Expert Reviews database structure and provides more precise insights during the channel partner onboarding process.
The Coverage from File functionality plays an important role in onboarding new channel partners.
When a potential partner is preparing to integrate Icecat services, they usually provide their product catalog file. Icecat account managers analyze this catalog using the Coverage from File tool to evaluate how well the partner’s product assortment is represented in the Icecat product database, including the availability of specific product assets such as Expert Reviews.
This analysis allows Icecat to provide partners with clear expectations about the value they will receive from the service once they are onboarded.
For example, partners can see:
This information helps partners evaluate the potential impact of integrating Icecat Expert Reviews into their ecommerce platforms.
Previously, the Coverage from File functionality relied on the older reviews database. As Icecat’s Expert Reviews service evolved, the underlying reviews infrastructure was redesigned to support a more flexible and scalable data model.
In this sprint, Coverage from File was updated to work with the new reviews database structure, ensuring that onboarding analysis now reflects the most accurate and up-to-date review data available in Icecat.
This improvement ensures that account managers can provide reliable insights during partner onboarding discussions.
With the updated functionality, Coverage from File now provides richer information about the availability of Expert Reviews.
Account managers can now retrieve the total number of expert reviews available for each product in the partner catalog. This helps partners understand the depth of review coverage for their product assortment.
The updated functionality also provides review counts per locale. This is particularly important because Icecat users typically subscribe to specific sets of locales, meaning that review availability in the relevant language plays a key role in the value delivered to the partner.
By analyzing review coverage per locale, account managers can show partners:
The updated Coverage from File functionality strengthens Icecat’s ability to support data-driven onboarding discussions with channel partners.
By providing clear insights into review coverage at both product and locale level, Icecat account managers can help partners better understand the potential value of the Expert Reviews service, how well their product catalog is already supported by Icecat content, and what improvements or expansions may further increase the value of the integration.
Icecat will continue enhancing its Expert Reviews infrastructure to ensure that partners receive accurate coverage insights and high-quality review content across markets and languages.
In this sprint, we introduced an important update for channel partners who integrate Icecat product data using the Product Catalog File (PCF) or CSV endpoints. The update expands the availability of the Icecat-generated PDF, ensuring that partners using PCF/CSV integrations can now access this product asset in the same way as partners using other Icecat data delivery formats.
Icecat provides an automatically generated product leaflet known as the Icecat Generated PDF.
This document is created by Icecat when the product belongs to a sponsor brand, and the brand has not provided its own official product leaflet. In such cases, Icecat automatically generates a product leaflet PDF based on the available structured product data and multimedia content.
This ensures that sponsor brand products still have a downloadable product leaflet, even when the brand itself has not supplied one.
Before this release, the Icecat-generated PDF was available only to partners integrating Icecat product data through XML, JSON, and Live HTML. Partners using the Product Catalog File (PCF) or CSV-based integrations did not have access to this file through their integration workflow.
Starting with this release, the Icecat-generated PDF is now available to PCF and CSV integrators. The file can be found in the Folder_PDF column, which is the same location where brand-provided product leaflets are normally listed.
This means that for PCF/CSV integrations:
This ensures a consistent integration experience across all Icecat delivery formats.
Integrators should keep in mind that content access restrictions may still apply. Even for sponsor brands, certain assets may be available only to users authorized by the brand.
In these cases, accessing the Icecat-generated PDF may require an access key (the same key is used when retrieving restricted assets via product XML or JSON).
This mechanism ensures that brand-defined access policies remain consistent across all Icecat distribution channels.
With this development, Icecat aims to enrich the product content distributed to channel partners who use PCF or CSV integrations.
By making the Icecat-generated PDF available through the Product Catalog File, partners can now benefit from:
Icecat will continue to expand and improve the product content available through its various integration methods to ensure partners receive high-quality, complete product data across all delivery channels.
In this sprint, we introduced two new image types – Logo and Packshot Full Flat – as part of our ongoing efforts to improve the classification and typification of images distributed by Icecat.
The improved image type structure helps channel partners, integrators, and AI-powered systems better understand the purpose and context of each image, enabling more precise use of product visuals across ecommerce platforms and digital services.
Icecat distributes a wide range of images associated with products, including:
Without clear classification, it can be difficult for partners and automated systems to determine which image to use in which context. The introduction of new image types improves image discoverability, filtering, and automated usage in partner integrations.
The Logo image type has been introduced to represent brand or service logos associated with a product, particularly for products where the brand identity is an essential part of the product itself.
This image type is especially relevant for software-related products, where the primary visual representation is often a brand or service logo rather than a physical product image.
Typical examples include:
In such cases, the Logo image type provides a clear distinction between brand/service visuals and traditional product photos.
The Logo image type can appear in any product category, but it is particularly useful in categories where products lack a traditional physical appearance.
The Packshot Full Flat image type is designed specifically for video game products.
Key Characteristics:
This image type represents the complete packaging artwork of the video game, providing a full view of the cover design and additional information typically displayed on the back of the box.
Partners can use Packshot Full Flat images to:
The introduction of Logo and Packshot Full Flat is part of Icecat’s broader initiative to enhance the structure and usability of product image datasets.
More precise image classification helps:
Icecat will continue to expand and refine image typification to ensure partners can efficiently leverage the full value of Icecat’s product media assets.
In this sprint, we introduced an important improvement to the Product Search API used internally across the Icecat Group platforms. The update enhances internal systems’ ability to locate products in the Icecat database when product codes are mapped across systems.
This improvement strengthens data synchronization between Icecat Group platforms, ensuring that products can be accurately identified even when multiple product code references exist.
Within the Icecat ecosystem, products can sometimes have multiple product codes associated with them due to mappings between original manufacturer product codes and alternative product identifiers used by channel partners.
Previously, the Product Search API focused primarily on standard product codes stored in the Icecat database. However, internal integrations also need the ability to search mapped product codes to ensure reliable synchronization between systems.
To address this need, we introduced a new parameter that controls whether mapped product codes should be considered during product search.
The updated Product Search API now supports the parameter: PartNumberMapping
This parameter allows internal systems to control how product codes are interpreted during the search process.
| Value | Search Behavior |
| true | Search includes both existing product codes and mapped product codes |
| false | Search is performed only within non-mapped (original) product codes |
When the parameter is set to PartNumberMapping = true, the search engine looks for products using:
In this scenario, providing the Brand ID is mandatory to ensure accurate product identification and avoid ambiguity between product codes from different manufacturers.
This mode is particularly useful for cross-platform product synchronization, where mapped product identifiers may be used by other systems within the Icecat Group.
When the parameter is set to PartNumberMapping = false, the search is restricted to original (non-mapped) product codes only.
This mode is useful when systems need to ensure that the product is found strictly based on its primary manufacturer code stored in Icecat, without considering alternative mappings.
The introduction of the PartNumberMapping parameter improves Icecat systems’ ability to synchronize product information across platforms within the Icecat Group.
By allowing systems to explicitly control whether mapped product codes are considered during search, the API now supports:
This enhancement is part of the ongoing effort to strengthen internal interoperability across Icecat services and platforms.
In addition to the feature releases introduced in this sprint, we implemented several improvements across the Icecat platform to expand partner capabilities, improve editorial efficiency, and strengthen platform reliability.
Below is an overview of the key updates delivered in this sprint.
In this sprint, we initiated development of a new capability that will allow distributor price information to be imported and distributed to channel partners.
The goal of this initiative is to extend the distributor catalog import process with distributor pricing data and later make this information available to partners through Icecat services.
Several important principles apply to this functionality:
As a first step, in this sprint we prepared the database structure required to support distributor pricing information. We also populated country-level currency data, which will be used when the distributor does not explicitly provide the currency for the price.
In the upcoming sprints, we plan to:
To improve the efficiency of Icecat’s editorial workflows, we initiated development of several improvements in the Export and Import tools used by the editorial team.
The planned functionality includes:
In this sprint, we implemented several backend preparations that will enable these features in upcoming releases. These preparations will allow Icecat editors to manage large data operations more efficiently and with better visibility into task progress.
In the previous sprint, we started improving the naming conventions of report files generated by the Icecat platform. In this sprint, we extended these improvements to reports generated through the Brand Cloud search functionality.
With the updated naming structure, users can more easily identify and differentiate these reports from other platform-generated reports.
Previously, Icecat experienced occasional issues in which system-generated emails from icecat.biz were blocked by spam filters. This happened because the same domain was used both for user communication and automated system notifications.
Starting from this release, a portion of system notifications has been moved to a dedicated subdomain.
This change ensures that even if automated notifications are blocked by email filters, it will not interfere with users who rely on icecat.biz email for communication with partners.
Icecat continues working toward making Live HTML fully cookies-free, allowing channel partners to integrate it as a third-party service that does not rely on cookies.
In this sprint, we performed an audit of the Live HTML service to identify components that still rely on cookies. As part of this work, the Plyr video player used in Live HTML has been reconfigured to no longer use cookies.
Additional components will be addressed in upcoming releases as we continue working toward a fully cookies-free Live HTML integration.
We also implemented several improvements focused on platform stability, reliability, and high availability.
These updates support the ongoing effort to ensure that the Icecat platform operates without single points of failure and maintains a robust infrastructure capable of handling growing workloads.
In addition to functional updates, this sprint included a series of maintenance and technical improvements to keep the platform efficient, maintainable, and scalable.
These activities included:
These maintenance tasks help reduce technical debt and ensure the long-term health and performance of the Icecat platform.
Sprint 245 introduces several improvements across the Icecat platform to enhance partner integrations, product data accessibility, and platform capabilities. The release expands the MCP server with new tools, introduces catalog quality reporting for channel partners, and improves onboarding insights through updated Expert Reviews coverage analysis. Content distribution was also enriched by making Icecat-generated PDFs available for PCF/CSV integrations and introducing new image types to improve media classification. Additionally, improvements to the Product Search API and other platform updates help strengthen synchronization across Icecat systems and improve overall service reliability.
If you are interested in improving your catalog quality insights, integrating Expert Reviews, or exploring the new MCP capabilities, please reach out to your Icecat account manager to learn how these new features can support your business.
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