RAG for Amazon Sellers and Claude Model Switching | Seller Sessions

Aug 18, 2026

Week three of the all-things-Claude series brings Shubhash back after some time away. He walks through why sellers should build a RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) system: business knowledge trapped in a founder's head and a stack of spreadsheets creates a bottleneck, and RAG breaks it by answering questions from your own files with sources attached, no hallucination, no SQL required.

Danny follows with a practical rundown of the model-switching setup he's spent the last week building: a Claude Code Router (CCR) experiment that didn't work out, and the eventual fix via OpenClaude, OpenRouter and DeepSeek to save on token spend for grunt work without disturbing his main Claude Desktop workflow. He also covers running a second email address on a different domain via the Google Workspace CLI, and gives an honest verdict on OpenMontage for AI-assisted video editing: impressive, but still not a replacement for editing domain experience.

Key Topics

• RAG systems for Amazon sellers - chunking, embedding, indexing, retrieval and answer, built on Supabase/Postgres with pgvector
• Data drift and guardrails - how to stop a RAG system guessing, and how to version-control its answers over time
• Model switching for cost control - why and how, via OpenClaude, OpenRouter and DeepSeek
• Harnesses vs models - why a model performs differently outside its native environment
• OpenMontage - an AI video editing repo, and why domain experience still can't be replaced

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Danny opens week three, hands over to Shubhash
• 00:45 - Shubhash introduces today's topic: RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation)
• 01:39 - Why sellers should build a RAG: founder-bottlenecked knowledge
• 02:53 - No model training, no GPUs required - "organising a warehouse, not building a robot"
• 03:42 - The five steps: chunk, embed, index, retrieve, answer
• 05:01 - Indexing on Postgres/Supabase, searchable by meaning and by exact keyword
• 06:08 - Retrieval and the router: number questions to tables, everything else answered with sources
• 06:54 - Danny on data drift: the chicken-and-egg problem of trusting Claude to catch its own drift
• 08:18 - Core of it simplified: chunk, guardrails, plain-English queries via Slack or Claude
• 09:15 - Building on the same Supabase project from earlier sessions, switching on pgvector
• 10:12 - Guardrail rule: don't guess, cite sources, flag when there's no answer
• 10:41 - Version control: feeding user feedback back into the system
• 11:27 - Danny's segment: model switching, why and how
• 13:22 - The CCR experiment: a gateway/pass-through that didn't preserve context or dependencies
• 15:14 - Why OpenClaude was the better route: terminal-based, dependencies not preloaded
• 16:44 - DeepSeek vs Fable 5: close, not equal, but roughly 90% cheaper for grunt work
• 17:40 - Harnesses matter as much as the model itself
• 20:38 - Budget-capping your OpenRouter API key (and the horror stories of not doing so)
• 22:52 - Why Danny moved off Claude in Chrome for email rebuilds - context window visibility problems
• 23:37 - Solving it with dual Google Workspace access via CLI (Seller Sessions + DataBrill)
• 25:17 - OpenMontage: plug in the repo, but expect to still do heavy lifting
• 27:36 - The aggregator analogy: why "done for you" video/design without domain experience is a scam
• 30:46 - Round-up: three steps to start a RAG system yourself
• 34:56 - Where to reach Shubhash

Key Takeaways

• RAG breaks the founder bottleneck - your spreadsheets and documents become queryable with sources attached, cutting out the "ask the founder" loop.
• RAG is simpler than it sounds - five steps (chunk, embed, index, retrieve, answer), no model training, no GPUs, built on Postgres/Supabase you likely already have.
• Guardrails beat guessing - if there's no answer in the data, say so rather than fabricate one.
• Model switching only pays off with the right setup - a terminal-based OpenClaude + OpenRouter + DeepSeek combo saved roughly 90% on grunt-work token spend.
• AI video editing still needs domain experience - OpenMontage is a genuine leap forward, but a done-for-you button-press is the same mistake the Amazon aggregators made.

Notable Quotes

"The business knowledge lives in the founder's head and a stack of spreadsheets that only they can navigate." - Shubhash

"It's easier or better to say, I don't have enough data to make a conclusion to this, than to guess." - Shubhash

"Harnesses are just as important, to a point, as the model itself." - Danny McMillan

"If you said to a video editor, I'll just press a button and it makes me a video - they'd say that sounds like a scam to me." - Danny McMillan

Resources Mentioned

• Supabase / Postgres + pgvector - the database layer for storing and searching RAG "cards" by meaning and keyword
• OpenRouter - model-switching gateway used to route to DeepSeek; supports API key budget caps
• DeepSeek (v4 Pro) - the model Danny settled on for cost-saving grunt work, roughly 90% cheaper than Fable 5
• OpenClaude - terminal-based alternative to a full CCR gateway, dependencies loaded on demand
• Google Workspace CLI - used to run two email accounts through Claude without a browser context-window problem
• OpenMontage - GitHub repo for AI-assisted video editing, works alongside a Claude video/Remotion flow

Connect

Shubhash - Not a Square
Email: shubhash [at] notasquare.io

Seller Sessions is the leading podcast for advanced Amazon sellers, hosted by Danny McMillan. Week four returns with Ritu for Go With The Flow.