Late Order
by
Delay handling for ecommerce teams: detect an order that will miss its promise before the customer does, then notify them with a compensation sized to the relationship.
Most late orders are discovered by the customer, not by the merchant. The tracking stops updating, nothing arrives, and the first contact anyone has about it is an angry message three days after the promised date. By then an apology costs more and buys less. The information needed to catch it earlier already exists in carrier scans and lead times, it is just nobody's job to watch. This skill detects the order that will miss its promise before the customer notices, then sends the notification with a compensation sized to the relationship.
What It Does
- Projects the delivery date from carrier scans rather than from the label date.
- Flags the order that will miss its promise while there is still time to say so.
- Reads the customer's value and history before deciding what to offer.
- Separates a one day slip from a shipment that is genuinely lost.
- Sizes compensation against the order and the relationship, not a flat rule.
- Sends the notification and the offer, with the decision logged.
Use Cases
- Tell a customer about a delay before they have to ask.
- Stop giving a full refund on a one day slip.
- Catch the shipment that stopped scanning four days ago.
- Offer something proportionate to a customer worth protecting.
Example Session
Which orders are going to be late, and what should we do about each?
Eleven orders are flagged. One is a false positive and four need more than a message.
- Situation | Orders | Projected slip | Offer | Reason
- One day slip, low value customer | 6 | 1 day | Notification only | Proportionate
- Three day slip, high value customer | 3 | 3 days | Shipping refunded | Relationship
- No scan in 4 days | 1 | Unknown | Replacement shipped | Likely lost
- Delivered, marked late in error | 1 | 0 | No action | False positive
The six one day slips get a message and nothing else, because a discount on a one day delay teaches customers that delays are profitable. The unscanned order is treated as lost and replaced today rather than after the customer complains next week, which costs the same and reads completely differently. One order is a tracking error and correctly gets nothing.
Why This Beats Prompting It Yourself
The Promised Date vs What The Carrier Scans Say: The Hidden Risk
A generic prompt compares the promised date to today and flags whatever has passed it, which finds every late order exactly one day too late to do anything useful. The scans have been saying it for three days. Waiting for the promise to break means every conversation starts with the customer already unhappy.
When You Still Need The Offer To Be Proportionate
A flat compensation rule is the expensive way to handle delays: it overpays on a one day slip and underpays on a lost parcel belonging to your best customer. This skill sizes the offer against the slip and the relationship, and gives six of the eleven orders nothing but a clear message, which is what those customers actually needed.
Known Limitations
Projection quality depends on carrier scan frequency, and a carrier that scans twice per journey gives a wider estimate that the output labels. It cannot distinguish a genuinely lost parcel from one sitting unscanned at a depot, so the four day rule is a judgment call you can configure. It sends notifications and queues the offers, and does not issue refunds or create replacement orders in your system.
Install It
- Download the ZIP.
It is free and there is no account to create. - Unzip it into your agent's skills folder.
Claude Code reads ~/.claude/skills/, which is hidden by default: the command in the folder block opens it. Other agents scan their own directory, so drop the same folder there instead. - Ask your agent to use it.
Restart the agent if it was already running, then it picks the skill up with no config.
skills folder
Copy
~/.claude/skills/late-order/
SKILL.md
references/carrier-profiles.md
notifications/
# one file per run, with the offer and reason
# macOS: create the folder and open it in Finder
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && open ~/.claude/skills
# Windows: paste in the Explorer address bar
%USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\Frequently asked questions
How is this different from a shipping notification app?
A notification app reports what the carrier says. This projects where the shipment will land against what you promised, decides whether that gap needs an offer, and sizes the offer against the customer. The notification is the last step rather than the whole product.
Which agents does the skill run in?
Any agent that supports the open SKILL.md format: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Manus, Grok and others load it unmodified. The format is portable, the location is not. Each agent scans its own skills directory, so you drop the same folder into whichever one yours uses. There is no config file to edit and no API key to provision.
What does it need connected to work?
Orders with their promised dates, carrier tracking events, and customer order history. Without customer history it still detects the delays and applies a flat offer rule, which it labels as the less useful mode.
Why send nothing but a message on a one day delay?
Because compensating a one day slip is expensive at volume and trains customers to watch for delays. A clear message ahead of time resolves most of them. The skill reserves offers for slips long enough that the customer's plans actually changed.
How does it decide something is lost rather than slow?
It uses days without a scan, defaulting to four, which is configurable per carrier. It cannot know for certain, and the output says so. Replacing early on that signal is usually cheaper than the support thread that follows a two week silence.
What is included with the skill?
The skill itself, the carrier profile reference, the notification templates, and the compensation thresholds. It is free and security scanned. We re-publish the ZIP when the profiles change, so download it again if your projections start drifting.
A comp offer should cost less than the customer is worth.
Polar carries lifetime value per customer on one definition, so the gesture you send on a delay is sized against the relationship it protects.
<script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How is this different from a shipping notification app?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"A notification app reports what the carrier says. This projects where the shipment will land against what you promised, decides whether that gap needs an offer, and sizes the offer against the customer. The notification is the last step rather than the whole product."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Which agents does the skill run in?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Any agent that supports the open SKILL.md format: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Manus, Grok and others load it unmodified. The format is portable, the location is not. Each agent scans its own skills directory, so you drop the same folder into whichever one yours uses. There is no config file to edit and no API key to provision."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What does it need connected to work?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Orders with their promised dates, carrier tracking events, and customer order history. Without customer history it still detects the delays and applies a flat offer rule, which it labels as the less useful mode."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Why send nothing but a message on a one day delay?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Because compensating a one day slip is expensive at volume and trains customers to watch for delays. A clear message ahead of time resolves most of them. The skill reserves offers for slips long enough that the customer's plans actually changed."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How does it decide something is lost rather than slow?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"It uses days without a scan, defaulting to four, which is configurable per carrier. It cannot know for certain, and the output says so. Replacing early on that signal is usually cheaper than the support thread that follows a two week silence."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What is included with the skill?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"The skill itself, the carrier profile reference, the notification templates, and the compensation thresholds. It is free and security scanned. We re-publish the ZIP when the profiles change, so download it again if your projections start drifting."}}]}</script>