Introduction

When ChatGPT made its debut, it wasn’t just a game-changer, it was a “drop-the-mic” moment in the tech world. Suddenly, understanding natural language wasn’t just possible, it was accessible to everyone. But there was a catch: integrating it into projects could burn a hole in your pocket, given the costs per token. So when OpenAI announced plugins as an alternative, the light-bulbs instantly started popping off over our heads. At Ibotta, we’ve always had a soft spot for trying out the latest and greatest in tech, so, it was a no-brainer for us to dive deep into the ChatGPT pool and see what we could come up with. Enter the Ibotta Shopping plugin.

The plugin is our take on experimenting with harnessing the power of ChatGPT for e-commerce. The Ibotta Shopping plugin is all about understanding what users are hunting for and serving up the best product matches. In short, it’s our first foray into using LLM tech to supercharge our mission to make online shopping smarter and more intuitive.

But, as any engineer will tell you, innovation isn’t always a walk in the park. Crafting this plugin was a journey — with its fair share of bumps, confusions, and straight up woah moments. In this blog post, we’ll pull back the curtain on the making of the Ibotta Shopping plugin, from the challenges we faced to the breakthroughs and learnings that made it all worth it.

What is a ChatGPT Plugin?

ChatGPT plugins are add-ons that Plus users can pair with GPT4 to extend its capabilities. They serve as a bridge, connecting the advanced language understanding of ChatGPT with various applications, thereby enhancing their functionality. The key innovation here is that we can actually give “tools” to the model to use to solve certain problems. For example, you can make a plugin that gives the model the ability to do math. The next time someone asks chatGPT to solve their math homework, it will read the problem, reach for that “math” plugin to do arithmetic, and then format what the plugin responds with in its normal LLM-framework. Many Developers have developed a variety of plugins, ranging from chess-related ones to those facilitating diagram drawing and recipe searches. We decided we wanted to add our own unique spin to the platform.

So, what about this Ibotta Shopping Plugin?

When we started brainstorming ideas on how to integrate our tech and data with the plugins, we took a step back and thought about what would really vibe with our mission to “Make every purchase rewarding”. From our experience working on the Ibotta browser extension, we knew it was helpful to think of the online shopping journey in terms of a few questions: What to buy, Where to buy, and When to buy. From our perspective, we wanted chatGPT to be like having a personal shopping assistant, one that knows your preferences and guides you through the many options of online shopping. We wanted it to strike a delicate balance between being attuned to your needs, and yet subtle enough to let your creativity shine.

How does it work?

ChatGPT plugins are designed to enhance the functionality of the ChatGPT model by integrating it with various applications and services. They operate by utilizing the model’s advanced natural language processing capabilities to understand user inputs and generate appropriate responses.

For instance, when a user inputs a query about a product or a shopping need into the Ibotta Shopping plugin, the plugin sends this query to the ChatGPT model. The model processes the query, understands the user’s needs and preferences, and generates a response. The plugin then uses this response to search for relevant products across various online stores, providing a list of product suggestions that match the user’s query.

Here are some standout use cases that truly encapsulate the potential of our plugin:

These are just a few glimpses of how the Ibotta shopping plugin enhances the shopping experience. Stay tuned for the next blog, where we go deep into the technical explorations of building a plugin on ChatGPT.

Conclusion

As we reflect on our journey with the Ibotta shopping plugin and ChatGPT, it’s clear that the intersection of technology and user needs can lead to transformative experiences. But what truly brings a smile to our faces are the real-world applications of our plugin, and how we can further our mission to make every purchase rewarding.

Interested in working at Ibotta? Check out https://ibotta.com/careers to browse openings and learn more about us!

AI-Powered Shopping: Unveiling Ibotta’s ChatGPT Plugin Experience was originally published in Building Ibotta on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How well do you think the course conveyed those takeaways?

I think the course did a good job of conveying the takeaways. I think the biggest takeaway I learned was writing clean and modular code as well as testing. Throughout the projects and even in the exams, testing your code was very essential in succeeding.

Were there any other particular takeaways for you?

I think other takeaways were design patterns that we learned through the weekly papers. For example, in the paper titled “The Interface Segregation Principle”, I learned more about the different ways of using interfaces to make a more modular code. My main takeaway from that paper was how it is deal to only use adapters when you are using the same pattern of multi-inheritance in many places as it creates a potential unnecessary object.

How did you feel about two-stage quizzes and tests?

The two-stage quizzes and tests were really helpful because I was able to discuss with my group ideas I haven't thought of before in terms of getting the solution to the quiz questions. Given time to do that in class helped me understand the material in the class more. I haven’t had a class that had collaborative tests before and I think it's an excellent thing to have because many times simply going over the test after the fact doesn’t help too much in comparison to discussing with your group during the test.

How did you feel about cold calling?

This was the first class I had that did cold calling. After going through the process in this class, I think it's really helpful in terms of staying engaged in the class and not zoning off in the lectures. Also, the conversational system during the lectures was much more engaging than simply going over slides.

How did you feel about office hours?

The office hours sessions were helpful. Anytime I was confused on topics we learned in class or troubles with the projects, going to office hours has always helped me.

How did you feel about lab sessions?

Similar to the office hours, the lab sessions were useful as any problem I was facing with the project like weird issues I ran into in the projects with C++, I was able to get resolved and learn from in the sessions. In addition, listening to other people’s problems was useful as I sometimes ran into them later on and was able to solve them because of the lab sessions.

What did you do this past week?

This week my partner and I started to make good progress on the Life lab. We are done with two of the hacker rank without any hiccups, so I think we’ll finish this project smoothly.

What’s in your way?

Nothing is in my way at the moment.

What will you do next week?

Next week, I will be finishing up the Life lab and look over the notes on certain topics we covered in class, mainly inheritance. After Tuesday, I hope to enjoy this break and relax from school.

If you read it, what did you think of What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You?

It was an interesting read. Similar to the article we read a few weeks back, it crazy to see that discrimination at this level still occurs in the industry. It just goes to show that no matter the amount of progress, it is hard to change the views of people that think this way. I don’t think there is a good solution to eliminating discrimination, but I hope in the future we won’t hear about it.

What was your experience of inheritance? (this question will vary, week to week)

I think inheritance is one of the best ways to reuse code and make everything very modular. I’ve used inheritance in Java before and from the lectures, the concept is pretty similar but there are some unique things in C++ that I will need to remember such as the syntax and how the default constructor of the parent class is automatically called. I also like how in C++ you can inherit multiple classes as opposed to Java.

What made you happy this week?

I am happy this week to have a lighter load of school work and looking forward to the break next week! It’s crazy to think that the semester is almost over after the break, I feel like it has gone very quickly.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick-of-the-week is Elasticsearch, an open-source NoSQL database that performs well with search and analytics data. They have other tools that help to access this data such as Kibana, a dashboard for Elasticsearch data. I recommend it to anyone that is interested in adding search to their projects/app since it's very easy to get it up and running and the results are amazing.

What did you do this past week?

This past week I cooled down for a bit then started working on the new Life project. I also started brushing up on some of the topics that we learned about in class that is useful for the project.

What’s in your way?

Nothing is in my way currently.

What will you do next week?

I will be finishing up the project and continue learning more about the things we are learning by practicing some of the implementation done in class.

If you read it, what did you think of The New Methodology?

I thought it was a good essay and the points the author brought up made sense. For example, discussing the tradeoffs of agile vs the traditional “code and fix” vs the other methodologies discussed in the paper. I have often used agile and learning the benefits and disadvantages with alternatives gave me a broader view of the software development lifecycle.

What was your experience of containers, container adapters, and Life? (this question will vary, week to week)

I did not have a lot of experience implementing containers but I knew they existed and what purpose they showed. After going through the common container implementations for data structures like deque, list, and vectors, it made a lot of sense. Similarly, for container adapters, I knew their existence and how they relied on containers that we have used before but did not know their implementation in C++. After going through the implementation in class and reading the notes in the Gitlab, I think I have a good understanding of their implementation and choices behind their underlying containers for the respective data structure. For the Life project, the lecture on Friday gave me a good idea of how to approach the project and the things needed to get it working. I look forward to finishing the project this week.

What made you happy this week?

I was happy this week to get my OS project done on time. We finished the virtual memory project which was the hardest project so far this year.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick-of-the-week is Redis, an open-source in-memory store. It is used mostly as a way to cache things in memory such as heavily read database queries in a distributed system. For example, you have 5 servers serving your backend API and you have a heavy query that needs to be cached. Instead of having a cache within each server, you have a centralized cache that those servers can read from. I recommend to check it out for anyone that is interested in designing a high scale application.

What did you do this past week?

This week I finished up the Darwin Project. This project was interesting to work on because it allowed us to think more about design and which design to go with.

What’s in your way?

Nothing is in my way at the moment. We encountered different memory issues while working on the project that was confusing to solve, but with the help of the TAs, we were able to understand and fix them.

What will you do next week?

Next week, I hope to start on the new and final project. I can’t believe we are already at the final project in the class. It feels just like yesterday when this class started.

If you read it, what did you think of The Dependency Inversion Principle?

I thought it made a lot of sense as a design principle. Separating different chunks of logic into more sizeable modules ensures maintainability in any software. The lamp example that the paper had was a really good example to understand the design, higher-level modules shouldn’t depend on lower-level ones.

What was your experience of continuing to implement std::vector, move semantics, and allocators again? (this question will vary, week to week)

As we starting to implement more parts of the vector class, I understood more of the intricacies that separate it from Java’s ArrayList such as being mindful of the copy constructor and making sure it is not heavy. I was not familiar with the move semantics and always thought setting something equal to one another is the same behavior, but learning more about it started making sense to me. After working on the allocator lab, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of it. However, after Friday’s lecture, I realized I forgot some stuff about it and the lecture was a good refresher to using it and knowing why we need to use it.

What made you happy this week?

I was happy this week to get the Darwin project done. We had everything done except memory issues which were very hard to debug, but happy that once we fixed that everything worked.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick-of-the-week is TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript that enforces strict types and supports definition files that are similar to C++’s header files. It makes writing large scale projects with JavaScript a lot more maintainable. While it is a lot more upfront work at first, I recommend it to anyone that is making a large scale project as it pays back in the future.

What did you do this past week?

This week I starting working on the Darwin project. At first, it was a lot of information to process but as my partner and I began to piece the information bit by bit, it was a lot less complicated than what I initially thought.

What’s in your way?

We encountered a weird segfault when returning an instance variable from one of our methods. We tried debugging in different ways such as trying Valgrind, but we are still unable to figure it out.

What will you do next week?

Next week I will be continuing working on the project and finishing that up.

If you read it, what did you think of The Interface Segregation Principle?

I thought it was an interesting read. I have been wanting to learn about more different design patterns and reading papers like these has increased my understanding of them. More specifically in this paper, I think the different ways of using interfaces to make a more modular code are a good idea. My main take away was the use of adapters vs inheriting multiple interfaces and how it is deal to only use adapters when you are using the same pattern of multi-inheritance in many places as it creates a potential unnecessary object.

What was your experience of continuing to implement std::vector? (this question will vary, week to week)

I knew how ArrayLists, the Java version of a vector worked internally and I believed that helped my understanding when we were implementing our own vector in class. There were a few things I did not know such as the intricacies when using references to a vector and copying them over, but after seeing an example of implementation in class I think I have a good grasp of it.

What made you happy this week?

I was happy this week because it was a less “hectic” week than normal. Usually, I have at least 1 big thing every week, but this week I did not so I got to relax a bit more.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick-of-the-week this week is Chart.js, an open-source library that allows one to add complex and comprehensive charts to your front-end. It is very easy to use, supports responsiveness, and is well documented. It also supports animation, so when you update the data set it animations that transition, which looks super cool. I recommend it to anyone that is trying to add some sort of chart to their website.

What did you do this past week?

This week my partner and I made some progress on the allocation lab. We got the basics down in terms of allocating and just need to finish up the allocation portion of the lab. Getting started on this lab was a bit more confusing than the last two because all the code to look and understand in the Allocator.h file.

What’s in your way?

Nothing is in my way at the moment. I just need to practice doing questions on HackerRank to prepare for the exam and get used to the testing environment.

What will you do next week?

Next week I will be continuing working on the project and finishing that up. I will also be studying for the upcoming test by looking over the topic and doing practice problems.

If you read it, what did you think of The Open-Closed Principle?

I thought it was a very interesting read. I agree with the ideas presented in the paper, most importantly the importance of having modular code. Working on any major project with many different parts, having modular code that requires one to only change that module rather than changing it everywhere.

What was your experience of iterator concepts, std::array, and std::vector? (this question will vary, week to week)

From the first time we learned about iterators, I feel like I have gotten a stronger grasp on the idea, and in this project, we had to implement our own custom iterator. With arrays and vectors, I was used to the concept from other programming languages I know in the past, and learning more about it this week made me more comfortable using vectors and arrays.

What made you happy this week?

I was happy this week because I finally got my sleep schedule on track. This summer break and home so much blurred the sense of time for me and caused my sleep schedule to become pretty unhealthy. After finally sticking to a strict sleep scheduler I am now able to easily go to bed at 12 am and wake up at 8 am.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick of the week is Quasar, a Vue framework for making web applications easily. I like it a lot because it has many complex components built-in and one can make a fully-fledged site with complex interactions super easily. I recommend it for bootstrapping ideas that do not need to be fully polished out. While using it, I felt like it included any component that you can imagine since it is open-source and required little CSS customizations.

What did you do this past week?

This week my partner and I finished up the Voting lab. We mainly added the testing harness which was interesting to do from scratch rather than in the Collatz lab where we had the testing harness done and only needed to provide the test cases.

What’s in your way?

Nothing is in my way at the moment. I feel like I am getting more and more familiar with C++ by working on these projects. Working on the Voting lab where we had to make everything from scratch, helped me a lot in understanding more about the language.

What will you do next week?

Next week I will be working on the new project as well as starting to review material for the upcoming test.

If you read it, what did you think of Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?

After reading it, I found it shocking that the problem is gender discrimination was that bad. Before reading this paper, I knew that there was a problem in share representation of women in the technology industry but didn’t know how severe the discrimination is. I think we are moving in the right direction in the future as more and more companies are doing something to promote gender equality, but I think the root of the problem is on the people that make up the industry, and fixing it there will be a challenge for sure.

What was your experience of arrays, equal(), and iterators? (this question will vary, week to week)

Prior to the lectures this week, I was not familiar with the equals() method in C++, but I knew about arrays and iterators from Java. Arrays and iterators from Java. The only thing I never thought about was that the initialization of an array size N is O(N), it makes sense but never thought of it like that in the past. Iterators are a super useful way to loop through a complex data structure easily, the only thing I am still not familiar with is actually implementing a custom iterator from scratch.

What made you happy this week?

I was happy this week to finish both the voting lab and my OS lab this week on time as well as having the time to study properly for my exams this week.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick of the week is Google News. Although probably known by most, I never realized how good of a platform it really is to get news based on your interests. It has various categories and the most important one is a for you section. The articles presented to me in the for you section were all of interest for me and helped me stay up to date on information I cared about.

What did you do this past week?

This week my partner and I worked on the Voting lab. We made some good progress on it like setting up the make file, GitLab CI, and implementation to work. I felt like we made some good progress in the lab and the fact that we started early makes me confident we will finish on time.

What’s in your way?

Nothing really in my way at the moment. Just like last week, I am continuing to get more and more familiar with C++ and reading up on the documentation for it to look for any methods or things in the standard library I did not know about.

What will you do next week?

Next week my partner and I will be finishing up and optimizing the Voting lab and be able to pass all the test cases. Also linking up our code with the unit testing. We are hoping to finish sometime next week.

What was your experience of exceptions, voting, and strcmp? (this question will vary, week to week)

I knew about exceptions but not in detail of the intricacies of the different examples shown in class. After that lecture, I felt like I got a better understanding of them in general. The voting lab process makes more sense to me after going over it in class and I’m sure I will be more comfortable after finishing up the solution for it. I have used strcmp before in C but not in C++, overall it seems very similar. In addition, the last HackerRank we did in class solidified my understanding of the method because we got the opportunity to create it ourselves.

What made you happy this week?

This week I finally won a game in Fall Guys. It’s an arcade-style battle royale game and after playing for weeks I finally won a game this week and it felt good being on the winning end for once.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick of the week is MongoDB Charts. This tool made by MongoDB allows one to visualize their Mongo database. I think it's essential to visualize the data you collect in your database and a solution like MongoDB Charts makes it very easy to build a dashboard to see valuable trends in your data. The coolest thing I found with this data was the ability to see a heat map of your location-based data.

What did you do this past week?

This past week was pretty productive. I finished up the optimization portion in the Collatz lab and finishing brushing up on C++. Also in my other classes as well I felt like I am getting more done in a shorter amount of time.

What’s in your way?

Nothing is really in my way currently.

What will you do next week?

Being done with the lab, I will be waiting for the next lab and working on it! I will also be practicing more C++ and try to get even better with it.

What was your experience of Collatz, the starter code, the makefile, its optimizations, and exceptions? (this question will vary, week to week)

The starter code was pretty straightforward and easy to dive right into. I was only a bit confused at first in the test file due to not being familiar with the unit testing framework, but once I understood how it was working, it was not hard to add additional test case files. Makefiles are essential to any project that requires many different modules that need to be compiled and linked and in this project, it was no different. All the function calls in the Makefile were useful and saved a lot of time such as the docker function to quickly get into the docker shell and committing code. Optimizing the code was interesting as I had to decide how I want to optimize and be able to pass the class’s test cases as well as the HackerRank. I ended up deciding on using meta cache and lazy cache and it seems to work pretty well. There was not much error checking in this lab, but the precondition that asserts the input given was pretty important.

What made you happy this week?

I was happy to finally finish this Project as well as in OS my partner and I finally were able to pass all the test cases after pulling our hairs for hours.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick-of-the-week is Github Code Spaces, I got beta access recently and was trying it out and it works pretty well. It is a cloud containerized VS Code environment, so it allows anyone to code on anything regardless of what machine you are using in the browser. I think going forward in the future, will be the way to go because it will anyone have a centralized complex software development environment on any device. While working on the Collatz lab, I was thinking that the docker shell we were working from is very similar to this concept except the docker container is on the cloud.