Guides · 3D printing

The stack, in shop order

1. Find what to print: Trending print finder. Lists new or fast-rising models on the sites you follow. You check each model's license before selling prints of it; many free models are personal-use only.
2. Price the job: 3D print price quote helper. Turns the slicer's print time and grams plus your rates into a line-by-line quote. You set the final price.
3. List it: Etsy / eBay listing writer. Drafts the title, tags, and description from your photos and notes, written for marketplace search.
4. Describe the photos: Product photo alt text. Writes alt text and captions so listings are accessible and easier to find.
5. Plan the week's printing: Print farm job queue. Orders open jobs by due date, assigns printers, totals filament, and flags anything that will be late.
6. Keep filament stocked: Filament spool inventory. Tells you what to restock first and which jobs fit the spools you already have.
7. Fix failed prints: 3D print failure diagnosis. Ranks likely causes from a photo of the failure and suggests one setting to change first.
8. Dial in new filament: Slicer settings assistant. Suggests a starting profile for a new filament and printer and explains each change.
9. Answer buyers: Customer support replies. Drafts replies to shipping, color, and custom-order questions from your own policies.
10. Watch the market: Competitor price watcher. Checks similar listings on a schedule and flags price changes so you can decide whether to react.

Don't set up all ten at once. Most sellers get the most out of the quote helper and listing writer first, because those happen on every order and every product.

Write one shop profile and reuse it

Every agent above works better when it knows your printers, materials, rates, and policies. Write them once and paste the block above each prompt, or save it in a ChatGPT or Claude Project so every chat starts with it.

Shop profile (paste this above every agent prompt):
- Shop: [name], sells on [Etsy / eBay / own site / local markets]
- Printers: [models, nozzle sizes, build volume, multicolor yes/no]
- Materials I stock: [PLA, PETG, TPU... with brands]
- My rates: filament $[x]/kg, machine time $[x]/hr, labor $[x]/hr, failure buffer [x]%
- Turnaround: [x] business days. Shipping: [carrier, cost or free over $x]
- Policies: [returns, custom orders, color substitutions]
- Voice: [friendly, short, no exclamation points, etc.]
- Never: publish listings, send messages or quotes, issue refunds, or buy anything. Draft only.

A simple weekly routine

• Monday: Run the trending print finder and the filament inventory check. Pick what to print this week and what to reorder.
• Each new order or request: Get the slicer estimate, run the quote helper, and send the quote yourself.
• Each new product: Photograph it, then run the listing writer and alt-text agent. Read the draft before you publish.
• Every morning: Paste open orders into the job queue agent and print in the order it suggests, adjusting for anything it can't know.
• When a print fails: Photo it and run failure diagnosis before you reprint. Change one setting at a time.
• Once a month: Run the competitor price watcher and review your prices against your real costs.

Guardrails for a print shop

• The agent drafts; you publish listings, send quotes, and reply to buyers.
• Print time and grams come from your slicer, not the AI's guess.
• Check every model's license before selling prints of a design you didn't make, and read the marketplace's rules for 3D printed items.
• Never give an agent your marketplace password or payment access. Paste data in, copy drafts out.
• Keep the shop profile current. Most bad output comes from stale rates or policies.

New to agents?

Start with how to build your first AI agent, then come back and set up one piece of the stack. All 3D printing agent ideas live in the 3D printing use cases hub.

Want the listing part done for you?

The Marketplace Listing Writer kit has prompts tuned for Etsy and eBay title and tag rules, 3D print specifics (filament, size, print time, finish), and a batch mode for variants.