# Trash Out-of-Stock Products That No Longer Sell

> Finds products that are out of stock and have had no orders in a year, so you can clear old listings out of your catalog.

- Job: [Catalog & products](https://storeagent.ai/mcp-recipes/job/catalog/)
- What it does: Asks first: changes your store, only after you say yes
- Time saved: ~35 min vs doing it by hand
- Requires: StoreAgent (free plugin, MCP on every plan)
- Works in: Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and any MCP client connected to the store through StoreAgent MCP
- Web page: https://storeagent.ai/mcp-recipes/trash-dead-stock/

## The prompt

```text
Find all products that are out of stock. Check our orders from the last 12 months and tell me which of these products have not been in any order. Show me a list with the product name, SKU and the date it was last changed, and wait for my OK. Move only the products I approve to the trash. Do not delete anything for good, and leave alone any product that has sold in the last 12 months.
```

## What happens when you paste it

You: Find all products that are out of stock…

Assistant: 38 products are out of stock. 27 of them appear in no order since 1 Oct 2025. 11 sold at least once, so I left those out. Calling: `woocommerce/products-query`, `woocommerce/orders-query`, `woocommerce/product-delete`.

Assistant: This will make changes in WooCommerce. Do you want me to go ahead?

Assistant: Moved 24 products to the trash, the ones you approved. You can restore them from Products > Trash for 30 days.

## Abilities this recipe calls

- **Find products** (`woocommerce/products-query`, read only, from WooCommerce): Finds products by name, SKU, status, type or stock status, with prices and stock.
- **Find orders** (`woocommerce/orders-query`, read only, from WooCommerce): Finds orders by status, customer, email or date, with the items in each order.
- **Delete a product** (`woocommerce/product-delete`, asks first, from WooCommerce): Moves a product to the trash, or deletes it for good if you say so.

## Variations

Add one of these to the end of the prompt. Swap anything in [brackets] for your own details.

- Use [6] months instead of 12.
- Set them to draft instead of moving them to the trash.

## Related recipes

- [Tag Your Newest Products Consistently](https://storeagent.ai/mcp-recipes/tag-catalog.md): Gives every recent product a clean, consistent set of tags so related products stop coming up empty.
- [Get Upsell and Cross-Sell Ideas for Your Best Sellers](https://storeagent.ai/mcp-recipes/upsell-ideas.md): Works out what actually sells together, then gives you pairings for your top products, ready for the Linked Products tab.
- [Add a New Product From Your Notes](https://storeagent.ai/mcp-recipes/new-product-draft.md): Turns a few lines of notes into a draft product with a price, SKU, description and tags, ready for you to add photos and publish.

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Part of the StoreAgent WooCommerce MCP Recipes directory: https://storeagent.ai/mcp-recipes/ (index for LLMs: https://storeagent.ai/mcp-recipes/llms.txt). Get StoreAgent free: https://app.storeagent.ai/sign-up/