Get to know MarginLens.

Start with your own record.

The four bottom tabs are Analyze, My Items, Session, and Account. Analyze starts an item or sourcing capture. My Items holds account-backed saved items available across your signed-in devices; Session holds trips and performance; Account holds plan, consent, support, and data settings.

For a single item, follow Analyze → Take a photo or Choose from your photos → Review your photos → Analyze this find. Add a clear overall photo and, when available, a label or detail view. The review screen lets you crop or replace photos and add asking price, condition, source, damage, and notes.

Approved store beta: use Pro beta tools without signing in or purchasing. Platform verification connects the installation automatically; camera/library permissions and processing consent still apply. Sign in at Save item for durable account storage. My Items, account sessions, history and export require sign-in. Wait for the assigned full-feature build; older store builds and direct Dev installs can have different access.

Where to find each feature.

Scene Studio, Scout Scan, Quick Capture and Review Queue, buying guidance, and the item guide are included in the planned first public release for Collector and Pro. Session and inventory performance uses recorded data and deterministic calculations. Direct marketplace publishing and Where to Go are outside the first release. Copying or sharing a listing draft does not publish it to a marketplace.

Practical walkthroughs.

Screenshots show development app screens with sample data. Mobile-layout browser captures illustrate the screens; native permissions, recording, and store checkout may look different.

Should I buy this thrift-store find?

Try this with an item you are free to photograph; you can stop before making a purchase. In the assigned full-feature beta, Pro tools work without signing in; Save item and account features require sign-in.

View full-size screenshot

1. Open Analyze. Take an overall photo or choose one from your photos. Add label and detail photos if they help identify the item.
2. On Review your photos, crop if needed and enter the asking price, condition, source, and any damage you can see. Select Analyze this find.
3. Read the verdict, cautions, confidence, resale range, and profit estimate. Open Why this verdict to inspect the evidence and what remains uncertain.
4. Choose Adjust purchase costs, change the selling channel or costs, then Apply changes. Under What did you decide?, record Bought, Maybe, or Passed.
5. Choose Save item on one result. Sign in at Save item and approve account photo storage when asked. Only the selected analysis, photos and chosen kept Scene set are copied to My Items; signing in does not import the whole queue or rerun AI processing.
6. Cancel sign-in once to check that the original work stays intact. After an interruption or app restart, use Resume save in Analyze, Account or the result and retry with the same account. If temporary work expired, retain the local photos and follow the error; do not expect an automatic paid rerun.
7. Guest cloud photos and Scene images expire 30 days from creation. Saved account copies remain until removal. Do not expect unsaved local work to survive reinstall or transfer to another device. Guest Discard requests cloud cleanup and does not reset your beta allowance.

Turn a valued result into a listing draft

Listing Studio is planned for Collector and Pro. It starts from a result with a valuation.

View full-size screenshot

1. Open a result and select Create listing draft or Edit listing draft.
2. Check the title, description, suggested asking price, category, and tags against the real item. Correct any unsupported claim or missing condition detail.
3. Use Save draft to return later, Copy all to paste into a marketplace, or Share complete draft for another app.
4. Review the marketplace’s own fees and listing fields before publishing there yourself.

Track a purchased find through a sale

My Items is an account-backed field ledger for inventory and sourcing sessions.

View full-size screenshot

1. After recording Bought on a result, open My Items and select Add item if you need to enter an item directly.
2. Save the purchase cost and storage location. If you are sourcing on a trip, open Session → Trips → Start session to set a budget and group finds.
3. When the item is listed or sold, open it from My Items and record the actual sale amount, fees, and shipping. Compare realized profit with the original estimate.
4. Use My Items → Export to share a CSV copy of the currently visible items.

Capture several items, then review them

Quick Capture keeps unfinished item captures on this device until you are ready to add details and analyze them.

View full-size screenshot

1. Open Analyze → Quick Capture and photograph one item at a time, or choose photos from the library. The queue shows how many of its 20 spaces are in use.
2. Open Review queue and select a captured item. Add its asking price and any condition, source, damage, or notes before starting analysis.
3. Select the Analyze N priced captures button (N is the number ready) and keep MarginLens open while the queue runs one analysis at a time. A missing asking price remains missing until you enter it.
4. Open each result, check the evidence and uncertainty, then save the item to My Items. In the full-feature guest beta, sign-in and explicit Save retire only the successfully saved guest references. For an account queue entry marked Saved to My Items, Remove capture removes the temporary device capture without removing the saved item.

Use Scout Scan to choose what to inspect

Scout is visual triage for a shelf or table, not an appraisal or authenticity check.

View full-size screenshot

1. Open Analyze → Scout Scan and photograph a well-lit shelf or table, or choose one shelf photo. Avoid treating the whole shelf as one item.
2. Review the inspection priorities and select a candidate. A Higher value potential label only explains visible clues in that photo; it is relative and uncertain.
3. Review the crop and select Use this crop as a draft, then open that draft in the review queue. If the crop is poor, take an individual photo instead.
4. Add the asking price and run closer analysis before deciding. Scout can return no standout and does not provide shelf-level prices, rarity guarantees, or a buying verdict.

Track a sourcing trip and its outcome

Session summarizes recorded inventory and costs so you can compare estimates with actual outcomes.

View full-size screenshot

1. Open Session → Trips and select Start session. Add a name, venue, or budget if useful; the next items you save join the active session automatically.
2. Analyze or save items as you shop. They remain in My Items, where you can record purchase cost, listing state, sale amount, fees, and shipping.
3. Stop the session when the trip ends. Reopen a completed trip to review its items and recorded spend.
4. Open Session → Performance to review deterministic totals. Partial costs stay disclosed, estimates remain separate from actual profit, and comparisons appear only when both values were recorded.

Ask what to verify before buying

Buying guidance and Ask about this item use the selected result, channel costs, and saved goals; they do not perform live web research.

View full-size screenshot

1. Open a result. Use Adjust purchase costs to check the selling channel and costs, then Apply changes. Expand Buying guidance and review Your buying goals; edit Minimum profit ($) and Minimum return on cost (%) and select Save goals when needed.
2. Read the suggested maximum purchase price as a calculation from the selected channel and saved goals. Compare it with the asking price and the item's condition yourself.
3. Open Ask about this item and choose Estimate, Confidence, Inspect, Costs, or Listing. Read the answer alongside the result evidence and cautions.
4. Use the linked references when present, and remember that the item guide uses this analysis only; it does not fetch new market information.

Create a supplemental Scene Studio image

Scene Studio keeps the original item photo unchanged while you review a cutout and create up to four supplemental staged images.

View full-size screenshot

1. In the full-feature beta, open Scene Studio from a completed guest result without signing in, or sign in and open a saved My Items item. Review the separate processing consent and approve it only when ready to send the selected photo. Guest kept images expire after 30 days unless explicitly copied to an account through Save item.
2. Start with a whole-item photo and wait for the cutout review. Compare Original, Cutout, and Edge check, confirm the whole item, openings and edges, and no extra foreground, then choose Accept cutout or Reject cutout and retake.
3. Choose a photographic setting and a Straight-on or Looking-down angle when available. Drag the cutout into position, then select Create preview; the setting is illustrative and the item pixels are not redrawn.
4. Review the pending staged image and choose Keep image or Discard. Reopen Scene Studio later to view kept images, choose another setting for another image, or save/share a kept image; the original item photo remains primary.

Plans and access.

Planned US pricing: Try five analyses free. This is an app allowance, not an Apple or Google subscription trial: five total per account, with no replenishment at month boundaries, after reinstalling or signing out, after deleting items, or after cancelling or downgrading a subscription. Failed analyses are refunded and duplicate retries are safe. After five, you can subscribe or buy a non-expiring analysis pack. Collector has 100 paid analyses per month at $9.99/month or $99.99/year; Pro has 250 at $19.99/month or $199.99/year. Saved items, core evidence, and CSV export remain accessible. Collector and Pro include the same current tools: Quick Capture and Review Queue, Scout Scan, Listing Studio, Scene Studio, buying guidance and item guide, and session and inventory performance reports. Pro provides higher analysis volume. A non-expiring pack of 50 extra analyses is planned at $9.99 for any tier; purchased credits do not unlock paid features. Stores will show final local prices and purchase terms at launch.

Usage accounting: each successful item analysis uses 1 available analysis, with your included allowance used before purchased credits. Paid plan allowances refresh monthly. Scout uses 1 analysis, and each separately chosen item analysis from Scout uses 1 additional analysis. Scene Studio has a separate planned allowance of 50 item sets per month for Collector, 100 for Pro, and 0 for Free; each set starts when its whole-item cutout is approved, can keep up to 4 images, and does not consume an ordinary item-analysis allowance. Failed attempts and retries do not silently double-charge an allowance.

Full-feature beta exception: verified ordinary store betas include 250 analyses per month and 100 Scene Studio item sets per month, up to four kept images per set, under shared operating limits. These are testing allowances, separate from the public offer and from purchased credits. Scene sets are separate from analyses. Ordinary beta checkout is disabled. Dedicated Sandbox billing builds opt out and require an explicitly supervised no-charge billing test; they are not the ordinary beta. Larger explicit testing grants are preserved. Limits or a service pause can stop processing before the monthly allowance is exhausted; Account shows the access state.

Compare plan capabilities