Claim Ready
Check a product listing against the EU's September 27, 2026 guarantee-notice and green-claim rules, and get the compliant text ready to paste in before the deadline hits.
ClaimReady
Check a product listing against the EU's September 27, 2026 guarantee-notice and green-claim rules, and get the compliant text ready to paste in before the deadline hits.
Date: 2026-09-10 Form factor: web app Status: Prototype
What it is
ClaimReady scans a product listing's description for the generic environmental claims the EU is banning outright on September 27, 2026 ("eco-friendly," "carbon neutral," "sustainable" without proof), and separately builds the two point-of-sale disclosures the same law requires: the fixed-wording Legal Guarantee Notice every B2C seller must show, and the GARAN durability label for anyone offering a guarantee longer than two years. Both requirements come from the same directive and the same effective date, but sellers currently have to piece together the rules from separate legal explainers. This puts both checks in one pass.
Who it serves
A small e-commerce seller (Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, or a hand-built storefront) shipping into the EU who wrote their own listings and doesn't have a compliance team reading Commission implementing regulations. Also useful to the marketing or ops person at a slightly bigger DTC brand who has to clear a few hundred SKUs before the deadline and needs to find the risky phrasing fast, not read the directive themselves.
Why it could be profitable
Freemium: one free listing scan and one free notice/label generation, no account required. A paid tier ($20–40/month) would cover bulk CSV or catalog-URL scanning across a full product line, non-English claim libraries (the banned-phrase list differs by member-state transposition), and an exportable audit report a seller can keep on file if a regulator asks.
The guarantee-notice half of this has a working precedent: Clearmark, a Shopify app, already serves the official unmodified EU notice artwork for free and covers the GARAN label too — real evidence that sellers are actively looking for tools to handle this deadline. What Clearmark doesn't do is the green-claims side, which needs judgment (does "sustainable" have backing evidence or not?) rather than just serving a static file, and it's Shopify-only, leaving Etsy, WooCommerce, and custom storefronts unaddressed. That's the gap this fills. What's untested is whether a seller who already found Clearmark for the notice will pay for a separate tool for the claims check, or whether the two should really be one product from the start.
The deadline itself is real and close: Directive (EU) 2024/825 applies from September 27, 2026, with penalties for widespread infringement reaching 4% of annual turnover or €2 million, whichever is higher.
Form factor & scope
Single-page web app. Three views: a listing scanner that flags risky environmental phrasing against a reference list of banned and conditional claims, a notice-and-label generator that produces the fixed Legal Guarantee Notice text and, where applicable, the GARAN label fields, and a deadline tracker showing days remaining and a three-item readiness checklist. The claims reference list here is a snapshot built from published legal-alert coverage as of September 10, 2026, not a legal database.
How to run it
- Open
index.htmlin any modern browser. - On "Listing Scanner," pick one of the sample listings or paste your own product description, and watch the flagged phrases update as you type.
- Switch to "Notice & Label Generator," fill in brand, model, and guarantee length, and copy the generated notice (and GARAN label fields, if the guarantee runs past 24 months).
- Check "Deadline Tracker" for the countdown and the full reference table of claim terms.
What's in this prototype
- Listing scanner that highlights banned and conditional environmental claims in live text, with the reason each is risky and a specific, evidence-based rewrite suggestion
- 14 sample product listings across apparel, electronics, beauty, home goods, and toys, pre-loaded so the scanner has real variety to show
- Legal Guarantee Notice generator with the fixed statutory wording, plus a GARAN durability label block that only appears when the entered guarantee exceeds 24 months
- Deadline countdown to September 27, 2026 and a three-item point-of-sale readiness checklist
- Reference table of 13 claim terms (banned outright, conditional on certification, or prohibited when based on offsetting) with the safer alternative for each
Roadmap
- Real bulk scanning: CSV upload or a live catalog connection (Shopify/WooCommerce API) instead of one listing at a time
- Per-member-state claim libraries, since national transposition of the directive won't use identical banned-word lists in every language
- A maintained legal database behind the claims list instead of a static snapshot, given this is new law and enforcement guidance is still developing
- Certification lookup (EU Ecolabel and similar) so a claim can be auto-cleared instead of always flagged
- Audit-report export (PDF) a seller can keep on file as evidence of a compliance review
Sources
- EU's New Guarantee Notices: What Changes In September 2026 For B2C Sellers — notice and GARAN label mechanics, September 27, 2026 effective date
- The EU legal guarantee notice and GARAN label — official European Commission summary of both requirements
- Environmental claims and greenwashing after 27 September 2026 — banned generic claims, offsetting restrictions, penalty structure
- Greenwashing Directive Explained — plain-language rundown of what counts as a banned claim
- The EU legal guarantee notice: what sellers must show from 27 September 2026 — existing Shopify-only tool for the notice/label half, used here to check for a competing product
Requirements
ClaimReady — Requirements
Goals
- Let a seller paste or select a product listing and see, within seconds, which phrases would violate the EU's September 27, 2026 green-claims rules
- Generate the fixed-wording Legal Guarantee Notice text and, when applicable, the GARAN durability label fields, without the seller needing to read the underlying regulation
- Make the combined deadline (guarantee notice + GARAN label + green-claims ban, all from the same directive) legible as one checklist instead of three separate legal explainers
- Demonstrate a believable wedge against the existing free Clearmark tool: green-claims judgment plus non-Shopify coverage
Primary user
A small-to-mid EU-facing online seller (Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, or custom storefront) who writes their own product listings and has no in-house legal or compliance function, trying to get their catalog ready before September 27, 2026 without hiring outside counsel.
Functional requirements
- FR1: The Listing Scanner must let a user either select a preset sample listing or paste custom description text into an editable field.
- FR2: The scanner must check the active text against a reference list of banned and conditional environmental claim terms and highlight each match inline.
- FR3: Each flagged term must show its risk category (banned outright, conditional on certification, or prohibited when based on offsetting), the reason it's risky, and a specific rewrite suggestion.
- FR4: The scanner must update its results live as the user edits the text, not only on a manual submit.
- FR5: The scanner must show an overall listing readiness read (e.g., number of flags found) alongside the detailed list.
- FR6: The Notice & Label Generator must collect brand name, product model, and whether a commercial durability guarantee is offered (and its length in months if so).
- FR7: The generator must always produce the fixed Legal Guarantee Notice text, since every B2C seller must show it regardless of any commercial guarantee.
- FR8: The generator must produce the GARAN label fields (duration, brand, model) only when the entered guarantee duration exceeds 24 months, and must state that the label is not required otherwise.
- FR9: The generated notice and label text must be copyable in one click.
- FR10: The Deadline Tracker must show a live countdown of days remaining until September 27, 2026.
- FR11: The Deadline Tracker must show a three-item readiness checklist (notice displayed, label displayed if applicable, listing free of unsubstantiated claims) and a reference table of all claim terms in the dataset.
- FR12: All listing, claim-term, and preset data must load from
sample-data.jsonrather than being hardcoded in markup. - FR13: The UI must label the claims reference list as a snapshot dated September 10, 2026, and state plainly that it is not legal advice.
User stories
- As a seller, I want to paste my product description and see which words are risky, so that I can fix my listing before the deadline without reading the directive myself.
- As a seller, I want a rewrite suggestion next to each flagged claim, so that I know what to replace it with instead of just deleting the sentence.
- As a seller offering a 3-year warranty, I want the GARAN label fields generated automatically, so that I don't have to figure out the label template myself.
- As a seller with no commercial guarantee beyond the legal minimum, I want to see that I don't need a GARAN label, so that I don't waste time building one I don't need.
- As a first-time visitor, I want sample listings I can click through, so that I can see how the scanner behaves before trying my own text.
- As a compliance-minded ops person, I want a single checklist covering all three requirements, so that I don't have to track the notice, the label, and the claims rule as separate projects.
Non-functional requirements
- Runs fully client-side; no listing text or brand information leaves the browser
- Readable on a phone-width viewport without horizontal scrolling
- All interactive controls reachable and operable by keyboard
- No listing or generator input persists beyond the browser session (prototype has no backend)
- Live text scanning must not noticeably lag on descriptions up to a few paragraphs long
Out of scope (for the prototype)
- Bulk CSV or live catalog/API scanning
- Non-English claim libraries or per-member-state transposition differences
- Certification lookup (EU Ecolabel or similar) to auto-clear a claim
- Actual delivery or embedding of the notice/label into a live storefront
- Payment processing for the paid tier described in the README
Open questions
- Would a seller who already uses the free Clearmark app for the notice/label pay separately for the claims check, or does this only work bundled as one product from day one?
- How aggressively will early enforcement actually target small sellers versus large ones, and does that change how urgently SMEs act before the deadline?
- Should the claims reference list eventually be reviewed by counsel per target market, given this is new law with limited enforcement precedent yet?
