Shopify

Set up an AI agent for Shopify that answers shoppers, recommends products as cards, looks up orders and tracking, and handles returns and address changes.

eesel's AI agent for Shopify is an AI chatbot and assistant for your store. It answers shoppers in your website chat, shows products as cards they can add to their cart, and looks up orders, tracking and stock live.

Your AI teammate is a commerce teammate in Shopify. It helps you run your store and answers every customer question. It reads your products, storefront pages, blog and policies, and looks up orders live. It recommends products, checks stock, and shows them as cards a shopper can add to their cart. It also checks tracking, starts returns and fixes shipping addresses.

The agent answering on a storefront, showing products as cards.

Set up eesel in Shopify

1

Ask your agent to connect Shopify

Open the chat in your dashboard and ask it to connect Shopify. It lays out the two ways to connect and asks for your store name. The store name is the part before .myshopify.com, not the full web address. Prefer to click? Integrations > Shopify in the left sidebar has the same Connect button.

The agent explains the two ways to connect and asks for your store name.

2

Pick Quick start or a full connection

Tell your agent which one you want, along with the store name.

• Quick start. A read of your public storefront, with no sign-in. It covers products, collections, pages and blog articles as a shopper sees them. It can search products and show product cards with Add to Cart. It cannot see orders or customers, or anything behind your Shopify admin login.

• Full connection. Orders, customers, products, tracking and refunds. Products, pages, blog articles and policies come from Shopify directly instead of the public storefront. A person has to approve it in a browser. There is no access token to paste, because Shopify retired that method.

For a full connection your agent posts a link.

The agent posts a connect link for your store.

The link opens Shopify's install screen, which lists what the eesel app may read and change. A person approves this in the browser: a store owner, or a staff member with app permissions. If the eesel app is already on that store, Shopify skips the screen.

Start with either one. Moving from Quick start to a full connection later loses nothing you have already read in.

3

Confirm the connection

Go back to the chat and tell your agent you approved it. It confirms the store is live, names the person who approved it, and reads a few recent orders. It also starts a background read of the catalog, policies and order patterns.

The chat confirming the store is live and reading recent orders.

Check it worked. The left sidebar now lists Shopify with your store name. From a terminal, eesel status shows the integration as connected with its source counts.

4

Check what it can read

Integrations > Shopify shows the connection as Connected, with your store name and Start a chat buttons. Sources lists Pages, Products, Blog Articles and Policies, each with a document count and a switch. Actions lists the Read and Write groups.

The Shopify integration page, with the four sources and the two action groups.

5

Ask about your store from Slack

Connect Slack, mention your agent in a Slack channel and ask a catalog question. It answers in the thread with products, prices and stock.

A store question asked and answered in a Slack thread.

6

Put it on your storefront

The Chat Bubble puts your agent on the storefront, and that page has the install steps for your theme. Connecting alone does not start your agent. It needs an automation first. Ask in the dashboard chat to turn on the bubble automation, and tell it how you want it to answer.

Your agent then answers a shopper's question and shows matching products as a carousel of cards. Each card carries the product image, its price, the variant and an Add to Cart button.

The chat bubble answering a recommendation question from the live catalog.

The expand icon at the top right of the bubble opens the same conversation full screen.

The same conversation in full-screen mode.

Check it worked. Your Automations page lists the automation, switched on. From a terminal, eesel automations lists the automation as on.

7

Hand a shopper to your team

When a shopper asks for a person, your agent can take their details and open a ticket in your helpdesk. Tell it how in the dashboard chat, for example: "When a shopper asks to speak to a person, ask for their name and email, create a Gorgias ticket with a summary of the chat, tag it chat-bubble-handover, and tell them our team will follow up." It writes the rules into its instructions and lists the steps back to you.

The handover rules, set up in chat.

The saved handover rules on the Instructions page.

On the storefront, a shopper asks for a person. Your agent asks for their name and email, then confirms the ticket.

The agent taking the handover and asking for contact details.

The agent confirming the ticket to the shopper.

The ticket lands in your helpdesk under the shopper's email, with a summary of the chat as the first message and the handover tag on it.

The handover ticket in Gorgias, tagged.

The handover uses two of your helpdesk's write actions: create ticket and add tags.

From Claude Code, Cursor or a terminal. The same setup works as commands: eesel login, then eesel integrations connect shopify, which prints the details that connection method needs, including the approval link for a person to open. The approval is a human step: print the link for a person, wait for the connection status to change, and do not retry the link. eesel status then shows the integration as connected with its source counts. eesel integrations download start reads the store's sources in, and eesel automations lists your automations. Turning an automation on and setting its instructions have no command, so use the dashboard chat for those. Full command reference: The eesel CLI. Step-by-step: Set up from Claude Code or the terminal. From an MCP client: Claude Code and MCP clients.

Sources, triggers and actions

Sources

Sources are what your agent learns from in your store.

Source	Description	Requires
Pages	Static storefront pages, such as About, Contact and FAQs	Full connection
Products	Your catalog, with variants, stock keeping unit codes, pricing and descriptions	Full connection
Blog Articles	Posts and articles published to your storefront	Full connection
Policies	Privacy, refund, terms of service and shipping policies	Full connection
Storefront read	The same content as a shopper sees it, read from your public pages	Quick start

Sources are a copy taken on a schedule, not a live feed. The lookup actions below read Shopify live. Every other integration on your agent is also a source. A helpdesk like Gorgias or Zendesk brings the ticket, and Shopify brings the order. See Integrations.

Triggers

Shopify has no triggers. Nothing in your store starts an agent run. The trigger comes from a helpdesk ticket, a Slack mention, or the chat bubble on your storefront. Your agent uses its Shopify actions while it handles that conversation. The trigger event is fixed when the automation is created. So a new automation is required for each different trigger event.

Actions

Actions are what your agent can do in your store.

	Action	What it does
Orders	Get Order by ID	Pulls one order by its identifier or order number
	Get Order History	Pulls a customer's orders from their email address
	Search Orders	Searches orders by product code, email, status, date range or tag
	Get Order Fulfillment	Tracking numbers, carrier and shipment status for an order
Customers	Get Customer by Email	Looks up a customer's details from their email address
Products	Search Products / Get Products	Finds products matching a query, or browses the catalog
	Get Product Variants	Size, color, product code, price and stock for a product
	Get Product Metafields / Get Variant Metafields	Custom fields on a product or on one specific variant
	Generate Product Carousel	Shows several products as cards in the chat rather than as text
	Show Cart	Shows the shopper's live cart as a card in the website chat bubble
Order changes	Create Return	Starts a return on an order
	Create Draft Order	Builds a draft order from what the shopper asked for, left for a person to confirm
	Update Shipping Address	Changes the delivery address on an order that has not shipped
	Update Customer Address	Changes the address saved on the customer's account, the one that fills in their next checkout
	Refund Order	Refunds an order
	Cancel Order	Cancels an order that has not been fulfilled

You stay in control the whole way. Adjust your AI agent's access to knowledge and its action permissions to your liking. See Actions and Approvals.

The integration page groups these as Read and Write, with a count on each group.

Old stores may still hit Shopify's 60 day order search limit. Shopify caps order search to the last 60 days unless an app asks for its read-all-orders permission. eesel asks for that permission now. Each store picks it up the next time someone reconnects it. A store connected before the change keeps the 60 day cap until then. Looking an order up by its number works either way.

Limitations

• No Shopify triggers. Nothing in your store starts your agent. A helpdesk ticket, a Slack mention or the chat bubble does.

• Quick start has no orders or customers. It reads only your public storefront. A password-protected storefront cannot be read this way.

• Shopify withholds some customer details. For eesel's Shopify app, Shopify does not return a customer's name, email, phone number or street address. Your agent can still find a customer's orders from their email address and can change an address, but it cannot read the saved address back to you.

• Address changes only touch the fields you name. Shopify keeps every other part of the address as it was.

• Shipped orders are fixed. Changing an order's shipping address, or cancelling it, only works before the order is fulfilled.

• Order search covers the last 60 days on stores that have not reconnected since eesel asked for Shopify's read-all-orders permission. Looking an order up by its number works either way.

• Checkout stays in Shopify. Your agent can build a cart and a draft order, but the shopper pays in your Shopify checkout.

Troubleshooting

Cannot connect?

Approving the app needs a Shopify account with app permissions: an owner, or a staff member with those rights. Give your agent the store name on its own, without .myshopify.com and without https://. There is no access token to paste.

Quick start connected but your agent cannot look up orders?

Orders, customers and anything behind your Shopify admin login need a full connection. Ask your agent to connect the store fully. Nothing already read in is lost.

Product or policy answers look out of date?

Sources are a copy taken on a schedule. Ask your agent to read its Shopify sources again. Check the source is switched on under Integrations > Shopify, and that the connection is still approved.

Order search misses an older order?

Shopify caps order search to the last 60 days for apps without its read-all-orders permission. Reconnect the store to lift the cap. Looking the order up by its number works meanwhile.

A refund or cancellation did not happen?

Open the conversation on the Activity page. If the action is waiting on a person, approve it and it runs. Cancellations only work on unfulfilled orders. The connection also needs Shopify's write permission on orders, so reconnect if a narrower approval was granted.

Product cards not showing in the chat bubble?

Check the carousel action is not switched off under Integrations > Shopify, and that the bubble automation is on. Then find the conversation on the Activity page. It shows whether the action ran or is waiting on an approval.

FAQ

How do I add an AI agent to Shopify?

Ask your agent in the eesel dashboard chat to connect Shopify, give it your store name, and pick Quick start or a full connection. Then ask it to turn on an automation, such as the chat bubble on your storefront. The steps are in Set up eesel in Shopify.

Can the Shopify AI agent answer order status questions?

Yes, with a full connection. Your agent looks the order up live by its number or the customer's email address, and reads the tracking number, carrier and shipment status. Quick start cannot see orders.

Can the Shopify AI agent handle refunds and returns?

Yes. It can start a return, refund an order, and cancel an order that has not shipped. Whether it acts directly or leaves the change for a person to confirm depends on how you set it up.

Can I connect Shopify to ChatGPT or Claude?

Yes, through eesel. Once Shopify is connected, you can talk to your eesel agent from ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor, and it works with your Shopify data. See Use eesel from ChatGPT, Use eesel from Claude and other assistants and Claude Code and MCP clients.

Does connecting Shopify let my AI agent change orders on its own?

No. Connecting only gives your agent access to your store. It does not act until you create an automation and switch actions on.

What is the difference between Quick start and a full Shopify connection?

Quick start reads your public storefront with no sign-in, so your agent can search products and show product cards with Add to Cart, but it cannot see orders or customers. A full connection reads Shopify directly and adds live order and customer lookups, variant and custom field detail, and the actions that change an order: returns, draft orders, address changes, refunds and cancellations. Moving from one to the other later loses nothing.

Is my Shopify data live or a copy?

Both. The lookup actions read Shopify live, so an order status or stock level is current when asked. Sources are a copy taken on a schedule. Ask your agent to read them again after a catalog or policy change.

Can shoppers buy from the Shopify chat?

Yes. The product cards carry an Add to Cart button, and the Show Cart action displays the live cart back to the shopper. Checkout still happens in your Shopify checkout.

Do I still need a helpdesk with the Shopify AI agent?

Not necessarily. Your agent needs something that brings it a conversation, because Shopify has no triggers. That can be a helpdesk like Zendesk, Gorgias or Freshdesk, the Chat Bubble, or a mention in Slack.

Related pages

• E-commerce Sales Rep for the job your agent does across your store and helpdesk

• Chat Bubble for putting your agent on your storefront

• Actions and Approvals for choosing what your agent may do

• Integrations overview for how sources, triggers and actions fit together

• Set up from Claude Code or the terminal