Agentic commerce on Shopify: getting your products sold inside ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude

7 min read

The biggest theme of Fall '26 is agentic commerce: shoppers asking an AI assistant to find something, then buying it in the chat without visiting your site. Shopify is wiring stores into most of the big assistants. Here's what's live, what applies to UK brands, and the groundwork that decides whether agents recommend you at all.

This post is part of our Shopify Editions Fall '26 series. For the full picture, start with Shopify Editions Fall '26: what UK brands should actually act on.

How it fits together

1. Shopify Catalog is Shopify's index of products. Shopify says more than 1 billion are now discoverable across AI channels, and agents search it on the shopper's behalf.
2. Your knowledge base holds the facts agents use for everything that isn't a product: returns, delivery times, brand values.
3. Checkout happens inside the chat through Shop Pay or a Shopify-powered direct checkout, and the order lands in your admin like any other.

Where shoppers can now buy

The UK caveat: Google's direct checkout requires you to sell to customers in the US, Canada or Australia, and it's rolling out to those shoppers gradually. Your store can be based in the UK, but UK shoppers are sent to your site to buy. Check which channels are live for your store under Sales channels > Agentic.

Step 1: get into Shopify Catalog

No Catalog listing, no agent visibility. The requirements are mostly housekeeping:

• Starter plan or higher, with no storefront password.
• Every product needs a title, at least one image and a price above zero, published to your online store or headless channel with a real product URL.
• Products can't be unlisted or hidden from search engines.
• Your account needs to be in good standing: verified email, two-step authentication, a passkey where offered, a low chargeback rate and prompt fulfilment.

Some categories are excluded outright, including alcohol, tobacco and vapes, CBD, collectible coins and bullion, event tickets, and services or add-ons such as warranties. If your store isn't eligible, Fall '26 now shows the reason in Sales channels > Agentic, along with what to change.

Two smaller updates help once you're in. Compare-at prices now pass to agents automatically, so markdowns show with no extra set-up. And channel data mapping lets you tailor product data per sales channel from the admin.

Step 2: publish your knowledge base

When a shopper asks an agent "what's their returns window?", the knowledge base is the answer it reads. Shopify scans your storefront and admin and sorts what it finds into categories: about the store, brand, policies, contact, payment, returns and warranty, fulfilment and gift services.

Scanned facts stay unpublished until you approve them. Policies and contact details publish automatically, so check they're current. You can hold up to 1,000 facts, add your own (sizing advice, materials, certifications), and everything published is publicly readable by AI channels. If you used the old Knowledge Base app, it's deprecated on 15 January 2027.

Step 3: check your checkout works outside your site

Direct checkout inside an agent is a stripped-back version of yours. In Google AI Mode and Gemini today:

• Subscriptions, bundles, customisable products and B2B-only products can't be bought.
• Google Analytics and custom pixels don't fire; only server-side started and completed events do.
• Local delivery, click and collect and pickup points aren't offered.
• App blocks for upsells, loyalty, trust badges and consent may not render.
• Shopify Functions and your discounts do run.
• Legal disclosures must sit in the first 6,000 characters of the product description.

That pixel point matters for reporting. Agent sales won't show properly in GA4, so judge them from Shopify's own analytics, which Fall '26 also improves with separated traffic sources in its marketing reports.

Direct checkout is on by default for eligible stores. If you rely on bundles, subscriptions or checkout upsells, you can switch it off and keep discovery, sending shoppers to your site instead.

Keep it in proportion

While Google's checkout excludes UK shoppers, agent-driven orders will be a small share of revenue for most UK brands in the short term. The groundwork is still low-regret: clean product data, accurate policies and a healthy account also help Google Shopping, on-site search and the Shop app, where products with the Shop Promise delivery badge now rank higher.

Book an AI channel readiness audit: we'll check your Catalog eligibility, knowledge base, product data and checkout compatibility, and tell you what to fix first.

More in our Shopify Editions Fall '26 series

• Shopify Editions Fall '26: what UK brands should actually act on
• Checkout, payments and fraud: what Fall '26 changes before and after Black Friday
• Sidekick and Canvas: putting Shopify's AI to work without losing control
• Selling from the UK to the EU and Nordics: the Fall '26 Markets and shipping updates
• Fall '26 for developers: what to fix in your theme and apps before the 2027 deadlines

Sources

• Selling on Google AI Mode and Gemini
• Requirements for being included in Shopify Catalog
• Answering customer questions with your knowledge base