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

How agentic commerce on Shopify fits together

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

Where shoppers can now buy

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. It must be 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 must 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. They include 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 under 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: write product data an agent can match

Agents match products to what a shopper describes, not to keywords typed into a search box. In the Catalog your products sit alongside every other eligible store’s, so the detail in your product data decides who gets recommended.

• Titles that say clearly what the product is.
• Descriptions in natural language that cover features, benefits and use cases.
• Images from several angles, so product cards in the chat look right.
• Complete variant data: size, colour, material and any other option you sell.
• Consistent naming and categorisation across your catalogue.
• Clear pricing and shipping. Agents can set your offer beside other merchants’ in the same chat.

For worked examples of natural-language descriptions and the metafields agents filter on, see our Winter ’26 guide to agentic storefronts.

Step 3: publish your knowledge base

When a shopper asks an agent “what’s their returns window?”, the knowledge base is what 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 are current. You can hold up to 1,000 facts and add your own, such as sizing advice, materials and certifications. Everything you publish is publicly readable by AI channels. If you used the old Knowledge Base app, it is deprecated on 15 January 2027.

Step 4: 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:

• Subscription-only products, bundles, customisable products and B2B-only products can’t be bought. A product sold both ways can still be bought as a one-time purchase.
• Google Analytics and custom pixels don’t fire. Only server-side checkout 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.

Before you rely on checkout inside an agent, place a test order with Shop Pay so you know the flow works from start to finish.

The pixel point matters for reporting. Agent sales won’t show properly in GA4, so judge them from Shopify’s own analytics. Fall ’26 also improves those, with separate traffic sources in the 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, so shoppers are sent to your site to buy. For the other checkout changes in this release, read what Fall ’26 changes in checkout, payments and fraud.

Keep it in proportion

While Google’s checkout leaves out UK shoppers, agent-driven orders will be a small share of revenue for most UK brands in the short term. The groundwork is still worth doing now. Clean product data, accurate policies and a healthy account also help in Google Shopping, on-site search and the Shop app. In the Shop app, products with the Shop Promise delivery badge now rank higher.

Where to start

Our AI and search readiness audit shows which AI channels your store is eligible for. It reviews your product data, policies and knowledge base, and gives you a prioritised, priced list of fixes. It costs £750, ex VAT. To see how we set up AI channels, read about getting your Shopify store ready for agentic commerce, or talk to us about your store.

More in our Shopify Editions Fall ’26 series

• Shopify Editions Fall ’26: what UK brands should 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

Sources

• Selling on Google AI Mode and Gemini (Shopify Help)
• Requirements for being included in Shopify Catalog (Shopify Help)
• Answering customer questions with your knowledge base (Shopify Help)
• Shopify agents documentation (shopify.dev)
• UCP core concepts (ucp.dev)