This article explains how your Shopify catalogue reaches your storefront agent, what the agent builds from it, how to control which products it can see, and what to do when something doesn't appear.
This article covers standard Shopify. If you run Shopify Hydrogen, most of this applies but your product imagery needs additional setup — see Current limitations below.
What the integration does
The integration connects your Shopify store to your storefront agent in two directions:
Reading your catalogue — products, variants, pricing, inventory, collections and sales channels, so the agent always works from your live range
Writing completed orders back — so an agentic order lands in Shopify like any other and flows through your existing fulfilment process
We do not modify your product data.
What you need to provide
What we need | Why |
API access to your store — test and live | To read your catalogue and write completed orders back |
High-resolution product images | Directly determines virtual try-on quality and how accurately the agent describes products |
Complete core product fields | Titles, descriptions, variants and collections are what the agent's understanding is built from |
Returns and shipping policies | So the agent answers policy questions from your actual policy — never a generic assumption |
A short brand brief | Tone of voice, phrases to use and avoid, and product knowledge specific to your range. See Getting to know your storefront agent |
Which products the agent should see | So we can set up your product rules at onboarding |
Good product data pays off twice. Descriptive image filenames, complete descriptions and a sensible category structure improve both how well the agent understands your range and how your products perform in ordinary search.
How the agent ingests your catalogue
When you connect your Shopify store, your catalogue goes through two stages before a shopper ever sees it.
Stage one — we take a copy and tidy it up
Your products, variants, pricing, inventory, collections and sales channels are read from Shopify and converted into a consistent internal format.
Custom fields are read too. If you keep detail in Shopify metafields or metaobjects — fit notes, fabric composition, care instructions — the agent can use that alongside your standard product fields. Coverage is still expanding, so it's worth confirming your particular setup with us during onboarding rather than assuming every field comes through.
We also take our own copy of your product images. Image links on commerce platforms expire, and if the agent relied on live links, product imagery would break over time. Holding our own copy means your storefront stays intact.
Once connected, changes you make in Shopify flow through automatically. Update a price, restock a size or publish a new product in Shopify, and the agent picks it up — you carry on working in Shopify exactly as you do now.
Stage two — we build an understanding of each product
This is where the agent's product knowledge comes from. For every product, we generate:
A detailed description based on the actual photographs — colour, material, silhouette, cut, style. This is why the agent can discuss a garment in visual detail your own listing may never have spelled out.
A consistent category drawn from one shared structure across all products, so the agent can compare like with like even when your own tagging has drifted over the years.
Searchable attributes — colour, material, length, neckline, occasion, care instructions, intended gender.
Colour swatches, translating names like "dusty rose" into an accurate visual swatch if your variant options don't already carry a hex value. Where they do, we use yours.
Try-on assets, prepared in advance so virtual try-on is quick when a shopper asks for it.
Outfit pairings, scored for whether items genuinely work together rather than simply sharing a tag.
All of this happens before launch and then continuously as your catalogue changes.
Choosing which products your agent can see
By default your agent works from your whole catalogue. If you want something narrower — for example excluding gift wrap, wholesale lines, sample sale items, or a region's range — then we can restrict what the agent sees using the product data you already maintain in Shopify:
Restrict by | Typical use |
Sales channel | Only products published to your online store |
Collection | Only products in a specific collection you control |
Tag | The most flexible option — tag anything you want included |
Vendor | Useful for multi-brand or concession catalogues |
Tell your onboarding contact what you want included and we'll configure it for you. Product rules are set up on our side rather than in your dashboard, so ask us if you're ever unsure what's currently applied to your store.
Once they're set up, day-to-day control sits with you: change what's in a collection, or add and remove tags, and the agent follows without you coming back to us.
How the rules combine. A product must satisfy every kind of rule you've set — so if you restrict by both sales channel and vendor, a product needs to match both. Within a single kind, any match counts — list three tags and a product needs only one of them to be included.
Why you can't just untick a sales channel. On Shopify you'd normally control this by publishing or unpublishing to a sales channel. Your agentic storefront isn't a Shopify sales channel — it runs its own basket and checkout, which a sales channel can't do — so inclusion is configured on our side instead. Tags are usually the most practical way to manage exceptions.
When the agent doesn't recognise a product
If a product is live in Shopify but your agent doesn't seem to know about it, the usual causes are:
It's excluded by your product rules. The most common cause. Rules are managed on our side, so ask your Swap contact which ones apply to your store if you're not sure.
Core product fields are missing. A product with no description or no usable imagery may not complete processing. Title, description, variants and imagery are the minimum.
It's very recently changed. Updates flow continuously but aren't instant.
A product can also be live but incomplete. Some enrichment — try-on assets in particular — is treated as non-essential, so a product will go live without it rather than being held back. If a specific product isn't offering virtual try-on when others are, that's usually why, and it's worth raising with support.
Current limitations
Shopify Hydrogen needs extra setup. Hydrogen serves product imagery from a content management system rather than Shopify directly, so images aren't picked up automatically and need mapping individually. Raise it at your first conversation — it affects your timeline.
One Shopify store per storefront, for now. If you run separate Shopify stores for different regions or currencies, each currently needs its own setup. Support for treating multiple stores as a single catalogue is in build.
Sizing isn't standardised across your catalogue yet. The agent works from sizes as they appear on your products, so it can't yet reliably compare a "UK 10" against a "38" across different parts of your range. This is in development.
Product relationships aren't used yet. Recommendations come from our own outfit pairing rather than any "related products" you've configured in Shopify. Support for reading those is in build.