The Four Roles
| Part | Role | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Product authority, storefront, checkout, orders, fulfillment, and merchant operations. | It is not replaced or duplicated by the pilot. |
| BMOS feed | Canonical JSON commerce feed hosted at app.buildmyonlinestore.com/agentic-commerce/feeds/<storefront_id>. | It is not hosted on the .agent name. |
.agent identity | The merchant's conversational identity and discovery entry point. Its metadata references the BMOS feed and approved conversation surface. | It is not a second Shopify store or JSON feed host. |
| Conversation runtime | Answers product questions from the merchant's BMOS-allowed catalog and can use Shopify's read-only Storefront Catalog tools for live search and variant revalidation. | It must not invent products, prices, availability, variants, or destinations. |
Shopper Journey
- A shopper or compatible client opens the merchant's
.agentidentity or its normal HTTPS conversation link. - BMOS retrieves only products allowed for that storefront and conversational channel. Shopify search results are intersected with this BMOS scope, so a Shopify-only or BMOS-hidden result cannot bypass merchant visibility policy.
- The assistant recommends real products using current feed facts. When the Shopify live-catalog connection is configured, Shopify can refresh the branded product URL and variant availability; BMOS falls back safely to the feed if Shopify is unavailable.
- An optional grounded answer model can phrase the result conversationally after retrieval. It cannot add products or checkout actions, and BMOS rejects output containing an unknown product, model-generated URL, unsupported price, or ungrounded shipping, discount, warranty, return, or availability claim.
- For a simple product with one sellable Shopify variant, BMOS may offer an exact-variant Shopify cart link.
- For a multi-variant product, BMOS must obtain the shopper's variant choice before an exact cart handoff. Until then, it links to the trusted Shopify product page.
- Shopify completes checkout and remains the system for the order and fulfillment.
A second discovery and conversation surface can send qualified traffic to Shopify. It does not create a competing order system when Shopify is the selected checkout destination.
Availability Rules
The assistant uses sellability policy, not quantity alone. See the Shopify Catalog Sync guide for the complete mapping.
tracked: zero available quantity means unavailable.continue_selling: Shopify permits purchase even when quantity is zero or negative, so BMOS keeps the product available.untracked: the product remains available and quantity is unknown rather than fabricated.unavailable: the product is explicitly unavailable and cannot produce an active buy action.
Activation Checklist
- Reconcile Shopify source, imported, hidden, failed, and feed-published product totals.
- Resync after Shopify metadata or inventory-policy improvements so existing imports receive the new fields.
- Verify trusted Shopify product URLs and variant IDs on representative simple and multi-variant products.
- Enable the merchant's conversational channel and restrict its product and checkout-action scope.
- Set monthly and per-session message limits. Enable grounded natural-language answers only after the configured model provider and deterministic fallback have been tested.
- For a Shopify live-catalog pilot, configure the trusted
myshopify.comdomain. BMOS permits catalog search, lookup, and product detail only; cart and checkout mutations require a separate reviewed activation. - Choose and bind the merchant's
.agentidentity; publish separate feed and conversation references. - If the shopper-facing widget is part of the launch, generate its one-time snippet and install it immediately before
</body>in Shopify'slayout/theme.liquid. This is separate from the JSON feed link in<head>. - Use Verify & submit for promotion in BMOS. The verifier must confirm the script, storefront key, allowed domain, and enabled channel before review.
- Test grounded product questions, unavailable products, variant selection, and Shopify handoff on desktop and mobile.
- Confirm conversation, recommendation, handoff, and failure analytics before inviting customers.
Pilot Status and Limits
Merchant-specific conversational Shopify agents are being activated as a controlled pilot. Catalog feeds and Shopify sync can be used independently, but a
.agent conversation should not be presented as live until its channel, identity, product scope, checkout routing, and end-to-end tests have been verified.- BMOS can provide another machine-readable discovery surface, but it cannot guarantee ranking, indexing, traffic, or placement in an AI search engine.
- The agent must use current merchant data and fail safely when product or checkout facts cannot be confirmed.
- Shopify checkout handoff is not the same as autonomous in-chat checkout; the shopper completes the transaction in Shopify.
- Merchant-specific plan allowances and pilot terms are account settings, not capabilities implied by the public feed.