AI Agents Just Got Access to Every Shopify Product, What This Means for Agentic AI Shopping

Shopify has quietly rolled out one of the most transformative infrastructure updates in ecommerce history, the launch of its new Shopify Catalog API. While the average merchant may not have noticed, the implications are seismic. With this new capability, AI platforms like Perplexity can now query and surface product data in real time, directly from Shopify’s global merchant ecosystem.

This isn’t just another update for developers. It marks the beginning of a new era, one where traditional search engines and ecommerce funnels are replaced by intelligent AI agents capable of discovering, comparing, and recommending products instantly. For retailers, this means your product feed is no longer just backend data, it’s your front-line salesperson in an AI-powered world.

What Is the Shopify Catalog API?

The Shopify Catalog API is a machine-readable, real-time interface that exposes structured data from every Shopify product listing. This includes:

• Product titles and descriptions
• Inventory and pricing
• Categorisation and taxonomy
• Enriched attributes via metafields and metaobjects

Essentially, this gives discovery platforms, like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot, a direct feed into your storefront’s data. There’s no need for scraping, crawling, or indexing your website. If you’re a Shopify merchant, you’re automatically included by default, but inclusion doesn’t guarantee visibility.

If your product feed is duplicated, missing key attributes, or poorly structured, AI platforms will likely skip over your listings in favour of better-optimised alternatives. That’s the game-changer: discoverability is now driven by feed quality, not backlinks or ad spend.

What Shopify Has Said Publicly

Following the launch, a select group of developers joined an informal AMA hosted by Vanessa Lee, Shopify’s VP of Product. Some key points surfaced from this discussion:

• Access to live feed data is invite-only, platforms must be approved and demonstrate merchant value.
• Perplexity is the first confirmed integration, with more AI partners in the pipeline.
• Merchants are opted in by default and must formally request exclusion.
• Only trusted partners can see pricing and inventory in real time.

Shopify is clearly positioning itself as the connective tissue between merchants and the future of AI-powered discovery. They’re curating who accesses the API based on trust and potential GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) growth for retailers, not just technical integrations.

Why This Changes Everything for Retailers

AI agents and Large Language Models (LLMs) are fundamentally altering how consumers shop. Instead of typing queries into Google and browsing multiple websites, users can now ask Perplexity a single question, for example, “Where can I buy waterproof black boots under $150?”, and receive a tailored, real-time answer with product listings pulled directly from ecommerce platforms.

This is agentic shopping. There’s no need for page titles, metadata, or on-page SEO. Your Shopify product feed is your only SEO. If your data isn’t optimised, structured properly, complete, and unique, you’re invisible to the AI agents powering this new consumer behaviour.

From Pages to Feeds: The Shift in Discovery

This is not an evolution. It’s a replacement of how product discovery happens. Retailers who fail to adapt will lose visibility fast, not because their products are poor, but because their data isn’t ready.

Why Most Shopify Product Feeds Aren’t Agent-Ready

Most ecommerce stores today still rely heavily on supplier feeds or legacy content written with human shoppers and Google in mind. That creates issues such as:

• • Duplicated content from suppliers shared across multiple sites
  • Missing metafields (e.g., material, sizing, care instructions)
  • Inconsistent taxonomy and misaligned categories
  • Weak or generic descriptions lacking context or relevance

These are red flags for AI agents. Structured clarity is everything. If your title, description, or attributes are missing, incomplete, or generic, the agent will pass you by in favour of better options, even if your product is technically in the feed.

How Retailers Can Prepare

This isn’t a technical integration issue, it’s a content performance problem. You don’t need to build an app. You need to fix your feed. Here’s how:

1. Audit your content: Check for duplicates, missing data, and irrelevant copy.
2. Rewrite for AI, not just humans: Ensure your descriptions answer real buyer questions.
3. Fill every field: Use metafields and metaobjects to include all relevant specs.
4. Enrich with schema: Add structured data markup to align with LLM expectations.

Don’t wait for the industry to standardise this. By then, it will be too late. Being agent-ready now gives you a first-mover advantage.

Implications for Developers, Agencies, and Startups

Agencies and developers supporting Shopify merchants need to reframe how they think about content and integrations:

• Help clients migrate legacy content into structured fields
• Build custom apps or extensions that expose feed data cleanly
• Use Shopify metaobjects to standardise inputs across large catalogs

Meanwhile, startups focused on AI, ecommerce tools, or search can now build against the Shopify Catalog API to create new merchant-first discovery solutions, but only if they meet Shopify’s requirements around trust and measurable merchant impact.

How Optidan Helps Retailers Win in an Agentic World

At Optidan, we specialise in turning messy, underperforming product feeds into high-performing content systems built for AI visibility. Our solution is tailored for Shopify and designed with agentic commerce in mind.

We offer:

• • Content audits: Identify duplication, gaps, and structure issues
  • Human-led rewriting: Every product, category, and brand page is rewritten for clarity, relevance, and AI alignment
  • Structured field support: We fill in metafields, metaobjects, and schema markup
  • Live sync: Ensure updates flow in real time from your store to discovery platforms

We’ve helped optimise thousands of products across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. The result? Higher visibility, better search inclusion, and more sales, across both traditional channels and emerging AI-first discovery flows.

The Takeaway

The Shopify Catalog API isn’t just a feature. It’s the beginning of a paradigm shift. The retailers that act now will lead the next generation of ecommerce. Those who delay may fade into algorithmic obscurity.

Your product feed is now your website. Make sure it’s built to perform, for shoppers, for AI agents, and for the future of retail.