Documentation

From install to live in one sitting.

Eleven steps, in the order you will actually do them. No developer is required for the standard setup - the only part Shopify requires you to do yourself is enabling the app embed in Theme Editor.

Install the app Something is broken

Step 01

Install & create an account

Install Shoplite from the Shopify App Store and approve access to the store. Shopify then sends you to Shoplite, where you create a dashboard account or sign in to an existing one. The first account that claims a newly installed shop becomes its owner; team invitees join with the role chosen for them.

Shopify issues an offline access token so background sync, webhooks and shopper chats keep working when no merchant is signed in. Shoplite currently requests these nine scopes; two can write data and the rest are read-only:

read_productsSearch products and return real titles, variants and prices.

read_ordersShow verified order and fulfilment status, and calculate order analytics.

read_customersIdentify signed-in shoppers and scope order history to the right customer.

read_themesSupport the theme-editor publishing flow and theme compatibility checks.

read_discountsCheck discount codes used by configured in-chat offers.

write_discountsCreate, update or deactivate the offer code a merchant explicitly configures.

read_inventoryCheck variant availability using Shopify inventory levels.

read_locationsRecognize inventory at locations that fulfil online orders.

write_ordersPresent for order-action work; the current shopper order-status flow itself remains read-only.

Shopify must approve newly added permissions. A scope change can therefore require reconnecting or reinstalling the app before the affected feature works.

Step 02

Complete onboarding

New owners go through an eleven-screen onboarding wizard before the dashboard. First choose a Basic, Plus, Pro or Pro Plus plan and approve its 30-day trial in Shopify. Monthly plans and annual plans have different overage behaviour, which the plan screen explains before approval.

The remaining screens build the first version of the agent and tailor the dashboard:

About you and your goals - organization, role, industry, store size, priorities and languages.

Store review - confirms the connected Shopify shop and the store metadata Shoplite received.

Agent draft - identity, tone, enabled capabilities, accent, position, greeting and quick-reply prompts.

Review - saves onboarding as complete and opens the merchant dashboard. Invited teammates skip this store-setup wizard.

Product and order tools read Shopify when the agent uses them. The current Knowledge screen is for curated FAQs; it does not crawl URLs or accept document uploads.

Shoplite onboarding screen for naming the AI agent with a live storefront chat preview — Onboarding shows a live storefront preview while you configure the agent.

Step 03

Configure the agent

Open Chat Agent → Configure chat agent → Setup. Its five tabs match the fields the storefront widget actually supports: Identity, Personality, Look, Greeting and Publish.

Set the agent name and optional avatar URL; choose Friendly, Professional or Playful tone; add up to 2,000 characters of persona instructions; choose a solid or gradient accent and bottom-left or bottom-right position; then write the opening message and up to four suggested prompts. The preview updates before you save.

Available on

These setup controls are available on every current plan. Owners and admins can edit them; viewers have read-only access. Fonts, reading level and business hours are not current setup options.

Shoplite agent setup Identity tab beside the live chat preview — The Setup tabs and live preview stay side by side while you edit.

Step 04

Add FAQs & choose skills

Under Configure chat agent → Knowledge, add up to six curated FAQ questions. They appear on the widget home screen; tapping one starts a chat with that question. This is the complete merchant-managed knowledge surface currently available.

Then open Skills and switch on only the tools the agent may call: Product search, Order lookup, AI recommendations, Add to cart and Hand off to a human. Product and order results come from Shopify, and disabling a skill removes that tool from live chats. Human handoff is a Pro feature; the other four skills are part of the core agent.

Use the Persona instructions in Setup for persistent “always” or “never” rules. The published configuration does not currently expose separate citation, disallowed-topic, approval or discount-cap controls.

Shoplite Knowledge screen with four storefront FAQ questions and a live widget preview — Knowledge manages the FAQ shortcuts shown on the widget home screen.

Shoplite Skills screen with product search, order lookup, recommendations, add to cart and human handoff — Skills makes every live commerce capability explicit and independently switchable.

Step 05

Test in the playground

Before anything reaches a shopper, talk to the agent yourself under Configure chat agent → Playground. It uses the saved agent configuration and real Shopify tools, but playground conversations are marked as tests and excluded from analytics.

Try an available product, an unavailable product, a broad recommendation and a guest order lookup. A guest must provide both the checkout email and exact order number; the playground does not inherit a storefront customer login.

Shoplite Playground screen ready for a test shopper question — Playground starts a private test chat that is excluded from shopper analytics.

Step 06

Publish to your theme

Publishing takes two separate switches, and both are required. Shoplite ships as a theme app embed - no script tags and no theme-file edits - so Shopify requires you to enable the embed in Theme Editor. Separately, your agent has its own on/off switch in Shoplite, and it starts off.

They do different jobs: the App embed puts the widget on your theme, and the Turn the agent on switch lets it serve shoppers. With the embed on but the agent off, your storefront shows nothing at all - that is the most common reason a freshly installed agent appears to do nothing.

1Open Configure chat agent → Setup → Publish and click Open Theme Editor.

2Under App embeds, switch on Shoplite AI Agent, then save the theme.

3Back in Shoplite, on the same Publish tab, switch Turn the agent on. Until this is on the widget stays hidden and the agent answers nothing, however the theme is configured.

4Open the published storefront and confirm the floating launcher appears. The dashboard health check verifies reachability only; it cannot prove the embed toggle is on.

The current publish flow expects Online Store 2.0. If App embeds is not available in Theme Editor, update or switch to a supported theme before publishing.

Shoplite Publish tab showing the agent recap and storefront installation controls — Review the saved agent configuration here before opening Shopify Theme Editor.

Step 07

Automations & handoff

On Plus and above, Automations provides three saved rules: show a CSAT survey when a chat closes, ask for email before the first AI reply, and add conversation tags when shopper messages contain configured keywords.

Human handoff is enabled separately under Skills on Pro and Pro Plus. Storefront and connected WhatsApp threads appear under Conversations. Once a thread is handed off, an available team member can reply from the dashboard, add shopper-level internal notes and release it back to the AI. Email integrations send alerts and transcripts; they are not an inbound email inbox.

Shoplite Automations screen with CSAT, pre-chat email capture and keyword tagging rules — Automations groups the saved CSAT, email-capture and keyword-tagging rules.

Step 08

Use analytics & reports

Analytics excludes playground tests and separates chat activity from product-search events. Start with these three views:

Zero-result searches

Product lookups that returned nothing, plus vocabulary fixes, demand gaps and refinement paths.

Conversation quality

CSAT, response speed, automation tags, topics, intent, sentiment and low-confidence answers.

Attributed revenue

Chats tied to carts and orders, with assisted revenue, AOV comparison and estimated support deflection.

Reports includes a weekly digest preview, Excel downloads, a printable report you can save as PDF, and a multi-store rollup. Pro unlocks the full Store Analytics sections and the ask-your-data AI assistant; the core chat analytics remain visible without those Pro features.

Shoplite Search analytics dashboard with search totals and a thirty-day volume chart — Search analytics highlights demand volume and trends before you inspect individual terms.

Step 09

Team & roles

Invite teammates from Settings → Team & Roles. Owners have full control, admins can operate the agent and manage non-owner members, and viewers are read-only. Pending invites count toward the seat limit: Basic includes one seat, Plus two, Pro three and Pro Plus four.

The same screen can require two-factor authentication for the whole shop or for individual members. Owners and admins can also make themselves available for automatic human-handoff assignment.

Shoplite Team and roles settings with member seats, two-factor authentication and add-member controls — Team & Roles keeps seat usage, invitations and the shop-wide MFA policy in one place.

Step 10

Privacy & data

Shopify tokens and stored integration secret fields are encrypted at rest. Mandatory Shopify privacy webhooks are HMAC verified, logged and acknowledged promptly. Customer and shop redaction run asynchronously; customer data requests are tracked for operator fulfilment rather than automatically emailed to the shopper.

Conversations are stored per shopper session and linked to a Shopify customer only when that shopper is signed in. A typed email is contact information, not verified identity. Shopify consent flags are stored on the conversation and surfaced with the shopper profile. Owners can download a shop-wide JSON export from the Privacy & Compliance page. See the privacy policy for retention detail.

Shoplite Privacy and compliance screen with export, encryption and redaction controls — Privacy & Compliance summarizes safeguards and provides the owner-only shop data export.

Step 11

Troubleshooting

The widget is not appearing on my storefront

Open Chat Agent → Configure chat agent → Setup → Publish, then use the Theme Editor link. Under App embeds, turn on Shoplite AI Agent and save the theme. The dashboard health check only proves the storefront is reachable, so open the published storefront and confirm the launcher visually.

The Shoplite app embed is missing in Theme Editor

Make sure you opened the current theme for the same shop where Shoplite is installed. The current publish flow expects an Online Store 2.0 theme; if App embeds is unavailable, update or switch to a supported theme, then reopen the Publish deep link.

The agent replies but never mentions a product

Open Chat Agent → Configure chat agent → Skills and make sure Product search is enabled; enable AI recommendations too if you expect related-product suggestions. The product must also be active and published in Shopify. The Knowledge page controls FAQs, not catalogue ingestion.

Order lookups fail for guests

Guest lookup requires both the email used at checkout and the exact customer-facing order number. A captured email by itself is not proof of identity. Also confirm Order lookup is enabled under Skills; if Shopify permissions are stale, reconnect or reinstall the shop.

Saved colours, greeting or position are not showing

Confirm the dashboard save completed, then reload the storefront. Widget configuration is fetched when the page loads; colour and launcher position come from Chat Agent → Setup, not from Theme Editor settings.

I hit my conversation limit mid-month

Basic and every annual plan pause new conversations at the included monthly limit while active threads can finish. Monthly Plus, Pro and Pro Plus can continue with metered conversations until the usage cap approved in Shopify is reached. Open Settings → Billing to upgrade, or raise the approved usage limit when the plan supports overage.

Still stuck?

Send us the shop URL and roughly when it happened - that is usually enough.

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