If you sell physical products on Shopify, an AI assistant working for a shopper can now talk to your store through documented, machine-readable endpoints instead of scraping your pages. That is useful, but the documentation has moved recently, and some older write-ups (including the way this topic was first pitched to us) describe a setup that Shopify's own docs say has changed. This is a map of what the current docs state, what they do not say, and what to tidy up before relying on any of it.
First, the map moved
The original Storefront MCP server lived at https://{shop}/api/mcp and offered four tools: search_catalog, get_product_details, get_cart and update_cart. It also gave a checkout URL from the cart and answered policy and FAQ questions. Shopify's Storefront MCP page now says the catalog and cart tools on that endpoint were removed and points to UCP (the Universal Commerce Protocol) instead, at a different endpoint: https://{shop}/api/ucp/mcp.
One caution: a Shopify community post says the older policy tool search_shop_policies_and_faqs is only on the old endpoint, which reports an August 31, 2026 sunset, and that the poster found no equivalent on the new one. That is a user report, not an official answer, and a third-party post claims the tool still answers. Treat the policy path as something to test on your own store rather than assume.
What each server does
- Storefront Catalog MCP (
search_catalog,lookup_catalog,get_product): searches your products by free text, looks up to 10 products or variants by ID, and returns full details for one product with option selection and availability signals. It is scoped to a single merchant. - Cart MCP (
create_cart,get_cart,update_cart,cancel_cart): cart management. Note thatupdate_cartreplaces the entire cart, so an agent has to resend every line item it wants to keep. - Checkout MCP: replaces the old checkout URL. Every request must be authenticated or signed. The docs page we read does not name its tools.
- Ask MCP (
ask_business): answers questions about your policies and services, such as returns, shipping and warranties. It does not change carts, place orders or start returns. - Customer Accounts MCP: unchanged, with its docs moved. It handles authenticated, customer-specific requests such as order status, order details and account preferences.
- Order MCP (
get_order): returns the current snapshot of an order (totals, line items, fulfillment events, post-purchase adjustments), but only for orders created through the calling agent's own checkout.
What the docs do not say
Your question as a shop owner is probably: do I need an app or a theme change? Here the honest answer is that the pages we read are silent on several points.
- The Storefront Catalog page does not say whether merchant apps or themes affect it, and does not say which products are visible or how they relate to your sales channels.
- The Customer Accounts MCP page does not mention themes. It does require things on the app-builder side: a store with a custom domain, an app meeting Shopify's protected customer data requirements, and OAuth 2.0 with PKCE. That is a developer's job, not a toggle in your admin.
- The Customer Accounts page does not mention returns. Do not assume a shopper's assistant can start a return through it.
- Order MCP is limited to Token-tier agents and to orders from that agent's own checkout. It does not provide cross-channel order history in v1.
Third-party guides disagree with each other and with the docs on merchant-side setup, so check any step-by-step guide against the Shopify pages before following it.
The part you control: policy pages
Ask MCP is the one most likely to put your own words in front of a shopper. Its answers come from your store's knowledge base and policies, and the answer is returned as plain text. Two documented limits matter: it handles one question per request (no multi-turn conversations), and it is available only in UCP draft, with the store exposing a draft profile at /.well-known/ucp/draft. Availability can differ between stores, so an agent confirms it with tools/list. If it is unavailable, the docs say the agent should tell the buyer an answer is not available.
Whatever the mechanism, the practical lesson is the same: an assistant will read your policies to a stranger, out of context. Tidy these first:
- Returns and refunds. State the window in days, who pays return shipping, and what condition items must be in. Put the numbers in one place, not scattered across three pages.
- Shipping. Countries served, carriers or typical delivery times, and what you charge. Remove outdated holiday notices.
- Warranty and damage claims. Say what to send you and how fast you respond.
- Contradictions. If your FAQ says 14 days and your policy page says 30, an assistant may quote either. Pick one.
- Product pages. Availability and option data come from your product setup, so clean variants, sizes and stock matter as much as the copy.
Check it yourself
Shopify's docs say you can confirm what a store exposes by calling tools/list over JSON-RPC 2.0 on the UCP endpoint, and that every request must carry an agent profile in the request metadata. Because that profile is required, we do not give a copy-paste request here; use the example profile on the Ask MCP page, which Shopify provides for testing. The useful habit is simple: ask your own store the questions a shopper would, read the plain-text answers, and fix the page behind any answer you would not want repeated.
What to take away
You probably do not need to install anything today. What you can do is make the content an assistant would read accurate and consistent, and keep an eye on Shopify's docs, because the endpoints, tools and availability (Ask is draft-only) are still shifting.
