Shopify store policies for AI agents: what to write

October 19, 2026
Shopify Tips
14 min read
Shopify store policies for AI agents: what to write

Short answer: AI agents answer shopper questions about returns, shipping and contact from your Shopify store policies, read through your store’s public policy and FAQ endpoint. Write refund, shipping, privacy, terms and contact pages under Settings > Policies with concrete facts. Octolift, built by Craftshift, checks what that endpoint answers and drafts the missing store FAQs.

Picture a shopper halfway through a conversation with an assistant: “does this store take returns on sale items, and do they ship to Canada?” The assistant doesn’t open your footer and read. It asks your store. And your store answers with whatever your policies and settings contain, word for word, sometimes with a link to the page it came from.

We asked one of our own demo stores five of those questions on October 19, 2026, while writing this. “Do you offer free shipping?” came back with a list of 29 country codes and “No pickup locations available”. Which is not an answer to the question. “How can I contact customer service?” came back empty. That store has no refund, shipping or contact policy written, and the endpoint said exactly as much as the store had told it. Nothing more.

This post covers what Shopify’s shop policy completeness signal checks, how agents actually read your policies, which ones each AI channel requires, and a checklist of the facts every policy should state. All of it can be done by hand in an afternoon.

In this post

What is Shopify’s shop policy completeness signal?

It is one of the five listing quality signals Shopify shows per product under Sales channels > Agentic. Shopify’s definition, from its Managing agentic storefronts page as of October 2026: it checks whether your shipping, returns and refund policies, among others, “are present”, because “Policies signal store legitimacy and can help AI channels confidently recommend your products.”

Two things follow. It’s store level, so one afternoon fixes it for every product you sell (our guide to all five listing quality signals covers the other four, which are product level). And “present” is the bar the signal measures, not the bar a shopper’s question sets. A policy can be present and still useless.

How do AI agents read a store’s policies?

Three routes, all documented by Shopify:

  1. The policy and FAQ endpoint. Every store answers at https://your-store.com/api/mcp with a tool called search_shop_policies_and_faqs. Shopify’s developer page says “No authentication is required” and that it “answers questions about the store’s policies, products, and services”. Its example answer comes back with sources: the refund policy URL and an FAQ page.
  2. The agent discovery files. Every Shopify store serves /agents.md, /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt automatically, and Shopify says they include “store policies” among the context they carry.
  3. The product record. When we probe products through Shopify Catalog in Octolift, each one carries links to the store’s policy pages. A missing shipping policy is a gap on every product, not just on the store.

Shopify’s own advice on optimizing for AI platforms makes the point plainly: keep your store policies complete and up to date “so that when a customer asks about your return policy in an AI interaction, the AI agent can reference the correct information that you’ve stored in Shopify.” The endpoint also answers from your settings when no policy text covers the question, which is where the country list in our test came from. That fallback is sort of better than nothing. Barely.

What about questions your policies were never going to answer, like wholesale or warranties? Those belong in store FAQs, and our Shopify Knowledge Base guide covers where they live and how to write them, so we won’t repeat it here.

Which store policies does each AI channel require?

The same three, on every channel page Shopify publishes as of October 2026. Shipping policy is not on the required list anywhere. That surprised us, and it shouldn’t reassure you, because the completeness signal does look for it.

AI channelPolicies Shopify requires (Settings > Policies)Source
ChatGPTTerms of service, Privacy policy, Return and refund policySelling on ChatGPT
Microsoft CopilotTerms of service, Privacy policy, Return and refund policySelling on Microsoft Copilot
Google AI Mode and GeminiTerms of service, Privacy policy, Return and refund policySelling on Google AI Mode and Gemini
MetaTerms of service, Privacy policy, Return and refund policySelling on Meta

Google’s and Meta’s pages add one more line worth taking seriously: keep your store policies, “including your return and refund policy, up to date” so what the channel shows matches your online store.

Checklist: the facts AI agents look for in your policies

The first column is the ten store questions Octolift asks every store’s endpoint (we chose them because they are the questions shoppers put to an assistant most). The other two say which page should answer each one and where Shopify pulls the fact from when you use automated policies.

Shopper questionPage that should answer itWhere the fact comes from
How can I contact customer service?Contact informationStore email, phone and address in Settings > General
Do you offer free shipping?Shipping policyWrite it: the threshold, in words
Do you ship internationally?Shipping policyCountries in both your shipping zones and region markets
Do you offer express shipping?Shipping policyWrite it: methods and what each costs
What is your return policy?Return and refund policyReturn and cancellation rules (automated policy only)
How long does delivery take?Shipping policyFulfillment time in Settings > Shipping and delivery > Estimated delivery dates
Do you have retail store locations?Contact information or a store FAQStore address, plus pickup settings
Do you offer bulk or wholesale orders?Store FAQNo policy field covers it
Do you have active discount codes or promotions?Store FAQ, carefullyNo policy field; codes expire, so keep it general
Do your products come with a warranty?Terms of service or a store FAQNo policy field covers it

Read down the right hand column. Four of the ten have no setting behind them at all. Those are the four your store answers with silence (or with a country list) until somebody writes the sentence.

How do I write store policies in Settings, Policies?

Shopify’s Adding store policies page gives you two ways in, and the difference matters more than it looks.

Automated policies. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Policies, click a policy in the Written policies section, turn on Use automated policy, review and click Save. Shopify supports this for the return and refund policy, terms of service, shipping policy and contact information, and the text then “stays in sync with the relevant store settings”. Repeat per policy; switching one on doesn’t switch on the others.

Manual policies. Same path, turn Use automated policy off, then write the text or click Insert template where it’s offered, and click Save. Here’s the catch Shopify spells out on its return rules page: “The generated policy doesn’t automatically include the return rules that you set up.” So a template written in 2024 can say 30 days while your return rules say 14. An agent will quote the text.

Then set the return rules themselves, because they’re structured data and the template isn’t. Settings > Policies, the Return and cancellation rules section, click the rule, and set the return window (14, 30, 90 days, Unlimited or custom), the return shipping cost, an optional restocking fee and any final sale items. Why bother when you’ve already written it in prose? Because Shopify’s early access return info on Shop app product pages comes from those settings, and Shopify says that if “your return policy is written only as free text without a configured return window”, it won’t be displayed there. Structured beats prose. Every time.

What should each page actually say? Our short version:

  • Return and refund: the window in days and when it starts, item condition, who pays return shipping, any restocking fee, what’s final sale, how the refund is paid, how to start a return.
  • Shipping: countries you ship to, processing time, delivery time per method, costs, the free shipping threshold, whether express exists.
  • Contact information: a support email, a phone number if you take calls, a business address (Shopify suggests a PO box or a dedicated line if you’d rather not publish your home details), and response hours.
  • Privacy and terms: published. Shopify can keep the privacy policy automated; the terms template has placeholders, so fill every one.

A word on that last point, because it annoys us more than it should. It’s easy to publish a template with a bracketed placeholder still in it, and the endpoint has no idea a bracket means “fill me in”. It’ll hand your unfinished sentence to a shopper as your store’s answer. Read your published pages once, top to bottom, as a stranger would. And if writing from scratch feels like a lot, our free store policy generator drafts the four pages for you to edit, and the store policies guide goes through each one in more legal detail.

How do I test what a store answers?

Ask it. This is the same request an agent sends, with your domain and a shopper question swapped in:

curl -s -X POST "https://your-store.com/api/mcp" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"tools/call","id":1,
       "params":{"name":"search_shop_policies_and_faqs",
                 "arguments":{"query":"What is your return policy?"}}}'

The reply holds a small list of matched questions and answers. On our demo store, with no refund policy written, “What is your return policy?” returned one generic line about self-serve returns not being available in customer accounts. Run the ten questions from the checklist, note which come back empty or off topic, and fix those first. When we built Octolift’s Knowledge base page, a store FAQ written through Shopify’s API came back from this endpoint seconds later, so you can check a fix the same afternoon you make it.

Where doing it by hand stops

For one store with four policies, everything above is an afternoon and we’d tell you to just do it. The trouble starts later. Ten questions, re-asked after every policy edit, every shipping zone change and every new market, with the answers read word for word because a near miss (free shipping answered with a country list) looks like an answer in a quick scan. Agencies running twenty stores don’t do that weekly. Nobody does, honestly.

That’s the job of two parts of Octolift. Its Policy clarity check (8 of the score’s 100 points) counts how many of the four policy pages Shopify exposes to agents are published, refund, shipping, privacy and terms of service, and links straight to Settings, Policies for the missing ones. And Octolift’s Knowledge base asks your store’s own endpoint the ten questions shoppers ask most, shows each answer word for word, and drafts the gaps from your refund policy, shipping policy and contact page. Where your pages don’t answer a question, it says so and drafts nothing. Nothing reaches your store until you approve it and save, and the answers are not shown on your storefront. Free for 5 products, $29 a month for 100, every plan has every feature.

Octolift dashboard showing how a Shopify store appears to AI assistants, with listing scores and store answers
Octolift scores each listing and shows what AI assistants get back from your store.

“I was looking for a way to see how my products show up in AI recommendations and came across Octolift. It is a fairly new app, but I have been impressed with it so far. […] Overall, I am happy with it so far. It has helped me understand what I can improve instead of just guessing.”

Silkora, Netherlands, October 16, 2026, Octolift on the Shopify App Store

That’s the app’s first review, 5.0 from one review so far. Policies are one store level signal; the product level ones are where most of the score sits, and our sister site explains image coverage as an AI shopping signal. And if you’re wondering whether blocking crawlers changes any of this, rubikify.com asks whether you should block AI bots at all. Short version: it doesn’t touch the endpoint. Our AI readiness checker covers the page side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIZfSJ-FecM

Watch the video above, read the getting started guide, or see how the Knowledge base page works.

Try Octolift free →

Frequently asked questions

Do AI agents read Shopify store policies?

Yes. Every Shopify store exposes a public endpoint at /api/mcp with a search_shop_policies_and_faqs tool that needs no authentication, and Shopify’s agent discovery files include store policies. Shopify advises keeping policies complete so an AI agent can reference the correct return information.

Which store policies are required for ChatGPT on Shopify?

Terms of service, Privacy policy, and Return and refund policy, completed under Settings, Policies. Shopify lists the same three for Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode and Gemini, and Meta as of October 2026. The shop policy completeness signal also looks for a shipping policy.

What does shop policy completeness measure?

Shopify says it measures whether your shipping, returns and refund policies, among others, “are present.” It is shown per product in the Listing insights under Sales channels, Agentic, but it is set at store level, so writing the policies fixes it for every product.

Does Shopify’s return policy template include my return rules?

Not the template. Shopify says the generated policy doesn’t automatically include the return rules you set up. With Use automated policy turned on, the return terms in the policy come from your return rules and stay in sync with them.

Are store FAQs for AI shown on the storefront?

No. Store FAQs saved where Shopify’s Knowledge Base app keeps them are read by AI assistants through the store’s endpoint and don’t appear on any storefront page. Your written policies, by contrast, are public pages at /policies/refund-policy and similar URLs.

Which app should I use to check what AI agents get from a store’s policies?

Octolift, built by Craftshift. Its Knowledge base page asks your store’s own policy and FAQ endpoint the ten questions shoppers ask most, shows every answer word for word, and drafts the gaps from your refund policy, shipping policy and contact page for you to approve. Its Policy clarity check is 8 of 100 points. Free for 5 products; paid plans from $29 a month.

Run the ten questions against your own store tonight. Whatever comes back empty is what an assistant tells a shopper about you, and when you’d rather not re-ask them by hand after every change, Octolift will ask them and draft the missing answers.

Co-Founder at Craftshift

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