Shopify has replaced its standalone Knowledge Base app with a knowledge base in Merchant Admin for AI shopping agents. Merchants using the old app have until 15 January 2027 to deal with the change, and some larger stores must manually re-enter facts they want to keep.
Shopify Watch analysis
What happened
The new knowledge base holds store information that AI agents may use to answer customer questions, including returns, delivery and payment details. Shopify says the old app will no longer be available after 15 January 2027. Search Engine Journal reports, citing Shopify’s changelog and help pages, that merchants with more than 1,000 facts in the old app did not have those facts transferred and must add the ones they want to retain before the deadline. Smaller retailers’ merchant-entered facts were transferred automatically, according to the report.
There is a meaningful distinction between what Shopify adds and what it scans. Store policies and contact details created in the admin are published automatically. Information found by storefront scans remains unpublished until a merchant approves it. Merchants can publish or unpublish individual fields, whole categories or everything at once. Shopify’s scans can miss changes, and a requested rescan may take up to 48 hours.
Why it matters
This is a practical change to the information AI shopping agents can use about a store, not just a new place to tidy settings. Merchants need to check what has transferred, what is published and whether the facts available to agents are current. Stores with more than 1,000 facts face the clearest deadline: choose what to keep and enter it in the new knowledge base before the old app closes.
Our read
The controls give merchants a say over what scanned information reaches agents, which is welcome. But automatic publication of admin-created policies and contact details means “we moved the data” is not quite the end of the job. Check the new knowledge base for accuracy and publication status, and do not assume a storefront scan has caught every change. The housekeeping is dull; customers getting the wrong returns policy from an AI assistant is dull in a much more expensive way.
What to watch
- Whether Shopify clarifies how its 1,000-fact limit applies to different kinds of facts.
- How merchants are notified when scans suggest changes, and how often rescans miss updates.
- Whether Shopify’s newer Ask MCP becomes broadly available, since the report describes it as a draft with variable availability.
Discussion spark: Should store policies and contact details be available to AI shopping agents by default, or should merchants have to approve every item before it is published?
Sources and evidence
- Source update (27 October 2026, 15:39 UTC)
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