Install guide

Installing Shoesy AI takes about three minutes end-to-end: install the app, set the tone and support contact, enable the embed in your theme, start your free trial, and confirm the widget is live — the wizard walks you through all of it.

1. Install the app

You can install from one of two places:

Shopify App Store — search for "Shoesy AI" and click Add app. This is the standard path.
Direct install link — if you received a beta invite, paste the install URL into your browser while signed in to your Shopify admin.

Shopify will ask you to approve the permissions Shoesy AI requests. The list is intentionally read-only — seven scopes: your products, inventory, locations, orders, store content, and policy pages, plus read-only theme access so we can tell you whether the widget embed is actually enabled. Shoesy AI never writes anything back to your store: there is no write_ scope of any kind. Theme access is read-only too — Shoesy can tell you whether the embed is enabled, but only you can enable and save it (next step).

After approval Shopify lands you on the Shoesy AI admin page inside your Shopify admin, at the start of the five-step onboarding wizard.

2. Tone and support contact (step 2)

Set the assistant's tone — Friendly (default), Formal, or Casual — and a support contact for anything it cannot confidently answer. The tone field affects how the assistant phrases responses; it does not change what it knows. The support contact can be a support email or a contact-page URL — provide at least one; onboarding will not complete until one is set. The email defaults to your Shopify shop contact and is editable.

This step has no Skip for now: the contact is the wizard's one required field, so Continue is the way past it. If you enter an email that differs from your Shopify shop contact, you get a non-blocking note — either address is fine.

3. Enable the app embed in your theme (step 3)

The widget is a Shopify Theme App Extension. It will not appear on your storefront until the embed is toggled on and saved in your live theme.

Click Open theme editor in step 3 of the wizard. The editor opens on the App embeds panel with Shoesy AI Assistant already switched on for you — but Shopify does not save that automatically:

Check that Shoesy AI Assistant shows as on (if the toggle reads off, switch it on).
Click Save in the top right.
Come back to the wizard tab.

That Save is the step people miss. Without it the embed reverts, and the wizard will keep reporting the embed as off.

Just installed? The theme editor can take a minute to list a newly installed app. If the App embeds panel looks empty or Shopify shows "App embed does not exist", refresh the editor page in your browser — the embed appears once Shopify finishes registering the install.

Back in the wizard, click Re-check. Until your trial starts, the badge reads Hidden — trial not started: your embed is on, but shoppers still see no chat bubble, because that gate is billing, not the theme (next step). The line under the badge always states what was actually checked — the app-embed setting in your published theme, read through the Shopify Admin API, which is what your theme says rather than what a shopper currently sees. The badge turns green and reads Answering shoppers only once all three hold: the embed is on, your trial or plan is active, and Show the chat bubble on storefront is checked in Settings (it is, unless you turned it off).

Theme setup is the one step you can defer: Skip for now leaves the wizard, and until every step is finished the dashboard shows a Setup isn’t finished banner above the tabs with a Resume setup button that takes you back. Coming back does not replay the wizard — it opens on the first step you have not finished, and anything you already saved stays saved.

4. Start your 14-day free trial (step 4)

Pick a plan to start your 14-day free trial. Until a trial or plan is active, shoppers see no chat bubble on your storefront at all — the assistant is hidden from them entirely, not answering in a limited way — so this step is what takes it live.

The plan step hands you to Shopify's plan page for Shoesy AI, where you pick a plan and confirm it — the subscription, the trial, and the charge are all Shopify's own billing on that page. Nothing is charged until you confirm there, and no charge lands during the 14-day trial either way. Once your plan is active, the wizard moves itself on to the final step.

If you close Shopify's page without deciding, nothing is stuck — no plan exists until you confirm one there, so closing it changes nothing. Manage plan takes you back to the same page whenever you're ready, and you can pick any plan then. See Billing for the full behaviour.

You can switch or cancel any time, or choose I'll set this up later to finish onboarding now and start the trial from the dashboard — the dashboard keeps a banner up until you do.

The wizard's last step shows a status badge plus a Try it now button. That button opens your storefront in a new tab through a short-lived preview link, so you can see the assistant even before your trial starts — which is exactly when a plain storefront visit would show nothing. Confirm the chat bubble appears in the bottom corner and open it. (If your storefront is still password-protected, Shopify asks for the store password first and drops the preview link — enter the password, then press Try it now again.)

If your trial is already running, send it a test message and you get a real answer. If you deferred the trial in step 4, the bubble and panel are real but questions come back with "Start your 14-day free trial to get live answers" — the panel says so in a banner. Either way you can see your greeting, your opener chips, and the AI-disclosure line exactly as a shopper will.

The bubble's accessible name is "AI Assistant" — that is intentional; do not rebrand it in your theme. The assistant's first message always ends with a line telling the shopper they are chatting with an AI, in their own language. That line is a legal requirement and cannot be switched off.

If the badge is amber after a few seconds, it is telling you shoppers can't see the assistant yet. Read the line under it — it names the hold-up:

Hidden — trial not started / Hidden — subscription lapsed: billing, not the embed. The badge links straight to the plan surface.
Hidden — embed off in theme: the app embed. Re-check the App embeds toggle is on and saved, and that you are editing your live theme, not a draft.
Hidden — chat bubble turned off: you switched the bubble off yourself. Turn Show the chat bubble on storefront back on under Settings → Assistant behavior and save — the status updates by itself, without Re-check.
Hidden from shoppers: more than one of the above at once. The lines under the badge name every one of them, and clearing a single one is not enough.
Couldn’t check right now: neither check could answer. That does not mean the assistant is off — try Re-check in a moment.
See Troubleshooting for the rest.

The wizard spells these out in full sentences because it is teaching you the setup. On the dashboard afterwards the same verdict is a compact badge with the facts beside it — see the status bar in the settings tour.

If your storefront is password-protected (every development store is), the status says so with its own Password-protected note: visitors need the store password to reach your storefront at all, whatever the widget is doing. The checks still work on a password-protected store — the theme reading goes through Shopify's Admin API, not through your storefront.

What happens automatically

Once installed, Shoesy AI:

Indexes your full product catalog. Initial indexing usually finishes within a few minutes for sub-1000-product stores; the dashboard shows progress.
Subscribes to product create / update / delete webhooks so the index stays current with no merchant action, and to inventory-level updates so a stock change re-syncs that product within moments. A daily reconcile sweeps up anything a webhook missed, so the stock the assistant sees stays close behind your real inventory without you touching anything.
Answers order-status questions by looking the order up in Shopify at the moment a shopper asks, rather than from a copy — so what it tells them is whatever your admin says right then.
Subscribes to order and refund webhooks. These do not power those answers; they are what lets Shoesy tell you which conversations led to orders, and which of those came back — the returns and sizing-outcome numbers on your dashboard.
Listens for the app/uninstalled webhook — if you remove the app, all your store data is purged within 30 days per the Privacy Policy.

Everything Shoesy AI asks for is read-only, so none of this writes anything back to your store.