Troubleshooting

The most common issues and how to fix each in under a minute.

Symptom: you do not see a chat bubble in the bottom corner of your storefront, or the status badge stays amber.

Read the badge first. The status bar's verdict badge names the hold-up rather than making you guess — Hidden — chat bubble turned off, Hidden — embed off in theme, Hidden — trial not started, Hidden — subscription lapsed, Hidden from shoppers (more than one of those at once), or Couldn’t check right now. The grey badges beside it say whether the app embed is on and whether your storefront is password-protected. Work the item the badge names; the checklist below covers the rest.

Checklist, in order:

App embed toggle — and Save. In your theme editor, open App embeds in the right-hand sidebar and confirm Shoesy AI Assistant is on. Then click Save in the top right: Shopify does not save automatically, and opening the editor from the Shoesy wizard switches the toggle on for you without saving it. An unsaved toggle reverts, which is the single most common cause of this problem.

Panel empty or "App embed does not exist" right after installing? Shopify's theme editor can take a minute to list a newly installed app. Refresh the editor page in your browser — the embed appears once Shopify finishes registering the install.
Your trial or plan is active. Until a trial or plan starts, the assistant is hidden from shoppers no matter what your theme says — that gate is separate from the app embed. The badge reads Hidden — trial not started (or Hidden — subscription lapsed) rather than Answering shoppers, a banner sits above the dashboard tabs on every page, and both link straight to Plan & usage.
The chat bubble is switched on in Shoesy. On the dashboard's Settings section, under Assistant behavior, make sure Show the chat bubble on storefront is checked. If it's off, the embed can be enabled and the widget still won't appear. The badge names this one too: it reads Hidden — chat bubble turned off, and hovering (or tabbing to) that badge points back at the switch. Save the box back on and the badge turns green by itself — no Re-check needed.
You are previewing the live theme. Theme editors default to the published theme, but a draft can be loaded via the URL. The widget loader only ships in published / preview-with-loader contexts.
Cache. Hard-reload the storefront (⌘⇧R on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows). Some Shopify themes inline the loader bundle into the HTML; a cached page will not reflect a freshly enabled embed for a minute or two.
Storefront password gate. If you have a development-store password page enabled, the widget does not load on the password page itself — it loads on the actual storefront once you are past the gate. The status checks still work on a password-protected store: the embed is read from your theme through Shopify's Admin API, not by loading your storefront.
Check the browser console. Open your storefront and open the browser's developer console (F12 → Console). The widget loader logs there, so an error message usually explains why the bubble is missing.

Checking it yourself before the trial starts? Use Try it now in the dashboard's status bar rather than typing your storefront URL. It opens your storefront through a short-lived preview link, which is the only way to see the assistant while it is still hidden from shoppers — a plain visit will correctly show nothing. In that pre-trial preview the bubble and panel are real, but questions come back with "Start your 14-day free trial to get live answers" rather than a real answer. That is the gate doing its job, not a fault. Use Test assistant if you want real answers before starting a trial. One wrinkle on password-protected storefronts: Shopify shows its password page first and drops the preview link on the way through — enter the store password, then press Try it now again and the preview opens normally.

If all of these pass and the bubble is still missing, copy the browser console output and email it to support@shoesy.ai.

Chat opens but the assistant does not answer

Symptom: the chat panel opens, you type a question, and either nothing comes back or you get a fallback message every time.

Common causes:

Catalog still indexing. First-install indexing takes a few minutes per ~1000 products. The dashboard's Home and Catalog sections show progress; the assistant returns fallbacks until indexing completes.
Question outside scope. Shoesy AI is intentionally narrow — it answers products, sizing, shipping, returns, order status. It will not answer "what's the weather?" or "tell me a joke." That is by design.
Confidence below threshold. For sizing in particular, the assistant returns a fallback rather than guessing if confidence is below 0.6. See Sizing setup for what drives that.
Plan cap exhausted. Once you have used your cap plus its 20% grace band, the assistant pauses new conversations until you upgrade or the cycle renews. Plan & usage shows a red "Assistant paused" banner when this is the cause.
Outage. If the dashboard's status badge is red across the board, email support@shoesy.ai.

Before you report any of this, try the same question in Test assistant. It runs the real pipeline against your real catalog, costs you nothing, and tells you whether the problem is the assistant or the storefront.

Sizing answers keep falling back

Symptom: the assistant says it doesn't have enough data to recommend a size, even for a brand you stock.

There is no per-store sizing-rule editor to override this (see Sizing setup); the fix is in your catalog:

Inconsistent size axes. If a product's variants mix systems (some US, some UK, some unlabelled), the engine refuses to guess. Normalise the variant options in Shopify.
Missing size chart. For an un-charted brand, a store size guide lifts confidence. Catalog quality on the Catalog page (Pro) flags footwear with no size chart.
Uncharted brand. If a brand isn't in the built-in set, email support with a transcript — that feedback is how brands get added.

Billing not activating after install

Symptom: you finished onboarding, but the dashboard says billing needs setting up or shows no plan.

Cause: your plan is chosen and confirmed on Shopify's plan page for Shoesy AI, and until you confirm one there, there is no plan. If you closed that page before deciding:

A banner sits above the dashboard tabs on every section, prompting you to start your trial (first time) or reactivate. Go to Plan & usage.
Click Manage plan — it takes you back to Shopify's plan page. Pick the plan you want and confirm it there. Closing the page earlier changed nothing, so there is nothing to undo or wait out.
Come back to the dashboard; it picks the new plan up within a few seconds of loading. If it doesn't, refresh.

You cannot get wedged here: no plan exists until you confirm one on Shopify's page, and the confirmation, the charge, and any proration all happen there — never anywhere else.

If you are an early-installed store with no charge on record, this is a known case — email support and we'll fix it manually within a business day.

Custom FAQ answer not being used

Symptom: you added an FAQ entry and the assistant still answers something different.

Checklist:

Approved and active. An imported FAQ is not served until you approve it, and an entry has to be active. Entries Shoesy drafts from your store content sit under the Imported from your site heading on the Knowledge page until you act on them.
Phrasing gap. The assistant matches a shopper's message against your FAQ question — both near-word-for-word and by meaning. A phrasing far from how you wrote the question can still miss. If shoppers ask "Can I order from Berlin?" and your entry asks "Do you ship to Germany?", add a second entry phrased the way shoppers actually ask.
Conflict with another entry. If two entries match the same question, the higher-scoring one wins. Edit or delete the loser.
Cache. Edits to the FAQ propagate to the assistant within a few seconds, but your own browser session may hold a cached transcript. Open a private/incognito window to verify.

Catalog quality is locked

Symptom: the Catalog page shows a catalog-quality upgrade prompt instead of a list of flagged products.

Catalog quality is a Pro feature — it unlocks as soon as your Pro plan is active, trial included. If you're on Starter or Growth, upgrade from the Plan & usage section; once Pro is active it scans your catalog and lists the exact product pages weakening the assistant's answers.

Anything else

Email support@shoesy.ai with a transcript or screenshot and we'll take a look. That is the same support address the assistant hands shoppers to when it can't confidently answer, so if you've set a different support contact, use whichever you prefer for your own questions.