Catalog & Knowledge
Your catalog is the agent’s product knowledge. You don’t paste product descriptions into a knowledge base and remember to update them — the agent reads your store.
How the catalog gets in
The first import
Connecting a store starts a full import of your products: names, descriptions, variants and their options, prices, images, and stock.
| Platform | When the first import runs |
|---|---|
| Shopify | Automatically, the moment the store is connected |
| WooCommerce (guided flow) | Automatically, as part of the approval callback |
| WooCommerce (manual API keys) | Not automatically — press Re-sync now. See After a manual connect |
A large catalog takes a few minutes. You can watch progress on the connection’s Catalog tab.
Keeping up afterwards
Once the store is connected, changes flow in three ways:
- Webhooks — your store notifies us the moment a product is created, updated, or deleted. This is the fast path and it’s how the catalog normally stays current.
- Scheduled reconciles — a background job compares what we hold against what your store reports every night, repairing anything a webhook missed. Clearing products you deleted upstream happens on a weekly pass rather than the nightly one, so a deletion a webhook missed can take up to a week to disappear.
- Re-sync on demand — the Re-sync now button on the connection’s Catalog tab re-imports everything. Use it after a bulk edit, a CSV import, or a migration, when you don’t want to wait.
Re-sync is an admin action. Owners and Admins can trigger it. Team Admins and Members can view the catalog’s status but not re-import it.
A manual WooCommerce connect registers no webhooks at connect time, whatever permission your key carries. An hourly background job repairs this: with a Read/Write key, webhooks register on their own, usually within the hour. With a read-only key they can never register — the job retries hourly and is refused every time — and the catalog then only ever changes on a scheduled reconcile or a manual re-sync. See After a manual connect.
Product knowledge and catalog Q&A
The imported catalog is turned into product knowledge the store agent searches when a shopper asks about products. That’s what lets it answer questions no product title contains — “which of these is machine washable?”, “what’s the difference between the Pro and the Standard?” — rather than only matching keywords.
You’ll find product knowledge on the connection’s page, with its own status and a Rebuild action.
- Viewing status is available to anyone who can see integrations, including Team Admins and Members.
- Rebuilding requires the same permission as connecting an integration, so Owners and Admins can do it but Team Admins and Members cannot. Rebuild after a large catalog change if answers feel stale, or after a re-sync that pulled in a lot of new products.
With two stores connected
Connecting a second store does not merge the two catalogs. Each store gets its own store agent at connect, and each agent is wired to that one store — so a shopper talking to your Shopify agent gets Shopify products, and the WooCommerce agent answers from WooCommerce.
That means a single conversation covers one store, not your whole business. If you want shoppers to reach the right catalog, point each channel at the store agent that owns it.
Product knowledge is built per store as well, so a Rebuild on one connection never touches the other’s answers.
Current inventory
Stock and price come from your synced catalog, kept current by webhooks — your store notifies us the moment stock moves, usually within seconds. That’s what stops the agent recommending something you sold out of an hour ago.
How quickly a stock change reaches the agent depends on the platform:
| Platform | How stock changes arrive |
|---|---|
| Shopify | Dedicated inventory updates. A stock change with no other product edit still arrives on its own, within seconds. |
| WooCommerce | Along with product updates. A stock-only change is picked up when the product next updates, or on the next scheduled reconcile. |
Shopify stores therefore have the tighter stock freshness of the two. On WooCommerce, a stock-only change can lag until the product next changes — worth knowing if you adjust stock without touching anything else.
Recommendations
The agent can suggest products rather than just look them up: “what would go with this?”, “something similar but cheaper”, “what do you have for a beginner?”
Recommendations are drawn from the same synced catalog, and are restricted to products that are actually in stock — the agent will not build a shopper’s enthusiasm around something they can’t buy. Like every other commerce answer, they come from that store agent’s own store.
Troubleshooting
The catalog looks empty
If you connected WooCommerce with manual API keys, nothing was imported at connect — press Re-sync now (see After a manual connect). Otherwise the first import may still be running; give a large catalog a few minutes.
A product I just added isn’t there
Normally a webhook delivers new products in seconds. If it doesn’t, a scheduled reconcile picks it up; Re-sync now does it immediately. If new products consistently only appear after a reconcile, your webhooks aren’t registered — for WooCommerce, that’s usually a read-only key.
A product I deleted is still being offered
Deletions arrive by webhook like any other change. If one is missed, the weekly reconcile clears it — that pass runs once a week, not nightly, so a missed deletion can linger for up to a week. To clear it now, run Re-sync now and then Rebuild product knowledge.
A product I deleted upstream came back after I re-listed it
It won’t. Once a product is cleared as deleted it stays that way, even if you re-add it to your store under the same ID — a re-sync doesn’t revive it. Re-create it as a new product, or add it to your Product Library by hand.
Answers are vague, or miss details in the description
Run Rebuild on product knowledge. A large import followed by heavy editing can leave the knowledge behind the catalog.
Prices or stock look out of date
Both come from the synced catalog, so a wrong number means the stored product record is behind your store. On WooCommerce this is expected for a stock-only change — it waits for the next product update or reconcile. Otherwise your webhooks may not be arriving: check the connection, then run Re-sync now.
Related
- Shopify — connecting a Shopify store
- WooCommerce — connecting a WooCommerce store
- Product Tools — the Product Library and the Product Finder quiz
- Shoppable Chat — showing products as cards in the conversation