Shoppable Chat
The conversation becomes the shop. Instead of describing a product in a paragraph and hoping the shopper goes and finds it, the agent shows the actual product — image, price, availability — as a card the shopper can add to a cart and check out from, without ever leaving the chat.
What the shopper sees
- They ask for something: “do you have anything in linen?”
- The agent replies with product cards — real products from your connected store, with image, name, price, and availability.
- They add one to their cart by tapping the card, or by simply saying so.
- They can review the cart, change their mind, or clear it — in conversation.
- When they’re ready, they check out: one tap out to your own checkout, cart intact. See Checkout.
Nothing about that flow asks the shopper to open a website, remember a product name, or start over.
Supported channels
Shoppable chat needs a channel that can render a rich card. Four can:
| Channel | Product cards & cart |
|---|---|
| Website chat widget | ✅ |
| Telegram | ✅ |
| ✅ | |
| Messenger | ✅ |
Discord, Slack, and Google Chat have no card surface, so shoppable chat doesn’t apply there. Agents on those channels still answer catalog questions, look up orders, and recommend products — they just do it in text.
The three carts, and how to tell them apart
Cuneiform Chat has three things a shopper could reasonably call “a cart”. They behave differently, and conflating them is the fastest way to misread what your shoppers are doing.
| Where it lives | What ends it | Where you see it | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Storefront inquiry cart | In the shopper’s own browser, inside the Storefront mini app | An inquiry handoff — a structured order request lands in your Inbox for a human to pick up | Your Inbox, as an order request |
| 2. Storefront checkout handoff | Nothing is stored — it’s a one-shot handoff link out of the Storefront | The shopper arriving at your own checkout | Your store’s own orders |
| 3. In-chat conversation cart | On our servers, attached to the conversation | Either a checkout handoff to your store, or the shopper abandoning it | Commerce Analytics, and your store’s orders |
The one this page is about is #3. It’s the only cart that persists on our side, the only one tied to a conversation rather than a browser, and the only one a shopper can pick back up by simply carrying on the chat.
A shopper who filled a Storefront cart (#1) and a shopper who filled a conversation cart (#3) are not in the same funnel. The first ends as a message in your Inbox for a human; the second ends at your checkout. If you’re comparing numbers, make sure you know which one you’re counting.
What the agent can do with the cart
The agent has a small, explicit set of cart actions, and it uses them in response to what the shopper says:
| The shopper says | What happens |
|---|---|
| ”show me something in linen” | Product cards are shown |
| ”add the second one” | That product is added to the cart |
| ”what’s in my cart?” | The cart is read back |
| ”actually drop the shirt” | That line is removed |
| ”start over” | The cart is cleared |
| ”I’m ready to buy” | The checkout handoff fires |
The shopper can also tap the buttons on the cards themselves — talking to the agent is an option, not a requirement.
What it needs
- A connected store with a synced catalog — the cards are real products, so there has to be a catalog to draw them from
- A card-capable channel from the table above
- Your store agent — the agent wired to the store when you connected it
Both Shopify and WooCommerce are supported. On WooCommerce, what happens at the checkout step depends on your connection’s permission — see Checkout.
Attribution
An order that starts in a chat is attributed to that conversation. That’s what makes shoppable chat measurable rather than anecdotal: you can see which conversations produced carts, which carts produced checkouts, and which checkouts produced orders. See Analytics.
Troubleshooting
The agent describes products instead of showing cards
Either the channel has no card surface (Discord, Slack, Google Chat), or you’re not talking to the store agent. Check which agent is wired to your store on Commerce.
Cards appear but the cart is empty after adding something
The cart is per conversation. If the shopper started a new conversation — a new session, or a different channel — they started a new cart with it.
A shopper’s cart came back later
That’s intended. The conversation cart persists with the conversation, so a shopper who wandered off mid-thought can pick up where they left off rather than rebuilding it.
Checkout only handed off one product
That’s the read-only WooCommerce path, not a shoppable-chat limitation. See Checkout.
Related
- Checkout — where the cart hands off to
- Catalog & Knowledge — the catalog the cards are drawn from
- Telegram Storefront — the Storefront, and its separate inquiry cart
- Analytics — cards shown, carts built, checkouts started