Shopify Kills Standalone AI Knowledge Base App, Moves It Into Admin

By Tom Whitfield

Shopify has replaced its standalone Knowledge Base app with a knowledge base built directly into Merchant Admin, and the old app stops working on January 15, 2027, according to the company's October 26 Changelog. The move puts store information for AI shopping agents inside the admin every merchant already uses, at the path Sales channels > Agentic > Knowledge base.

What does the new knowledge base do?

The Merchant Admin knowledge base holds all non-product information an AI agent may need to answer customer questions about a specific store — return policies, shipping times, brand values, according to Shopify's Help Center. Some of that data, including store policies and contact info, publishes automatically when created.

The knowledge base sorts store information into ten categories, including returns and warranty, payment options, delivery and fulfillment, and second-hand purchases. An "Additional Facts" category covers anything merchants add themselves. Every other category pulls information from a storefront scan, an admin setting, or manual input.

Shopify runs regular storefront scans that can surface new information and feed it back to merchants as suggested updates to approve or reject. Scans miss changes sometimes. Merchants can request a rescan, but it can take up to 48 hours.

Each store's published knowledge base is "publicly available through the Storefront MCP," according to Shopify, meaning AI apps such as the Shop app and third-party platforms can access it.

What gets published by default?

Information gathered through a storefront scan stays unpublished until the merchant publishes it. Shopify's changelog states nothing the company writes reaches an AI agent before publication, and stores that never used the old app need to take no action.

Facts generated in the admin work differently: those publish when Shopify creates them. Merchants can publish or unpublish everything at once, a full category, or a single field.

There are exceptions. A custom storefront, or one on the Agentic plan, can only add additional facts. A password-protected storefront cannot be scanned at all, so its knowledge base displays only admin data.

What must merchants do before January 15, 2027?

Merchants with more than 1,000 facts in the old app did not get their facts transferred to the new database. Shopify says these larger retailers must re-enter the facts they want to keep before January 15, 2027. The company has sent email notifications directly to affected merchants.

Smaller retailers face no work. All facts they entered or edited in the app were transferred to the new database automatically and published.

The capacity limits are uneven in Shopify's own documentation. The Help Center caps the new page at 1,000 facts total, combining generated facts and merchant-written facts. The changelog describes the limit as 1,000 additional facts.

How well does it actually answer buyers?

Bill Hunt tested 122 Shopify stores in August and September for a Search Engine Journal article published October 14. Of the 88 stores where he queried the policy tool, two returned a usable answer about canceling an order. There is no dedicated knowledge base category for cancellations, so merchants can add missing terms as an additional fact. Hunt also recommends testing the policy tool with real buyer questions — a check that does not depend on the old app's query log, which the new knowledge base Help page does not replicate.

The old app's metrics page included a query log of customer queries submitted to AI shopping assistants, which agent responded, and whether it answered. Shopify's Managing agentic storefronts page still lists sales, orders, sessions and conversions by AI channel, plus a product search preview. Neither page lists a record of customer questions about the store.

What happens next?

Shopify's developer resources mark the Storefront MCP tool used for policies and FAQs as deprecated, though it still functions. Developers are directed to Ask MCP, whose ask_business tool answers buyer questions based on a store's knowledge base and policies. Shopify describes Ask as a "draft" capability and warns its availability may vary across stores — a signal that the plumbing behind agentic commerce is still moving.