How do I allow ChatGPT and other AI agents on my Shopify store?

Check what your store serves today

1. 1

   Step 1: Open your live robots.txt

   Go to https://yourstore.com/robots.txt. Shopify's current default starts with a comment block (# Shopify storefront.) that points AI agents to /agents.md and the store's UCP endpoints, then has only two groups: User-agent: * and User-agent: adsbot-google.

2. 2

   Step 2: Look for AI crawler names

   Search the file for GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended. A group that names one of them with Disallow: / blocks that crawler from the whole store.

3. 3

   Step 3: Check whether your theme has a template

   In Shopify admin, go to Online Store, click the three dots next to your published theme and choose Edit code. Look under Templates for robots.txt.liquid. Themes don't include it by default, so if it's there, someone added it.

4. 4

   Step 4: Spot an outdated template

   A file with groups for Nutch, AhrefsBot or MJ12bot, or with Disallow: /search and Disallow: /policies/, comes from a template. Shopify says such templates can include rules the default file no longer has, and that deleting the template returns the store to the current default.

Two ways AI reaches a Shopify store

robots.txt only covers crawlers and agents that read your storefront. Shopify also sends product data straight to AI channels through Shopify Catalog. The two are controlled in different places, and blocking one doesn't affect the other.

Shopify says it plainly: blocking AI crawlers at the robots.txt or network layer affects only open-web discoverability, and doesn't stop Shopify Catalog sending product data to the agentic storefronts you've turned on.

Remove an AI crawler block

1. 1

   Step 1: Save a copy of your current robots.txt

   Shopify recommends this before you publish changes, so you can compare the rendered template with what the store served before.

2. 2

   Step 2: Open the template

   Online Store, then the three dots next to your theme, then Edit code, then templates/robots.txt.liquid.

3. 3

   Step 3: Delete the group that blocks AI crawlers

   Remove the User-agent lines for the AI crawlers you want to let in and the Disallow: / under them. Leave the robots.default_groups loop alone.

   User-agent: GPTBot
   User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
   User-agent: ClaudeBot
   User-agent: PerplexityBot
   Disallow: /

4. 4

   Step 4: Or delete the template entirely

   If the template only existed to add AI rules, delete it: right-click robots.txt.liquid, choose Delete permanently, then Delete. The store goes back to Shopify's current default file.

5. 5

   Step 5: Check the live file again

   Shopify says changes are instant but crawlers don't react immediately. OpenAI says its crawlers can take about 24 hours to pick up a robots.txt change.

Keep AI search and agents, opt out of training

If you want ChatGPT search, Perplexity and shopping agents to read your store but don't want your pages used for model training, add one group for the training tokens after Shopify's default loop. Search crawlers have no group of their own, so they keep following User-agent: * and its cart, checkout and account rules.

{% for group in robots.default_groups %}
  {{- group.user_agent }}

  {%- for rule in group.rules -%}
    {{ rule }}
  {%- endfor -%}

  {%- if group.sitemap != blank -%}
    {{ group.sitemap }}
  {%- endif -%}
{% endfor %}

# Opt out of AI model training.
# Search crawlers and shopping agents follow the * group above.
User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: Google-Extended
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
User-agent: meta-externalagent
Disallow: /

Which token does what is in does blocking GPTBot hurt your store.

What robots.txt can't do on Shopify

• It can't take you out of agentic storefronts. Use Sales channels, then Agentic, and turn off Allow Shopify to manage for me to pick channels one by one. You can also turn off Shopify Catalog access for third-party AI channels there; it can take up to 7 days. Only Unlisted hides a product from Shop too.
• It can't hide a single product from AI only. Shopify's one full method is setting the product to Unlisted, which also hides it from sitemaps, Google and your store search.
• It can't change Shopify's bot protection. Shopify handles that at the network layer and doesn't support a Cloudflare proxy in front of the store. See does Cloudflare block AI agents.
• It doesn't bind user-triggered fetchers. OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to ChatGPT-User, because a person asked for the page.

Access is only the first step. Once an agent is in, it still has to find the price, the variant and the delivery cost. That's where most stores lose it: see why AI agents can't find your delivery price and product variants and stock for AI agents.