Capability note: Merchant portal and knowledge controls

Operators configure knowledge, recommendations, and day-to-day controls in the merchant portal. This archive note points at the public help and product surfaces for that work. It is not a screenshot-accurate release of an internal admin build.

Use Merchant Portal Guide, Merchant Knowledge, and Merchant Portal as the living documentation. When a dated portal change is approved for the public archive, it will appear as its own update with change type and availability labels—not as a rumor in this capability note.

What this capability is for

A storefront assistant without an operator control surface becomes folklore: someone typed a prompt once, knowledge drifted, pairing included last season’s SKUs. The portal is where merchandising rules and store knowledge stay auditable. Store-help product language: Store Help and Product Q&A.

Controls to treat as launch-critical

• Knowledge publishing and retirement when policy pages change.
• Recommendation and pairing rules that stay catalog-only.
• Access for the people who will actually log in after week one.
• A path for billing questions that does not invent prices.

Catalog-only parent constraint: Catalog-Only Recommendations. Pairing: Complete the Look. Billing documentation: Plans, Usage and Billing and Pricing—this note copies no plan prices.

Day-two operations

After launch, the portal is a weekly habit: knowledge versus live pages, pairing versus drop assortment, widget still present after theme publish. See the operations session brief in Webinars and the launch checklist in Academy. Neither issues a certificate.

When Shopify and the assistant disagree

Treat it as sync or catalog before treating it as a portal bug. Connect a Shopify Store, Shopify Catalog Sync, and Troubleshooting are the first stops.

Verification steps

1. Confirm named owners can sign in.
2. Publish one knowledge entry that matches a live policy page; ask the assistant; compare.
3. Confirm a pairing rule excludes a SKU you documented as forbidden.
4. Confirm a merchandiser can find Getting Started and portal help without Slack archaeology.

How to talk about it internally

Call it operator controls for knowledge and recommendations. Do not call it an unreleased admin redesign. Do not brief unpublished portal features. Product truth for the storefront assistant remains AI Shopping Assistant.

Knowledge versus recommendation rules

Knowledge answers operational language. Rules constrain which SKUs may appear together or at all. Mixing them produces drift: a knowledge article that says “we never discount hero dresses” while a rule still allows an unauthorized offer sentence, or a pairing rule that includes a SKU knowledge says is appointment-only. Keep the two layers consistent and owned.

Write prohibitions as clearly as permissions. Typical fashion prohibitions include no invented fit, no medical claims, no celebrity styling, no delivery dates operations cannot keep, and no describing try-on as exact-fit. Those sentences belong in knowledge, not only in a launch Slack.

Access, billing, and named owners

Portal capability includes who can log in. A departed contractor as the only owner is an operations incident. Confirm billing contact using published pages only. Do not paste remembered plan prices into the portal wiki. If access fails, Troubleshooting and Contact are the path.

Small brands may assign one person to catalog and knowledge. Still name the jobs separately so a drop does not skip the knowledge update. Academy launch checklist: Academy.

Failure modes

• Rules configured against a development catalog that does not match production collections.
• Knowledge updated in a Google Doc that the assistant does not read.
• Theme published without re-checking embed, blamed on the portal.
• Unpublished admin features briefed as if they had shipped.

Related reading

Getting Started, Install the Storefront Widget, Resources, and sibling capability notes on this hub. If access fails, Contact rather than sharing passwords in merchandising chat. Storefront product page: AI Shopping Assistant.

What to configure in the first week

Knowledge for shipping and returns that match live pages. Prohibitions for fit, discounts, and try-on language. Pairing rules that stay inside SKUs you stock. Named login owners. None of that is unpublished roadmap. It is V1 operator work described on Merchant Portal Guide and Merchant Knowledge.

If Shopify and the assistant disagree, do not rewrite a prompt in the portal. Inspect sync. Connect a Shopify Store, Shopify Catalog Sync.

Governance habits

• Policy change and knowledge change in one ticket.
• Drop day includes a pairing review.
• Theme publish includes an embed check.
• Billing questions go to published URLs only.

Storefront capability: AI Shopping Assistant. Catalog-only parent: Catalog-Only Recommendations. Pairing: Complete the Look.

New-hire path

Point new operators at Merchant Portal Guide, Merchant Knowledge, and Getting Started—not at a remembered demo. Have them publish one knowledge entry that matches a live page and exclude one forbidden SKU from pairing. That is onboarding. No LMS score is attached.

If they cannot log in, that is an access incident. Troubleshooting and Contact. Do not share passwords in merchandising chat.

Treat the portal as weekly operations, not as a launch souvenir. Policy pages, pairing collections, and theme publishes all invalidate last week’s settings. Help Center remains the runbook if the UI and a remembered demo disagree. Merchant Portal Guide.

Catalog-only pairing and knowledge prohibitions belong in the same weekly pass so the assistant cannot drift on either layer.