I Connected OpenClaw to My Shopify Store. Here's What Happened in 72 Hours.
Last month I almost paid $299/month for a Shopify AI app.
It promised to "automate everything." Abandoned cart recovery. Product descriptions. Customer segmentation. The whole deal.
Then I connected OpenClaw to my Shopify store instead. For free.
Within 72 hours, it had:
- Found a broken checkout flow costing me ~$2,100/month
- Recovered 14 abandoned carts worth $1,847
- Written 31 product descriptions that actually sound human
- Built a daily sales digest that hits my inbox at 7 AM
Here is exactly how I set it up. Step by step. No fluff.
Step 1: Get Your Shopify API Credentials
Go to your Shopify admin. Settings > Apps and sales channels > Develop apps.
Create a new app. Call it "OpenClaw Agent" or whatever you want.
Under API credentials, configure these Admin API scopes:
read_products, write_products
read_orders
read_customers
read_inventory
read_analytics
That is it. Do NOT give it full admin access. You do not need write_orders or write_customers for 90% of use cases. Scope it tight.
Copy your Admin API access token. You will need it once.
Step 2: Give OpenClaw the Connection
In your OpenClaw system prompt, add this context:
You have access to my Shopify store via the Admin API.
Store URL: my-store.myshopify.com
API version: 2024-01
Use these endpoints:
- GET /admin/api/2024-01/products.json (list products)
- GET /admin/api/2024-01/orders.json (list orders)
- GET /admin/api/2024-01/customers.json (list customers)
- PUT /admin/api/2024-01/products/{id}.json (update product)
Always include the header:
X-Shopify-Access-Token: {token}
Rate limit: max 2 requests per second. Wait between calls.
If you are running OpenClaw with tool use (MCP or function calling), create a tool that wraps the Shopify API. If you are using it with direct HTTP access, the prompt context above is enough.
That took me 4 minutes.
Step 3: The Store Audit (This Is Where It Gets Good)
First thing I asked my agent:
"Crawl my entire Shopify store. Check every product page, every collection, and the checkout flow. Give me a prioritized list of issues."
It came back with 17 issues. Most were minor — missing alt tags, thin product descriptions, that kind of thing.
But issue #3 stopped me cold.
My mobile checkout had a broken discount code field. On iOS, tapping the discount field scrolled the page down and hid the "Apply" button below the fold. Customers could not apply their codes on mobile.
I checked my analytics. 62% of my traffic is mobile. I had been running a 15% off campaign for 3 weeks. Hundreds of mobile customers saw the discount code field, tried to use it, could not, and bounced.
Conservative estimate: $2,100 in lost revenue. Per month. From one CSS bug that I never would have found manually.
I fixed it in 20 minutes.
That alone paid for the entire year of hosting.
Step 4: Abandoned Cart Recovery
Next, I set up a daily abandoned cart workflow:
"Every morning at 6 AM, pull all abandoned checkouts from the last 24 hours. For each one, analyze what was in the cart, the customer's browse history if available, and the likely reason for abandonment. Then draft a recovery email for each."
The agent categorizes abandonments into 3 buckets:
Price shock — Customer added items, saw the total (especially with shipping), and left. These get a "free shipping over $X" message if they are close to the threshold, or a "here's 10% off" if they are not.
Comparison shoppers — Customer viewed the same product multiple times over several days, added to cart, left. These get a differentiation email: why our product is different, customer reviews, quality details.
Distracted — Customer was actively adding items, then just stopped. These get a simple "Still thinking about it?" reminder 2 hours later.
In the first 72 hours, 14 of those emails converted. $1,847 in recovered revenue.
The default Shopify abandoned cart email? It sends one generic message 10 hours later. Same message for everyone. That is not recovery. That is a form letter.
Step 5: Product Descriptions at Scale
I had 31 products with placeholder descriptions. You know the ones — "Great quality. Buy now." Embarrassing.
I told my agent:
"Rewrite every product description in my store. Use the product title, images, tags, and price to understand the product. Write descriptions that are 80-120 words, benefit-focused, and match the voice of [brand name]. Include one line about materials/specs and one about who it is for. Output as a CSV I can review before publishing."
31 descriptions. Done in 8 minutes. I reviewed them, tweaked maybe 5, and bulk-published.
Those products started showing up in Google Shopping results within a week. Organic clicks went up 23% on those product pages.
Step 6: The Daily Digest
This is my favorite part. Every morning at 7 AM, my agent sends me a Slack message:
DAILY STORE DIGEST — Feb 10, 2026
Revenue yesterday: $1,247 (+8% vs. 7-day avg)
Orders: 19
AOV: $65.63
Top seller: Summer Candle Set (6 units)
Low stock alert: Ocean Breeze Diffuser (3 remaining)
Abandoned carts: 7 (recovery emails queued)
Notable: 3 customers purchased for the 2nd time this month.
Returning customer rate trending up — 34% vs. 28% last month.
Action items:
- Reorder Ocean Breeze Diffuser (est. stockout in 2 days)
- Review 2 flagged support tickets
That used to take me 30 minutes every morning to piece together from 4 different Shopify screens.
Now I read it while drinking coffee.
What I Learned
The store audit is worth it alone. Every Shopify store has hidden issues. Broken things on mobile, slow pages, missing SEO basics. An AI agent can crawl everything in minutes and find what you have been missing.
Generic abandoned cart emails are leaving money on the table. The difference between "You forgot something" and a message that addresses the specific reason someone left — that is the difference between 2% recovery and 15% recovery.
Product descriptions compound. Good descriptions improve SEO, improve conversion rate, AND reduce returns (because customers know what they are getting). It is the highest-leverage writing a store owner can do, and most people procrastinate on it forever.
You do not need another Shopify app. Most of what $200-300/month apps do, OpenClaw can do with API access and good prompts. You keep the data. You control the logic. You do not get locked into another subscription.
Common Questions
"Can the agent process payments or modify orders?"
Only if you give it write access to orders. I recommend against it for most stores. Read access for lookups, write access only for products (descriptions, inventory). Anything involving money should require your approval.
"What about customer privacy?"
Configure your agent to not store customer PII in conversation history. Process it in memory, use it to make decisions, but do not log names, emails, or addresses. Shopify's own privacy policy already covers API access, but you should add AI processing to your privacy policy if you have not.
"Does it work with Shopify Plus?"
Yes. Same API, same setup. Plus stores get additional API endpoints (like Scripts and Flow), which give the agent even more to work with.
Try It Today
The full setup takes 15 minutes. Not a weekend. Not "once I have time." Fifteen minutes.
- Create a Shopify private app with read scopes
- Deploy OpenClaw on Clawctl
- Add the API context to your system prompt
- Ask it to audit your store
The store audit alone will pay for itself. Every store has at least one broken thing costing real money.
Deploy OpenClaw for your Shopify store
Want pre-built Shopify skills instead of writing prompts from scratch? The Clawctl Shopify bundle includes store audit, cart recovery, inventory management, and product descriptions — ready to go.