ShelfCite for Shopify

The words

four for the audit, four for the board

A cell prints one of these and never anything else. Two of the eight are never painted as a result, because an absence of a reading and a bad reading are different facts.

Word	Where	What it means
Open	the audit	The agent can read it, and what is there is what an agent needs.
Thin	the audit	The agent can read it, and what is there is incomplete.
Closed	the audit	The agent cannot read it.
Unread	the audit	ShelfCite could not read it either, so it is not a finding about this store.
Shelved	the board	The engine put one of your products in the answer.
Named	the board	The engine named your store and put none of your products in the answer.
Off	the board	The answer is other stores’ products.
Not asked	the board	This cycle has not reached the question yet. It is not a result.

The checks

every URL a free audit opens

Six public files plus up to three of the store’s own product pages. Every one is a URL any visitor can open, and the audit sends a named user agent that says what it is.

File	What it answers	On beardbrand.com
Product feed	the one request that hands an agent the whole catalog as data	Open 20 products in one request
Collections	the categories the store already sorts itself into, which is where a category question lands	Open 47 collections
Product sitemap	how a crawler finds every product page without guessing a URL	Open products are listed
Product schema	the JSON-LD block an engine that does not run JavaScript reads instead of the page	Open 9 of 9 fields, best of 3 product pages
UCP profile	the file an agent reads to learn it can search, cart and check out on this store without scraping it	Open protocol 2026-08-25, 9 capabilities over mcp and embedded
llms.txt	the plain text file a handful of agents read before anything else	Open 88 lines of text/markdown
robots.txt	which AI crawlers the store lets in, parsed the way a crawler reads it: the most specific matching group wins and the longest matching path decides.	1 of 8 closed

The catalog grid reads seven fields off each product in the feed. A description is measured against 120 characters of real text with the markup stripped, and tags against three, because below either an agent has almost nothing to match a question on.

The product feed at /products.json is the one thing this audit reads that Shopify does not document. Its own Ajax API reference documents the per product .js form and no bulk feed. Every Shopify store tested on 2026-09-19 answered it with 200 and JSON, and that is stated here rather than dressed up as documented behaviour.

The engines

7, the field the shared pool ran on 2026-09-19

Each engine is asked through a real signed in browser session on a schedule, which is why the volume is bounded by wall clock. The list is read off the pool’s own state file, so an engine added or dropped there moves this page.

Engine	Operator	Crawler the audit checks
ChatGPT	OpenAI	GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User
Perplexity	Perplexity	PerplexityBot
Google AI	Google	Google-Extended
Gemini	Google	Google-Extended
Claude	Anthropic	ClaudeBot
Grok	xAI	none published
Copilot	Microsoft	none published

The name

Shopify’s own rules, quoted

The product is called ShelfCite. Shopify appears after it and never inside it. That is the construction Shopify’s own app requirements checklist asks for: the brand comes first and the platform is named to show compatibility.

One claim that circulates widely could not be verified. No Shopify page found on 2026-09-19 states that a third party may never put the word Shopify in a name, and no Shopify page states the “for Shopify” construction as a rule. What the pages do say is quoted below. Where a claim has no primary source it is not made here.

The mark beside the headline is Shopify’s own primary logo, taken from its brand asset CDN, unmodified and in full colour. Requirement 4.4.3 forbids a trademark in an app icon, banner or screenshot and allows it to communicate compatibility. It is in none of the three and it is never part of this product’s own mark.

Every rule observed, read 2026-09-19

The mark is taken from Shopify’s own brand asset CDN and is not redrawn.

It is used in full colour and unmodified. It is never recoloured, rotated, stretched or put on a gradient.

It is never below 80px wide, which is the floor the brand assets page states.

It is never part of this product’s own logo and never sits in this app’s icon.

Every place it appears links to https://www.shopify.com, which the trademarks page asks for.

It appears only to say what this product reads, which is the compatibility use requirement 4.4.3 allows.

The sources

11, each fetched and quoted

Every claim this app makes about Shopify is here with the sentence it came from. Two of them contradict each other and both are Shopify’s own pages read the same day, so both are printed rather than one being picked.

What this app says	What the page says	Where
The product is named ShelfCite, and Shopify appears only after it.	“Every app must have its own unique, recognizable name that leads with your distinctive brand identifier. Your app’s name must not be identical or confusingly similar to another app, developer, brand, or Shopify product.”	App Store requirement 4.1.2 read 2026-09-19
Naming Shopify after the brand is the construction Shopify’s own checklist asks for.	“Show compatibility without implying affiliation: You can reference a platform or business that your app integrates with, but your brand name must come first.”	App requirements checklist, App name read 2026-09-19
The Shopify mark beside the headline is the compatibility use the requirements allow.	“Do not use our trademarks in your app icon, banner, or screenshots. Our trademarks can only be used to communicate your app’s compatibility with Shopify in accordance with our brand guidelines.”	App Store requirement 4.4.3 read 2026-09-19
Every place the Shopify mark appears here links to shopify.com.	“When Shopify’s name or Brand Assets are mentioned on a webpage, they should ideally include an embedded hyperlink to our homepage: https://www.shopify.com .”	Shopify Trademark Usage Guidelines read 2026-09-19
The mark is never drawn below 80px wide and is never recoloured.	“To maintain the visual integrity of our logo, don’t scale it below 80 pixels or 28 millimeters wide. Digital 80px (width) Print 28mm (width)”	Shopify brand assets read 2026-09-19
Every Shopify storefront publishes a Universal Commerce Protocol profile, and the free audit reads it.	“The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is what makes that possible. It’s the open standard for how AI agents transact with merchants. Meanwhile Catalog API is UCP’s discovery layer, turning billions of products from millions of merchants into structured, queryable data across AI surfaces.”	Shopify, Spring ’26 Edition read 2026-09-19
Building on the agentic layer no longer needs approval.	“Building on Shopify’s agentic commerce layer used to require approval. That requirement is gone. With UCP and Catalog API, we give developers the tools to build end-to-end agentic experiences all on their own. Developers don’t apply for UCP access, they register their agent profile in the Developer Dashboard and call the public MCP endpoint.”	Shopify, Spring ’26 Edition read 2026-09-19
The Spring ’26 announcement prices Catalog access at an API key.	“It opens up. Catalog access takes just an API key, no approval needed.”	Shopify, Spring ’26 Edition read 2026-09-19
Shopify’s current Catalog docs say the opposite about the key, and both pages were read the same day.	“Catalog type: Global Catalog. Scope: All Shopify merchants. Endpoint: https://catalog.shopify.com/api/ucp/mcp. Auth: Agent profile (no API key needed).”	shopify.dev, About Catalogs read 2026-09-19
The Catalog REST API this product does not call is marked deprecated on Shopify’s own page.	“Deprecated: This REST API is deprecated. Use the Global Catalog MCP tools instead.”	shopify.dev, Catalog API reference read 2026-09-19
The one product endpoint Shopify documents is the .js form. It does not document /products.json, which this audit reads and which every store tested answered.	“Get the JSON of a product using the product handle.”	shopify.dev, Ajax API product, on GET /{locale}/products/{product-handle}.js read 2026-09-19

The marks

12, vendored, sources recorded

Nothing is redrawn and nothing is picked up off a disk by filename. Each file is fetched from the place its owner publishes it and served as its own document.

Mark	From	Note
Perplexity	simple-icons perplexity (CC0), https://simpleicons.org/?q=perplexity
Anthropic	simple-icons claude (CC0), https://simpleicons.org/?q=claude
Google	simple-icons google (CC0), https://simpleicons.org/?q=google
Gemini	simple-icons googlegemini (CC0), https://simpleicons.org/?q=googlegemini
Apple	simple-icons apple (CC0), https://simpleicons.org/?q=apple
xAI	simple-icons x (CC0), https://simpleicons.org/?q=x
OpenAI	https://github.com/openai.png?size=160	simple-icons carries no OpenAI mark and openai.com answers 403 to anything that is not a browser, so the organisation avatar is the mark OpenAI itself publishes.
Amazon	https://github.com/amzn.png?size=160	simple-icons carries no Amazon mark. amzn is Amazon’s own organisation.
Microsoft	https://github.com/microsoft.png?size=160	simple-icons carries no Microsoft mark.
Shopify	https://cdn.shopify.com/shopifycloud/brochure/assets/brand-assets/shopify-logo-primary-logo-456baa801ee66a0a435671082365958316831c9960c480451dd0330bcdae304f.svg	Shopify’s own primary logo, off https://www.shopify.com/brand-assets. Unmodified, full colour, and every use links to https://www.shopify.com as the trademark guidelines ask.
Shopify	https://cdn.shopify.com/shopifycloud/brochure/assets/brand-assets/shopify-logo-shopping-bag-full-color-66166b2e55d67988b56b4bd28b63c271e2b9713358cb723070a92bde17ad7d63.svg	The Shopping Bag brandmark on its own, off the same page. Shopify’s guidance says the S is always white whatever the background, so it is used as published.
Shopify	https://cdn.shopify.com/shopifycloud/brochure/assets/brand-assets/shopify-logo-inverted-primary-logo-bdc6ddd67862d9bb1f8c559e1bb50dd233112ac57b29cac2edcf17ed2e1fe6fa.svg	Shopify’s own inverted primary logo, off https://www.shopify.com/brand-assets, for a dark ground. This is the file every lockup on this app draws. The plain primary file leaves its wordmark path unfilled, so it renders black and vanished on this ground.