FAQ
Common questions
Answers to what merchants ask most before connecting and after. If something is missing, email us and a person will answer.
What is Mercopilot?
- What does Mercopilot do?
- Mercopilot connects your Shopify store and your Google Ads account to Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI assistants through a standard called MCP. Once connected, you ask your AI assistant plain-English questions about your store and your ad spend, get a ranked list of what to fix and where to grow, and approve specific changes that are made directly in Shopify or Google Ads. No separate dashboard to monitor, no reports to download.
- What is MCP?
- MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It is an open standard that lets AI assistants connect to outside services so they can look up live data and take actions in real systems, rather than answering from memory alone. Mercopilot is an MCP server. When you add it to Claude or ChatGPT, your assistant gains twelve tools tied to your store and your Google Ads account, covering everything from revenue snapshots to wasted ad spend to executing approved changes. The MCP tools page lists all twelve.
- Which AI assistants does it work with?
- Mercopilot works with Claude (web, desktop, and mobile), Claude Code, ChatGPT, and any other AI tool that supports MCP over Streamable HTTP. The Claude guide and the ChatGPT guide have step-by-step setup instructions for each.
- Is Mercopilot only for Shopify?
- Shopify is the one storefront that is live, and Google Ads is live alongside it, so you can look at what you sell and what you spend to sell it in the same conversation. WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Meta Ads, and Google Analytics are on the roadmap.
Getting started
- What do I need to get started?
- Two things: a Shopify store and Claude or ChatGPT. Connect your store first, then add Mercopilot to your AI client — the Free plan already covers four tools, so a subscription isn't required to start. Upgrade to Professional whenever you want the rest. Your dashboard overview shows each step and marks which ones are still open. The quick-start guide walks through connecting a store and an AI client in under five minutes.
- How do I connect my Shopify store?
- Sign in to your Mercopilot dashboard, open Stores, and type your store's .myshopify.com domain. Shopify shows an authorization screen where you approve the install. Approve it, and your store appears with a Connected status. The whole thing takes about a minute. See the Shopify guide if you run into any issues.
- How do I connect Google Ads?
- Open Ads in your dashboard and click Connect Google Ads. Google asks you to sign in and approve access, and every ad account that sign-in can reach is connected at once, so a manager account brings its clients with it. It is optional. Everything on the store side works without it. The Google Ads guide covers it step by step.
- Do I need to generate an API key?
- No. When you add Mercopilot to Claude or ChatGPT, your AI client opens a Mercopilot sign-in window. You sign in there, pick your store, and click Authorize. That sign-in is the only credential the whole setup needs. There is no key to generate, copy, or store.
- What URL do I paste into my AI client?
https://api.mercopilot.com/mcpis the server address. It is the same for every store and every account. You paste it once per AI client when you first set up the connection.
How it works
- How does Mercopilot read my store data?
- Every time your AI assistant asks a question, Mercopilot fetches live data from Shopify's API. Nothing is copied or stored as a nightly snapshot on Mercopilot's side. You are always seeing your store's current state, which means a stockout surfaces in real time, not the next morning.
- What can I ask my AI assistant?
- Anything you would ask a growth advisor who has full visibility into your store. A few examples: "How is my store doing this month?" "Which products are running low on stock?" "What should I discount to move slow inventory?" "Rewrite the description for my Trail Runner 2." "Publish the draft hoodie I just set up." The how it works page has more examples.
- What can Mercopilot tell me about my Google Ads?
- Two things. The first is where your budget is going to waste: search terms you pay for that never convert, campaigns returning less than your target, and profitable campaigns held back by a daily budget that is set too low. The second joins your Shopping spend to your own catalog, so you can see money going to products that are out of stock or barely selling, and best sellers getting no spend at all. Each finding names the fix, and you can ask for it in the same conversation.
- Will my assistant make changes to my store without asking?
- No. Mercopilot never takes action on its own. An AI assistant can read your store and surface recommendations as often as you ask, but it cannot change anything in Shopify unless you explicitly ask it to make a specific change in that conversation. Every write goes through you.
- What kinds of changes can Mercopilot make?
- Nine types. In your store: updating a product's price, updating a product's title, rewriting a product's description, creating a discount code, updating inventory quantity, and publishing a draft product. In Google Ads: adding a negative keyword to a campaign, pausing a campaign, and setting a campaign's daily budget. Each change is made one at a time, and only after you direct the assistant to make it.
- Where can I see what my assistant has done?
- The Activity page in your dashboard logs every tool call: which tool ran, which store it concerned, the arguments it was given, and whether it succeeded. If a change failed, the log shows the error. Expanding any row shows the full detail, including the exact arguments the assistant passed.
Subscription and billing
- How much does Mercopilot cost?
- Three tiers. Free connects four tools — a store lookup, a live snapshot, product search, and one revenue-leak report — with no card and no time limit. Professional is $49 a month, or $490 a year (works out to $40.83 a month, the equivalent of two months free), and unlocks all twelve tools, every store on your account, and Google Ads. Enterprise is priced around your setup and adds custom integrations, additional APIs, and multiple users — there is no listed price, since it starts with a conversation rather than a checkout.
- What does each plan include?
- Free covers four of Mercopilot's twelve tools: looking up your stores, a full snapshot, searching for a product, and one revenue-leak report. Professional adds the remaining eight — the rest of the analysis tools, both recommendation tools, Google Ads, and the ability to make changes — plus every Shopify store connected to your account, unlimited queries from Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP client, and all changes made through Mercopilot with no per-action charge. The price is the same whether you have one store or five. Enterprise includes everything in Professional plus custom integrations, additional APIs, and multiple users.
- How do I subscribe?
- Open Billing in your dashboard, choose your billing period, and click Upgrade to Professional. You will be redirected to Polar's payment page to enter your card details. Once the payment processes, the rest of the tools are active immediately — your account already had the four Free ones.
- How do I cancel?
- Open Billing in your dashboard and click Cancel subscription. Your access runs to the end of the period you have already paid for. Nothing changes in your Shopify store when you cancel.
- What happens to my tools after I cancel?
- All twelve tools stay active until the end of your paid period. After that, your account drops to the Free plan rather than losing access outright: the store lookup, snapshot, product search, and revenue-leak tools keep answering, and the other eight are refused until you subscribe again. Your stores stay connected and your account remains open either way, so reactivating later is straightforward. No data is deleted when a subscription ends.
- Can I reactivate after canceling?
- Yes. If your paid period has not ended yet, open Billing and click Reactivate. Your subscription continues as if you had not canceled. Once the period ends, a new subscription starts a fresh billing cycle.
- Who handles my payment?
- Payments are processed by Polar on a hosted page they own. Mercopilot never sees or stores your card number. What we keep is your subscription status, the billing period, and the dates it covers.
Account and security
- There's no password. How do I sign in?
- Mercopilot is fully passwordless. You sign in with a passkey or your Google account. A passkey uses your device's built-in biometrics (Face ID, fingerprint, or screen lock), so there is nothing to remember and nothing to lose to a phishing page. If you prefer, Google Sign-In works as an alternative or as a backup on top of a passkey.
- What if I lose access to my passkey device?
- As long as your account has more than one sign-in method, you can use any of them to get back in. From the Account page in your dashboard, you can add a passkey on a new device or link a Google account as a backup. We block removing your last sign-in method so you cannot accidentally lock yourself out.
- Does Mercopilot store my store's data?
- The activity log records every tool call your AI assistant makes: which tool ran, which store it concerned, the arguments it was given, and whether it succeeded. Results are not stored because they duplicate live store data and would grow large quickly. The log exists so you have a clear audit trail of anything that touched your store.
- Does Mercopilot read my customers' personal information?
- No. The Shopify integration reads product, inventory, and order data. It does not read customer names, email addresses, shipping addresses, or payment information. Our privacy policy covers exactly what we collect and why.
Troubleshooting
- My AI client says it doesn't have access to Mercopilot tools.
- Two things to check. First, in Claude (web or desktop), make sure the Mercopilot connector is enabled for the current conversation. Look for the integrations toggle in the conversation toolbar and switch it on. In ChatGPT, open the connector settings and confirm it is active. Second, if you are asking for something beyond the four Free tools and your subscription has lapsed, those eight are refused regardless of the connector state — the store lookup, snapshot, product search, and revenue-leak tools keep working either way. Open Billing in your dashboard to check your subscription status.
- I asked for a change and nothing happened in my store.
- Check the Activity page in your dashboard. Each tool call shows whether it succeeded, and if it failed, what the error was. The most common cause is a mismatched product reference. Ask your assistant to search for the product by name first, then retry the change with the result it finds.
- My AI client keeps asking me to sign in to Mercopilot again.
- OAuth tokens last until they are revoked. If you are being asked repeatedly, the most likely cause is that you signed in with a different Mercopilot account the second time, or the session was revoked from your Account page. Disconnect the Mercopilot connector in your AI client, re-add the server URL, and sign in once more.
- Something isn't covered here.
- Email [email protected] and a person will answer.
Stop asking “how many orders did I get?” Start asking what to fix first
Connect Shopify and Google Ads and see where the money is going — the best seller about to run out, the stock that has stopped moving, the search terms you pay for that never sell. Every fix comes with what it's worth, and getting it done is one word away.
- See the biggest wins first
- Finds it, then fixes it for you
- Catch lost sales before they happen