In this article
The short answer
- In our default Shopify store, all six AI models we rank reached checkout, each in five steps. That is the shortest path of our three real-platform stores.
- None of the six chose a size or a colour. Shopify pre-selects the first available variant, and every model added it to the cart as it was.
- Shopify’s default robots.txt asks bots to stay out of the checkout. Our agent obeys, so on Shopify “reached checkout” means it clicked Check out; the checkout page itself was not tested.
- The default store was not the problem. In our other test stores, what stopped every model were things a store adds itself, on any platform.
When Shopify brought merchant catalogues to AI assistants in December 2025, its CEO said the company was making every store “agent-ready by default” (BetaKit). Since then, many posts have told merchants to check whether an AI agent can actually buy on their site. We had a Shopify store in our weekly test, so we looked at what the agents did in it.
The store and the task
Our store M02 is a Shopify development store with the default theme and six pairs of running shoes, with size and colour as variants. We changed no settings for agents. A development store sits behind a password page: our test code enters the password before the run, and the model never sees it.
The task was the same as in all our stores: buy one pair of running shoes, at most $150 with delivery, and stop before payment. The agent is a real Chrome browser driven by an AI model. It identifies itself, signs its requests with Web Bot Auth, and obeys robots.txt. Each of the six ranked models ran the store once, on 29 October 2026.
What happened
All six models reached checkout, and every run took exactly five steps: open the catalogue, open the first shoe, add to cart, click Check out in the cart drawer, done (recording, Gemini 3.8 Flash).
For comparison, our two other real-platform stores in their default settings, in the same week:
- Magento (M01): five models reached checkout, in 6 to 14 steps. Amazon Nova 2 Lite used up its steps on the home page (recording).
- PrestaShop (M03): five models reached checkout in five steps. GPT-6 Luna stopped in the cart: “Proceed to checkout” opens a cart page with a second checkout button, and it took that for a failed click (recording).
- Shopify (M02): six of six, five steps each.
Nobody chose a size
On the product page, Shopify had already selected EU 42 in Navy, the first variant in stock. Every model added that variant to the cart, and most said in their notes that it was already selected. Claude Haiku 5.5, for example, noted that the size and colour were “already highlighted as selected” before it clicked Add to cart.
Our task named no size, so this was the right call here, and it is part of why the path was so short. It also means this test says nothing about a shopper who needs size 44. With a pre-selected variant, the agent has to notice that the default is wrong and change it. We have not tested that yet; it is a natural next task for our stores.
The checkout the agents did not open
Shopify’s default robots.txt asks bots not to open the checkout. Our agent follows robots.txt, so on Shopify the run ends when the agent clicks through to checkout, and we count that as reaching it. The checkout page itself, with its fields and payment options, was not part of this test.
That is a real difference for a store owner. An agent that respects robots.txt can bring a shopper to the door of your Shopify checkout, but not through it on its own. PrestaShop’s default robots.txt does the same for the cart and order pages; on our PrestaShop store we added a group that lets our agent in, as we explain on our bot page.
What does stop agents
The default stores were not where agents failed this week. In our 18 purpose-built test stores, four stopped every one of the six models: product tiles that are not links, a size list built in JavaScript, checkout only with an account, and a parcel locker picked on a map. We describe each one, with the fix, in our week 44 ranking report.
None of these is tied to a platform. They come from themes, apps and checkout extensions that a store adds on top of the default. A Shopify store that is agent-ready on day one can stop being agent-ready after one theme change or one app install. That is worth checking again after every change, not once.
What this test does not show
- One development store, the default theme, six products, one run per model, one week. A real store with a large catalogue, a custom theme and apps can behave very differently.
- We test shopping in a browser only. Shopify’s channels that put store catalogues inside AI assistants are a different path, and we do not measure them here.
- Our agent acts only on the buttons, links and fields it finds in the page code, with a limit of 16 steps and 150 seconds.
- The scoring is a CanItBuy method (ranking method 1.0), not an official standard. The rules are on our method page.
Check your own store
Every run above has a recording on our ranking page. The free scan checks one product page of your store against the obstacles in our test stores. On WooCommerce, the free CanItBuy Agent Ready plugin shows which AI agents visit and where they stop; on PrestaShop, the free module does the same.
Questions
Can AI shopping agents buy in a default Shopify store?
In our test, all six AI models we rank reached the checkout of a default Shopify development store, each in five steps. Shopify’s default robots.txt asks bots not to open the checkout, so the checkout page itself was not tested.
Did the agents choose a size?
No. Shopify pre-selected the first variant in stock, and every model added it as it was. Our task named no size, so that was correct here; a task with a specific size is not tested yet.
Is this a test of real Shopify merchants?
No. M02 is our own Shopify development store. We do not test or rate other companies’ stores.