Shopify: the 360 agent-readiness check
Shopify scores 74 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a B, read 9 November 2026. Of the five surfaces an agent acts on, Ora found 4: an MCP server, a public API, OAuth, a command line. A live MCP handshake on a platform that still has no OpenAPI file.
On 9 November 2026 the public site at shopify.com scored 74 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a B, in Ora's Commerce Tools category. Ora probes a site the way an agent would: it requests pages with the agents' own user agents, reads robots.txt, looks for the files agents read, and tries the API, MCP and payment surfaces. This check reads the act layer first, because that is what the directory records, then the door, what an agent can read, and whether the company is found and recommended. Ora's one-line summary: Shopify offers strong developer discoverability and an NPM/PyPI SDK with a ChatGPT app listing, but lacks a published OpenAPI specification for agents to integrate against.
The score
| Layer | Asks | Points | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Usability | Can agents use it | 56 of 79 | 71% |
| Access | Can agents read it | 39 of 60 | 65% |
| Discovery | Can agents find and recommend it | 15 of 16 | 94% |
| Payments | Can agents pay | 0 of 0 | none apply |
| Total | Grade B | 74 of 100 | 74% |
What an agent can do
The surfaces an agent acts on: an API it can find and call, an MCP server, an agent card, OAuth metadata, a command line. This is the layer the directory records, so it comes first. 2 checks in this group do not apply to this site and are left out.
In the directory, Shopify no MCP endpoint on record; the connector run of 4 November 2026 is on the entry page. Ora's MCP server check for the same domain reads pass; the two look for different things, the directory for a server that answers a handshake and lists tools, Ora for a server it can find from the site.
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCP server / manifest mcp-server | Pass | 6 of 6 | MCP server connected via Streamable HTTP - shopify-mcp-server v1.0.0 (protocol 2025-11-25) |
| MCP well-known discovery mcp-well-known-discovery | Partial | 1 of 2 | MCP server at https://mcp.shopify.com - list its server card, hosted on your own domain, in /.well-known/ai-catalog.json so MCP clients can discover it |
| Public API with reachable endpoints public-api | Pass | 7 of 7 | REST API documentation found at https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/build/ai-toolkit.md. Best-of-protocols score: 7/7. |
| Public API/docs linked from homepage public-api-docs | Pass | 3 of 3 | Documentation site found at https://shopify.dev |
| Developer portal developer-portal | Pass | 6 of 6 | Developer portal found at /developers |
| OpenAPI spec published openapi-spec | Fail | 0 of 7 | No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found |
| API catalog (RFC 9727) api-catalog-rfc9727 | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/api-catalog found (RFC 9727) |
| A2A / agent-card a2a-agent-card | Fail | 0 of 2 | No A2A agent card found at /.well-known/agent-card.json |
| Agent discovery file agent-discovery-file | Pass | 2 of 2 | Agent discovery file found at /agents.md |
| OAuth 2.0 support oauth-support | Pass | 5 of 5 | OpenID Connect discovery endpoint found at https://accounts.shopify.com |
| OAuth Protected Resource metadata (RFC 9728) oauth-protected-resource | Pass | 2 of 2 | no detail published |
| auth.md exists auth-md-exists | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /auth.md found at site root |
| WebMCP support webmcp | Partial | 0 of 5 | No WebMCP support detected on the homepage. WebMCP is mentioned in the documentation at /developers, but a mention is not an implementation, so it earns no points. |
| NLWeb /ask endpoint nlweb-ask | Fail | 0 of 1 | No NLWeb-conformant /ask endpoint found via GET or POST |
| CLI tool available cli-tool | Pass | 3 of 3 | CLI package found on npm: @shopify/cli |
| Multi-language SDK packages rest-sdk-packages | Pass | 3 of 3 | SDK packages found across 3 ecosystems: npm, pypi, rubygems |
| JSON error responses json-error-responses | Fail | 0 of 4 | API does not return JSON error responses (or no API detected) |
At the door
What the site answers when a request arrives with an agent's user agent, and what robots.txt says to agents.
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Not blocked by bot detection bot-detection | Pass | 2 of 2 | Site accessible to 4 agent user-agents (ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot). |
| Agent crawler reachability agent-crawler-reachability | Pass | 2 of 2 | Reachable to every agent we tested - ChatGPT-User: reachable, OAI-SearchBot: reachable, Claude-User: reachable, PerplexityBot: reachable |
| robots.txt AI crawler policy robots-ai-policy-quality | Pass | 2 of 2 | AI search crawlers: allowed in 3 of 3 checks (3 crawlers on 1 page). AI training crawlers: allowed in 2 of 2 checks (2 crawlers on 1 page), not scored. |
| robots.txt agent-user policy robots-agent-user-policy | Pass | 2 of 2 | No applicable crawl or usage restriction found for 3 user-triggered agents (chatgpt-user, claude-user, perplexity-user) on 1 public page: https://shopify.com/. Declared policy only; |
| Content behind auth docs-auth-gate | Pass | 2 of 2 | All 5 sampled pages are publicly readable (5 with substantive content) |
| Homepage not hidden from search noindex-directives | Pass | 1 of 1 | No noindex on the homepage: no robots, googlebot or bingbot meta tag and no X-Robots-Tag header hides it from search. |
| Redirect hygiene redirect-hygiene | Pass | 1 of 1 | no detail published |
| Web Bot Auth directory web-bot-auth-directory | Partial | 1 of 2 | Web Bot Auth directory has no 'keys' array |
What an agent can read
Whether the text is in the first response, what the site publishes for agents, and how it describes itself to them.
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Content without JavaScript content-no-js | Partial | 2 of 3 | Homepage: 3361 chars with H1, but 2.1% content ratio is below the 5% target. 4 of 4 sampled inner pages have text without JavaScript (1 skipped). |
| Page token budget page-token-budget | Pass | 1 of 1 | All 7 measured pages fit an agent context budget (largest ~4K tokens) |
| Sitemap exists sitemap | Pass | 2 of 2 | Valid sitemap found at https://www.shopify.com/sitemaps_list.xml with multiple sitemaps entries |
| Sitemap freshness (lastmod) sitemap-lastmod | Pass | 1 of 1 | no detail published |
| llms.txt exists llms-txt-exists | Pass | 1 of 1 | Found the llms.txt at https://shopify.dev/llms.txt. |
| llms.txt formatting llms-txt-formatting | Pass | 2 of 2 | The llms.txt is well-formatted: 87 lines with markdown links, 12,797 characters in total. |
| llms.txt links resolve llms-txt-links-resolve | Pass | 2 of 2 | no detail published |
| Markdown agent docs markdown-negotiation | Pass | 1 of 1 | Markdown-shaped docs found at path-suffix routes (1) |
| Markdown URL fallback markdown-url-fallback | Fail | 0 of 2 | Homepage does not support the .md suffix. Probed https://shopify.com/index.md and it did not return markdown (expected text/markdown content-type or a heading-led non-HTML body). |
| Bot-UA markdown serving agent-ua-markdown | Fail | 0 of 1 | No probed bot User-Agent (ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User) receives markdown when requesting HTML. Optional: detect AI-bot UAs server-side and serve them a markdown representation directly. |
| Agent mode view agent-mode-view | Fail | 0 of 2 | ?mode=agent returns same content as homepage (no dedicated agent view) |
| JSON-LD structured data json-ld | Fail | 0 of 4 | No JSON-LD structured data found on homepage |
| Organization schema completeness org-schema-completeness | Fail | 0 of 2 | No JSON-LD found - Organization schema missing |
| JSON-LD entity linking (sameAs) json-ld-entity-linking | Fail | 0 of 2 | No JSON-LD found - no entity linking possible |
| Schema type breadth schema-type-breadth | Fail | 0 of 2 | No extended schema types found - AI can only answer basic questions about this entity |
| Metadata completeness metadata-completeness | Pass | 2 of 2 | All metadata signals present: canonical URL, lang="en", og:image, og:type |
| Agent instruction / when-to-use agent-instruction | Fail | 0 of 3 | No agent instruction file with when-to-use guidance found |
Found and recommended
Whether an assistant can find the company by name, confirm what it is, and see it in the registries agents read.
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand name discoverability brand-search-accuracy | Pass | 3 of 3 | shopify.com ranks #5 for "Shopify" (searched your brand name alone: no main product term from your homepage qualified) |
| Wikipedia / Wikidata entity presence wikipedia-presence | Partial | 2 of 4 | Wikidata Q7501150 (Shopify) verified - draft a Wikipedia page with cited references to complete knowledge graph coverage |
| Developer resource discoverability agentic-search-specific | Pass | 3 of 3 | no detail published |
| Listed in MCP registries mcp-registry-listed | Pass | 1 of 1 | no detail published |
| NPM/PyPI SDK package npm-sdk-package | Pass | 1 of 1 | no detail published |
| ChatGPT app listed chatgpt-app-listed | Pass | 2 of 2 | no detail published |
| Registry branding registry-branding | Fail | 0 of 2 | No registry branding (name, icon, description) found |
| Listed on skills.sh skills-sh-listed | Pass | 1 of 1 | no detail published |
| ARD discovery ard-catalog | Fail | 0 of 1 | No /.well-known/ard.json, no same-site rel="ard" link, and no legacy /.well-known/ai-catalog.json |
Payments
The agent payment protocols Ora probes for. A site that sells nothing has nothing here, and Ora scores the layer out of zero when none applies.
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| UCP - Universal Commerce Protocol ucp-support | Partial | 0 of 3 | UCP text signals (universal commerce protocol) plus OAuth authorization-server metadata; no /.well-known/ucp profile found on https://shopify.com or https://api.shopify.com |
| ACP - Agentic Commerce Protocol acp-support | Partial | 0 of 3 | no ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) signals detected |
| ACP delegate payment acp-delegate-payment | Partial | 0 of 3 | No ACP Delegate Payment signals detected |
| AP2 - Agent Payments Protocol ap2-support | Partial | 0 of 3 | No AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol) signals detected |
| x402 payment protocol x402-support | Partial | 0 of 2 | No x402 payment protocol support detected |
| MPP payment protocol mpp-support | Partial | 0 of 2 | No MPP (Machine Payments Protocol) support detected |
The fixes worth most points
Ora attaches an estimate to each failing or partial check: how many points the site would gain by passing it. These are the 5 with the largest estimates for Shopify, with what Ora observed. The wording of each fix is Ora's; the 28 checks it runs on an MCP server are listed with their layer and tier.
- OpenAPI spec published: fail, 0 of 7, about 3.9 points to gain. Ora saw: No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found
- Scoped permissions: fail, 0 of 5, about 2.8 points to gain. Ora saw: No declared OAuth scopes, security schemes, or scoped-permission documentation found
- WebMCP support: partial, 0 of 5, about 2.8 points to gain. Ora saw: No WebMCP support detected on the homepage. WebMCP is mentioned in the documentation at /developers, but a mention is not an implementation, so it earns no points.
- JSON error responses: fail, 0 of 4, about 2.3 points to gain. Ora saw: API does not return JSON error responses (or no API detected)
- MCP Apps support: fail, 0 of 4, about 2.3 points to gain. Ora saw: No MCP Apps support detected - this product has an in-agent UI surface but exposes no ui:// resources or tool UI metadata for agents to render.
Our read
Shopify's MCP server completed a live handshake with Ora over Streamable HTTP, shopify-mcp-server version 1.0.0 on protocol 2025-11-25, which puts it in the small group of companies here whose act layer an agent can use today rather than read about. OpenID Connect discovery is published at accounts.shopify.com, the CLI is on npm, SDKs are in three registries, shopify.dev carries an llms.txt and the domain serves an agents.md. What it does not publish is an OpenAPI specification, about 4 points, and the server card is not listed in a catalog on the company's own domain. The reading side is thinner than the act side: the home page gives 2.1 percent text and no JSON-LD, and Ora found a Wikidata item without a Wikipedia article. For a commerce platform the surfaces that matter are live; the files around them are the work left.
Test your own surfaces
The scan above is free and needs no account: enter a domain at ora.ai and read the same four layers for your own site. For an MCP server, Ora scans the server URL itself and runs 28 of its 132 public checks on it, which is why it is the check this directory recommends; the reasons, the limits and the alternatives are on their own page. The command below runs the same audit from a terminal and exits with 1 under the score you set, so it can gate a deploy.
npx ax@0.10 audit https://example.com --min-score 70All 360 checks, one company a day. Corrections to the corrections page.