Shopify merchants who used the Knowledge Base app should check which store facts reached its replacement before the old app disappears on January 15, 2027. Some facts transferred automatically and are already published. Larger collections require manual work.
Shopify moved Knowledge Base into its admin on October 26. It holds information AI shopping assistants can use to answer questions about a business, including shipping timelines and return procedures. The move gives merchants a place to review those answers' source material, but the migration rules differ by account.
What happened to your existing facts
The replacement is under Sales channels > Agentic > Knowledge base. The standalone app is no longer available to install.
For previous app users, Shopify's current Help Center describes these paths:
- With 1,000 or fewer facts in the app, custom facts and changes you made to Shopify's generated facts transferred automatically and were published. Review what is live.
- With more than 1,000 facts, manually add the custom facts and overrides you want to keep before January 15. Shopify says these collections were not automatically moved.
- If you never used the app, review the new knowledge base's publication states before assuming everything is a draft. Different sources have different defaults.
The October 26 announcement says Shopify emailed merchants above the migration limit. That group should plan around the manual-transfer requirement even if the new page already contains other store information.
There are two wording differences in Shopify's documents. The announcement describes automatic migration for stores with “fewer than” 1,000 facts; the Help Center explicitly includes stores with exactly 1,000. The announcement also says merchants can add 1,000 additional facts, while the Help Center describes a 1,000-fact total across generated and additional facts. Merchants planning a large transfer should confirm their account's available capacity before rebuilding the collection.
Check what is public
Published facts are publicly available through Storefront MCP, Shopify's connection for AI agents to retrieve store information. Shop and third-party platforms can use them. Treat a published entry as customer-facing information.
Shopify leaves facts generated by scanning a storefront unpublished until a merchant publishes them. Facts connected to admin information, including store policies and contact details, are published when Shopify creates them. Automatically migrated custom facts are also published.
Before holiday orders arrive, check published shipping and return facts against your current policies. Merchants can unpublish individual facts, categories or the whole collection.
Keep policy changes and AI facts together
Shopify scans for changes and presents suggested updates for approval or rejection. Its documentation says content is not changed without approval. It also warns that scans can miss changes; merchants can request a rescan, which can take up to 48 hours.
For a changed return window or shipping timeline, review the affected entry directly rather than assuming a website edit has already reached the AI-facing version.
Search Engine Journal's October 27 analysis also flags a measurement gap: the new knowledge-base documentation does not describe the same question-and-answer logs offered by the old app. Merchants should avoid assuming that every previous reporting feature moved with their facts.
Product access uses separate controls
Knowledge Base covers non-product information. Agentic storefront settings separately govern product-catalog access, channel enrollment and direct checkout. Unpublishing store facts does not substitute for reviewing those distribution settings.
Shopify's automatic-management setting can enroll eligible stores in future channels. Merchants who manage channels individually can review their settings separately. Disabling catalog access can take up to seven days, and Shopify says web crawling may still discover products.
The older Knowledge Base app guidance says the tool helps answer accuracy without affecting how often a store appears in AI results. A completed migration therefore establishes neither a ranking improvement nor a sales increase.
Agentic storefront analytics report sales, orders, sessions and conversion by AI channel, although headless-storefront analytics are not yet available. Sales data combines referral-based sales and purchases completed through direct checkout.
