Getting Started
Recommended first steps
- Confirm WooCommerce is active and the shop has published, visible products.
- Open WooCommerce → AI Assistant → Settings → General.
- Enable Enable AI Agent.
- Leave Transport on Blocking request (most compatible) unless you have a specific streaming host (see the warning below).
- Open the storefront. You should see a circular launcher (default: bottom right).
- Send a product name that exists in the catalog (for example an exact product title).
You do not need an AI API key for this test. The plugin searches WooCommerce and returns product cards.
Basic configuration
| Goal | Where |
|---|---|
| Turn the assistant on | Settings → General → Enable AI Agent |
| Conversational AI | AI Provider → choose OpenAI or Gemini, save a key, pick a model |
| Chat look and greeting | Settings → Appearance |
| Reply language | Settings → AI Language |
| How products are found | Product Search |
| Suggestions on product/cart | Recommendations |
| Place chat in a page | Shortcode [ai_woocommerce_assistant] — see Shortcodes |
How to verify the plugin is working
Admin
- WooCommerce → AI Assistant → Dashboard shows status cards (empty cards mean no traffic yet, not a failure).
- Developer & Debug shows a system status panel.
Storefront
- Open any shop page (not wp-admin).
- Click the launcher.
- You should see the chatbot name and welcome message.
- Type a product title from your catalog and send.
Expected without an API key
- Product cards from WooCommerce, or the No Products Found fallback message
- Cart icon / mini-cart if cart tools are enabled (they are on by default)
- No invented product names or prices
Expected with a valid API key
- Natural-language replies plus the same catalog cards
- Tool-based Q&A, comparison, and sales questions when those tools are enabled
If the launcher is missing
- Enable AI Agent is off
- Show floating assistant is off and the page has no shortcode
- You are on a page that already contains the shortcode (the floating launcher is hidden there on purpose)
- A caching plugin is serving HTML from before activation — purge cache
Basic frontend usage
Shoppers:
- Open the chat (launcher or shortcode).
- Type a question or product request.
- Browse product cards (price, image, stock, add to cart).
- Confirm staged cart changes when the assistant proposes them.
- Open the in-chat cart, change quantity, remove items, or go to WooCommerce checkout.
Guests can use search, cart, and (with order number + billing email) order lookup. Logged-in customers can list their recent orders without that extra step.
Warning: Transport = Streaming
The Transport setting can be set to Streaming, with automatic fallback. The REST config advertises sse, but the shipped storefront widget sends blocking POST requests and does not open an EventSource stream.
Recommended: leave Transport on Blocking request (most compatible).
Implementation status of storefront SSE streaming: incomplete. See General settings.