Put a shop-by-chat agent on your own site without rebuilding checkout: connect your live catalog once, keep yourself as merchant of record, and let shoppers go from question to order in the conversation: AI agent prompt
PYMNTS (Nov 5, 2026), covering firmly’s Series A announcement, reports that firmly Connect lets merchants plug existing commerce infrastructure into AI agents, marketplaces, social networks and shoppable ads through one standardized connection so they are not rewriting catalog, inventory, pricing and checkout for every new channel. Merchants remain merchant of record and keep their payment provider, customer relationships and transaction data. Alongside the $15 million round led by Squarepoint Capital (with J.P. Morgan Payments, Mastercard and Samsung Next among participants), firmly launched Ask Agent: a conversational shopping experience added to a merchant site with one line of JavaScript. Shoppers describe what they want in plain language and get recommendations from the merchant’s real-time catalog, pricing and inventory, then can move from discovery through checkout in the conversation, with support for loyalty, cross-sell and post-purchase service. The company said early Ask Agent deployments showed conversion-rate gains of up to 18% and average-order-value gains of up to 23% (company-reported). Analysts cited in the release expect AI-driven U.S. retail-site traffic to grow 130% year over year this holiday season. The prompt below helps you spec the same merchant-controlled chat shop even if you wire it yourself.
The prompt
Help me design an on-site shop-by-chat agent that never bypasses my checkout. Store: [what I sell]. Catalog source: [Shopify/other + how inventory updates]. Rules: I stay merchant of record; use my payment provider; never invent stock or price; escalate custom quotes and complaints to a person. 1) List the 15 intents the agent must handle (find product, compare, size help, gift find, loyalty, order status, return start) and which ones may complete a purchase in-chat vs must hand off. 2) Write the system rules: only recommend in-stock SKUs at live price, show shipping and return facts from my published policy, and refuse medical/legal claims. 3) Draft 10 sample shopper chats and the correct agent behavior for each. 4) Give a one-week pilot plan: where the chat widget sits, which products are in scope, who reviews transcripts daily, and which metrics (conversion, AOV, escalation rate, wrong-answer rate) decide keep or kill. 5) Checklist so loyalty discounts and post-purchase help still hit my existing systems. Mark unknowns [CHECK].
Fill in the blanks, then copy
This prompt has 2 [bracket]s to fill in. Type your details below and the prompt updates as you go. Your answers stay in this browser and are reused on other prompts with the same blanks. Nothing is sent to us.
Example values are fictional, just to show how a filled-in prompt reads. Replace them with your real details.How to use it
- Copy the prompt above.
- Replace every [bracket] with your own details (use the fill-in-the-blanks box above, which remembers your answers for the next prompt).
- Paste it into firmly Ask Agent / Connect, Shopify, ChatGPT and review the answer before you use it.
Works with: firmly Ask Agent / Connect, Shopify, ChatGPT, Claude, your existing payments provider
Real-world example: pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/firmly-lands-15-million-a
Featured in: AI prompts for writing SOPs, reports, policies and checklists
Before you use it: what to check
Already built into this prompt
- Help me design an on-site shop-by-chat agent that never bypasses my checkout.
- Rules: I stay merchant of record; use my payment provider; never invent stock or price; escalate custom quotes and complaints to a person.
Check yourself
- This prompt works on text other people wrote (emails, reviews, messages or web pages). That text can hide instructions aimed at AI, such as "ignore your rules and…". Paste it as material to work on, and never let the AI act on requests inside it, like paying, sharing logins or changing records. How prompt injection works →
- Check every figure, price and total against your own records before anything is sent, posted or booked. A person approves refunds, discounts, payments and price changes.
- Anything legal, tax or compliance-related is a first draft for a qualified person to check. It is not professional advice, and clause references and deadlines must be checked against the source.
- Remove names, contact details, account numbers and other personal data the task doesn't need before you paste, and check your AI tool's data and training settings.
Using an AI agent? Download this prompt as a SKILL.md agent skill with these checks built in, or get the .zip for Claude.ai. How to install skills.
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