RE:CATALOG

RE:CATALOG — Frequently Asked Questions

Getting started

What does RE:CATALOG do?

You upload photos of a product. RE:CATALOG looks at them and writes a complete catalog entry: title, formatted description, Shopify taxonomy category, product attributes, tags, SEO title and meta description, and a suggested price — in your shop’s own language. It then creates the product as a draft and translates it into your other store languages.

The photos-to-draft path takes about a minute. What you would otherwise type by hand for every product, you review and approve instead.

Do I need an AI account or API key?

No. On standard plans the app uses our AI accounts and the cost is included in your subscription. Supplying your own key is optional and only available on BYOK plans — see Bring your own key.

What do I need to install it?

A Shopify store and an active RE:CATALOG plan. Nothing else — no theme changes, no code, no external accounts.

Why does the app ask for those permissions?

Permission What it is for
write_products Creating the draft product and its content.
write_files Uploading your photos into your Shopify Files library.
read_locales Seeing which languages your store publishes, so it knows what to translate into.
write_translations Writing translations into Shopify’s native translation store.
write_metaobjects, write_metaobject_definitions Writing standard category metafields, on plans that include them.

The app requests no access to your customers or orders.

Using the app

How many photos can I upload per product?

Between 1 and 5. More angles generally produce a better result — a photo of the label, tag, or spec sheet helps the most, because the app reads attributes it can actually see rather than guessing.

Will it invent details about my product?

It is instructed not to. The app extracts attributes it can read or safely infer from the photos and is told not to claim features that are not visible. It can still be wrong, which is exactly why every product is created as a draft and shown to you for review first. Nothing is published to your storefront without you.

Can I edit the result before the product is created?

Yes. Every field on the preview screen is editable — title, description, category, attributes, tags, SEO, price. What you approve is what gets created; your edits are what the translations are based on.

The category is wrong. Can I change it?

Yes. The app suggests the best match from the Shopify Standard Product Taxonomy plus up to four alternatives, and you pick from that list on the preview screen.

Is the suggested price reliable?

Treat it as a starting point, not an appraisal. It is an estimate for your market, based on your store’s country and currency and on what the model can recognise in the photos. It has no access to your costs, your margins, or live market data. Always check it.

How do I set the tone of the copy?

Settings → Brand voice. Anything you write there is passed to the AI on every generation and applied to titles, descriptions, tags, and SEO text. Concrete instructions work better than adjectives: “short sentences, no exclamation marks, address the reader as ‘you’” beats “premium and engaging”.

Why is the product created as a draft?

So you review before customers see it. Publish it in Shopify when you are satisfied.

Can I use it on products I already have?

The main flow creates new products from photos. Check the app for the current status of enhancing existing products.

Languages and translation

Which languages does it write in?

The catalog entry is generated in your store’s primary language first. It is then translated into the other languages your store publishes, according to your plan’s limit and your selection in Settings.

Where do translations end up?

In Shopify’s native translation store — the same place Translate & Adapt uses. Open any product, switch language, and you will see them. You can edit them there like any other translation.

We never store your translated content on our servers. If you uninstall the app, your translations stay in your store.

How many languages do I get?

It depends on your plan. Free plans include your primary language plus one more; paid plans include more; BYOK plans are unlimited. Your Settings page shows the exact limit for your plan.

A translation failed. Do I lose the product?

No. Translation runs one language at a time, so a failure affects only that language. The product and every language that succeeded are unaffected. You can retry the failed language from the wizard, or resume it later from the dashboard.

Plans and billing

How does billing work?

Through Shopify’s usage-based billing. You pay a plan base fee, your plan includes a number of product generations, and anything beyond that is metered per product and appears on your regular Shopify invoice. There is nothing separate to pay and no card to enter — we never see your payment details.

What exactly counts as one billable product?

One delivered analysis. When the app finishes reading your photos and shows you the result, that counts — whether or not you go on to create the product. This is deliberate: the AI work is done and paid for at that point.

Translations do not cost extra. Editing the preview does not cost extra. Creating the product after the analysis does not cost extra.

A generation failed. Was I charged?

No. Metering only happens once an analysis is successfully delivered to you. Failures are not metered.

Is there a free plan?

Where offered, the free plan includes a set number of products per calendar month (10 by default) and your primary language plus one more. The counter resets on the 1st of each month, UTC.

I hit my free plan limit. What now?

You will see a message telling you how many of your monthly products you have used. Either wait for the reset on the 1st, or upgrade in the app’s billing page.

Can I change or cancel my plan?

Yes, in the app’s billing page, at any time, without contacting us. Uninstalling the app cancels the subscription through Shopify.

Bring your own key (BYOK)

What is BYOK?

On BYOK plans you supply your own AI provider API key in Settings. The app then calls that provider using your account.

Why would I want that?

Three reasons: your AI provider bills you directly at their rates instead of the generation being metered on your Shopify invoice; the data relationship with the AI provider is directly yours, under your own terms with them; and you get unlimited translation languages and free choice of provider and model.

The trade-off is that you manage the key and the provider account yourself.

Is my API key safe?

It is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before it is written to our database, decrypted in memory only at the moment a generation runs, never logged, never displayed back to you in full, and destroyed when you uninstall the app. You can remove it yourself in Settings at any time.

Which providers can I use?

Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (GPT), Google (Gemini), Mistral, and xAI (Grok). The available list is shown in Settings. On a BYOK plan the app uses only your key — it will not silently fall back to ours — so if the key is missing or invalid, generation is disabled with an error telling you what to fix.

Data and privacy

What happens to my product photos?

They upload from your browser straight into your own Shopify Files library — they never pass through our servers on the way. When you press Generate, our server fetches a resized copy from Shopify’s CDN, holds it in memory for that one request, sends it to the AI provider, and discards it. We never store your photos. Our database only records the Shopify file ID, which points to a file in your store.

Which AI provider sees my photos?

Whichever one your plan and settings resolve to — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral, or xAI. The app shows you the provider that produced each result. On plans with model selection or BYOK, you choose.

Will my photos be used to train AI models?

Not by default. All of these providers state that data submitted through their paid APIs is not used to train their models by default, and we do not opt into any training programme. If you want that relationship directly under your own contract with the provider, use a BYOK plan.

Do you access my customers’ data?

No — and we could not if we wanted to. The app holds no permission to read customers or orders. We store no customer data of any kind.

What data do you actually keep?

Your shop domain, your settings (brand voice, language choices, encrypted BYOK key), a record of each generation with the generated text and which AI model produced it, and the usage events sent to Shopify for billing. That is it. Full detail is in our Privacy Policy.

What happens to my data when I uninstall?

Your session and all your settings — including your encrypted API key — are deleted immediately on uninstall. 48 hours later, Shopify sends a redaction request and we purge everything else: your generation history, translation records, and usage events. Nothing about your shop remains.

Everything the app wrote into your store — draft products, files, translations — stays yours and stays in your store.

Troubleshooting

“Subscription required”

Your store has no active RE:CATALOG subscription. Open the app’s billing page and choose a plan.

“Monthly limit reached”

You are on the free plan and have used this month’s allowance. Wait for the 1st, or upgrade.

“Rate limited”

The app allows up to 20 generations per hour per store, to prevent runaway usage. Wait and retry.

“Files not ready”

Shopify is still processing your uploaded photos. Wait a few seconds and press Generate again. If it persists, re-upload the photo — a corrupt or unsupported file can stall processing.

“API key missing” or “Invalid API key” (BYOK plans)

Go to Settings and add or replace your provider API key. BYOK plans use only your key — there is no fallback to ours. Check that the key is active in your provider’s console and that the account has credit.

“Provider not available”

The provider you selected is temporarily unavailable in the app. Pick a different one in Settings.

The generation timed out

AI providers occasionally slow down. Retry. If it repeats, try fewer or smaller photos, or a different provider if your plan allows it.

Something else

Email TODO: support@…. Tell us your store domain and roughly when it happened, and we can find the specific job in our logs.

Support