Product knowledge base

How product indexing works

Indexing is how a product gets a knowledge base. Until you've indexed a product, the widget doesn't appear on its page and no AI has anything specific to answer from. What it reads Only your own product content in Shopify: - Product title - Description - Vendor - Product type It doesn't pull anything from the web, from competitor listings, or from your other products. If a detail isn't in your product content, it won't be in the knowledge base. That's worth knowing up front, because a two-line description won't produce much of a spec sheet. What it produces - A structured description — your description, reorganised into sections. - A spec sheet — key specifications pulled out of your copy. - An FAQ — questions and answers a shopper is likely to need. - Predefined questions — the suggested question chips shown in the widget. 📷 A product's Knowledge base tab, scrolled so the sections, spec sheet and FAQ are all visible. You can edit any of it afterwards. See Review and edit a product's knowledge base. What it costs One AI generation per run. Regenerating only the knowledge base costs one, and regenerating only the questions costs one, so rebuilding both halves separately costs two where doing them together costs one. How many you get depends on your plan. See Plans and pricing. How each AI uses it Arus AI answers from the knowledge base of whichever product the shopper is looking at, and is told to stay on that product rather than wander off into general advice. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Grok get the shopper's question plus a link to a public JSON file containing that product's knowledge base. That's what stops them guessing from the product name alone. Keeping it up to date If you later change a product's title, description, vendor or product type, the app marks its knowledge base Needs update. It doesn't regenerate on its own, because that would spend your generations without asking. Changes to tags, price, inventory, images or product status don't trigger this, since none of them feed the knowledge base. See Product statuses explained.

Index products in bulk

The Products page is the list of products Ask Any AI knows about. Adding a product to that list and indexing it is what makes the widget appear on its page. Three ways to add products Click Add products at the top right. - Select products — pick them individually from a picker. Good when you're starting out or topping up later. - Select collections — adds everything in the collections you choose. Handy for rolling out one category at a time. - Add all products — your whole catalog. The app asks you to confirm first, because on a big catalog this uses a lot of generations. 📷 The Add products dropdown open, showing all three options with their descriptions. Then index them Select the rows you want and index them. Each product uses one AI generation. Runs happen in the background, so you can leave the page and come back — the statuses update as each one finishes. Check your allowance first Indexing 400 products needs 400 generations. Have a look at the AI generations meter on the home page before you start a big run. What happens when you hit a limit explains what happens if you run out halfway through. The short version: the products that already finished are fine and you don't pay for them twice. If you're on the free plan with 10 generations, spend them on your ten best sellers rather than whatever happens to be at the top of the list. Removing products Selecting rows and removing them deletes those knowledge bases and takes the widget off those product pages. If you add them back later you'll need to index them again, and pay the generation again.

Product statuses explained

Every row on the Products page has a status badge. 📷 The Products list with several rows visible, ideally showing Indexed, Needs update and Not indexed badges together. Not indexed The product is on your list but doesn't have a knowledge base yet, so the widget isn't showing on its page. Index it to fix that. Indexing A run is in progress. It happens in the background, so you can go and do something else — the status updates when it's done. Indexed The product has a current knowledge base and the widget is live on its page, assuming you've added the block to your theme. Needs update The product has a knowledge base, but you've since changed the title, description, vendor or product type. The widget carries on working and answering from the old knowledge base — it's just describing an older version of the product. Regenerate it when you're ready. It costs one generation, which is why the app flags it instead of doing it automatically. Changing tags, price, inventory, images or product status never triggers this, because none of them are used to build the knowledge base. Generation failed The run didn't finish. Hover over the badge to see the actual error. Usually it's one of these: - The product barely has any content. A title and one line of description isn't enough to build a spec sheet and an FAQ from. Fill out the description and try again. - You've run out of generations for the month. See What happens when you hit a limit. - Something went wrong temporarily. Just run it again. If a product keeps failing and it has a proper description, send us the product URL at support@aruslabs.co.

Review and edit a product's knowledge base

Click any product on the Products list to open it. There are three tabs. 📷 A product detail page showing the three tabs: Knowledge base, Predefined questions, Questions asked. Knowledge base The generated sections, spec sheet and FAQ. Underneath the heading you'll see either AI generated or Manual, the second meaning you've edited it since. Edit lets you change anything by hand, and your changes stick — the app won't quietly overwrite them. Regenerate rebuilds it from the product's current content. It costs one AI generation and it replaces your manual edits, so if you've hand-corrected a spec, copy it somewhere before you regenerate. Generating takes about 10 to 20 seconds. Predefined questions The suggested questions shown in the widget, one per line. These are worth spending time on, since most shoppers tap a suggestion rather than typing their own question. Regenerating just the questions costs one generation. See Predefined questions. Questions asked What real shoppers have asked about this particular product, and which AI they used. Filter to Chat to see only the Arus AI conversations, since those are the ones with a full transcript. What to look for on your first few products Read the FAQ and the spec sheet properly on two or three products before you index the whole catalog. Two things to watch for: Specs that came out wrong. Usually the description was ambiguous — a measurement with no unit, a compatibility note that reads two ways. Fix the description and regenerate, rather than patching the spec sheet, so the product page improves too. An FAQ that talks around the question. If your description doesn't say whether the jacket is machine washable, the FAQ can't either. Add it to the description. The knowledge base is only ever as good as the product content it was built from, so most fixes belong in Shopify rather than here.

Predefined questions

Predefined questions are the tappable suggestions in the widget. Most shoppers use one instead of typing their own, so they end up doing a lot of the work. 📷 The widget on a storefront product page with the question chips visible. Editing them Open a product from Products and go to the Predefined questions tab. One question per line. Save when you're done. Regenerating them with AI costs one generation and replaces whatever's there. Writing good ones Ask what a shopper asks, not what you want to tell them. "Will this fit a 15-inch laptop?" gets tapped. "What are the dimensions?" doesn't. Be specific to the product. Generic questions get generic answers, and shoppers can tell. Cover the objection. The thing a hesitant shopper wouldn't email to ask about — sizing, compatibility, care, returns — is usually the question worth putting in the widget. Four to six is plenty. A long list gets skimmed past. How they're displayed This is a theme setting, on the Ask Any AI block, under Predefined questions → Layout: - Show all (stacked) shows every question at once. Best if you've got a few short ones. - One at a time (auto-rotating) cycles through them in a single slot. Better for longer questions, or when there isn't much room on the product page. It applies to every product, since it's set on the theme block rather than per product.