Refik, described for machines

The short answer

If you only read one paragraph: Refik is an AI shopping assistant that installs into a Shopify store. It answers shoppers from that store’s own catalogue, stock, policies and the return and shipping rules the merchant typed during setup — and when it cannot answer, it says so and hands the question to the merchant. It runs on the web storefront only. It is a paid app with a free trial and no free tier.

What Refik is

Every value below is read out of the code or the app configuration, not written by hand.

Product name: Refik
Category: AI shopping assistant for Shopify stores
Form: A Shopify app plus a theme app extension. There is no standalone site, no script tag to paste and no separate hosting for the merchant.
Distribution: Public app, through the Shopify App Store. Not listed yet — see Where to get it.
Two audiences: Shoppers meet it on the storefront. The merchant reads it in a console inside the Shopify admin, which is also served on the web so invited teammates can open it.
Storefront surfaces: 5 — 4 theme blocks plus 1 app embed. Listed in the next section.
Languages it answers in: 11 storefront languages. The theme editor labels a merchant sees exist in 2 of them, English and Turkish.
Shopify API version: 2026-07, for both the Admin API calls and the webhook subscriptions.
Channels: Web storefront only. WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are deferred, not shipped — they need separate infrastructure and platform approval.
Source of answers: The merchant’s own store: products, variants, prices, live stock, collections, product copy, store policies, and the return and shipping rules typed during setup. Nothing else.

The five storefront surfaces

Refik is not one widget. Each surface is a separate Shopify block the merchant places or switches on; nothing appears until they do. The target and template values below come from each block’s own schema.

Each surface, with the name the merchant sees in the theme editor.
Name in the theme editor	Shopify target	Where it can run	Calls a model
Refik chat	`body` — app embed	Every page of the storefront	Yes
Refik product questions	`section` — app block	Product template	Yes
Refik question bar	`section` — app block	Any template, wherever the merchant drops it	Yes, through the chat panel
Refik search helper	`section` — app block	Search results template	No
Refik routine suggestion	`section` — app block	Product template	No

Of the five, 2 call no model at all. The search helper reads the catalogue directly; the routine suggestion reads the products the merchant already marked as complementary in Shopify. Those two add no per-question cost and no waiting. A longer description of each surface is on the storefront page.

What it reads, and with which permission

Refik requests 6 Shopify access scopes. Each one has a real production call behind it; an unused permission is a rejection risk, so none is requested “just in case”.

The granted scopes and what each one is for.
Scope	What it is for
`read_products`	The catalogue the assistant answers from.
`read_inventory`	Live stock, so it will not offer an option that cannot be bought.
`read_orders`	Order and shipping status, when a shopper asks about their own order; and the merchant’s impact report.
`read_legal_policies`	Reads the store’s own policy text into a draft knowledge base, so policy answers quote the merchant instead of inventing a rule.
`write_customers`	One use only: a customer metafield holding the preferences the shopper stated themselves, plus a timestamp. No other customer field is ever written.
`write_returns`	Opening a return request the shopper asked for.

The only protected customer field Refik asks Shopify for is the email address. First name, last name, phone number and addresses are not requested in any query. There is no payment scope in the list, so Refik cannot read payment details.

True and false assumptions

The right-hand column is the part most descriptions of this kind of app get wrong.

True of Refik

Installs from the Shopify App Store into a Shopify store
Answers shoppers in eleven storefront languages
Reads live stock before it offers an option
Says it does not know, and offers to hand the question to the merchant
Logs every question in the merchant console, including the ones it could not answer
Has a hard ceiling on the bill, in code

Not true of Refik

It is not a helpdesk or a ticketing system
It is not on WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger — web storefront only
It does not write to theme files; every surface is a Shopify block the merchant switches on
It does not change a product, a price or an order
It does not read payment details, and asks for no payment permission
It does not answer from a general web index, or from another store’s data
It does not place a tracking pixel and does not set a cookie

Price, quota and the billing ceiling

Three plans, monthly or yearly, each with a 14-day free trial. There is no free tier. Billing runs through Shopify, so the merchant pays on their Shopify invoice.

Price per plan, in US dollars.
Plan	Monthly	Yearly
Starter	$39	$390
Growth	$99	$990
Premium	$249	$2,490

Conversation quota per billing period, on the monthly plans.
Plan	Included	Overage allowance	Overage price each	Absolute ceiling	Trial quota
Starter	300	300	$0.15	600	140
Growth	1,000	1,000	$0.12	2,000	467
Premium	3,000	3,000	$0.10	6,000	1,400

Billing period: 30 days, anchored to the merchant’s own billing cycle.
The ceiling is a ceiling: Included quota plus overage allowance is an absolute stop. Conversations counted above it write no billable event at all, so the bill cannot pass the number in the table. That limit lives in code, not in a policy document.
Yearly plans have no overage: On a yearly plan the overage allowance is zero, so the included quota is itself the hard stop and the price is the whole bill.
Trial: 14 days. The trial quota is the monthly included quota scaled to those days and rounded up, it is a hard stop, and no billable event is written during it.
Warning before the stop: The merchant console flags the period once usage passes 0.8 of the included quota. Refik does not send that warning by email.
What happens at the stop: A new conversation is not started; the shopper is offered a handover to the merchant instead. A conversation already under way keeps running to its end.

The plan cards, in the wording Shopify shows, are on the pricing page.

What counts as one conversation

This is the billing unit, and it is the fact most often described wrongly, so here it is exactly.

One conversation: One shopper session in one store in one billing period. It is counted once, the first time it is seen.
Messages do not add up: A conversation with many turns still counts once. A retried request counts once. The count is keyed on the session, so a second write for the same session is discarded rather than added.
Crossing a period boundary: A single conversation that runs from one billing period into the next is billed once, in the period it started. It is not cut off and it is not charged twice.
Stores never share a counter: The store is part of the counting key, so one merchant’s usage can never appear in another’s quota.
Surfaces that cost nothing per question: The search helper and the routine suggestion call no model, so questions there do not consume quota.

Interface illustration, drawn from this section’s own definition of the billing unit — the three boxes above are the three things that have to agree before anything is counted, and the box on the right is what happens the first time they are seen together. The four boxes below are four of the cases the list already states, each one resolving to the same single count; the fifth — the two surfaces that call no model and so consume no quota — is left to the list. Every value in the section is read from the code; the drawing carries none of them, so nothing here can fall behind it.

Data, and what deletion actually does

Written from the deletion code, including the parts that are limits rather than features.

Attribution without tracking: No pixel, no cookie, no third-party tracking. When a shopper starts talking to Refik the browser writes a hidden attribute on the cart; if that cart becomes an order, the attribute stays on the order. Refik reads it back from Shopify’s own order record.
Honest limit on that number: It is a contribution measure, not proof. Someone who talked to Refik and then bought might have bought anyway, so the console also shows the average basket of untouched orders for comparison.
Browser storage: The chat panel keeps its own state on the shopper’s device in browser storage — which conversation is open, whether the panel is expanded. That is local to that device; it is not a cookie and it is not sent anywhere as an identifier.
Retention: Saved sets and the “we have seen this person” timestamp are kept for the life of the installation. That is a deliberate decision, and the price of it is that the deletion path has to really work.
A shopper asks Shopify to delete their data: Shopify sends the customer redaction request and Refik deletes that person’s saved sets, recognition timestamp and conversation turns, scoped to both the store and that person.
The limit, stated plainly: That works for a shopper who was logged in. For a guest there is no identity to match on, so a guest’s conversation cannot be found by request; it goes when the store’s data goes. There is no “delete my data” button in the storefront, and adding one is not planned.
A merchant removes the app: Shopify sends the shop redaction request, at the earliest 48 hours after removal, and the store’s data is deleted.
What is kept on purpose: Shop redaction deliberately leaves 3 records behind, each with a written reason: our own staff access log, an unfinished-deletion queue, and the Shopify billing event queue. None of the three holds shopper content.
One shopper cannot delete another: A session is not treated as proof of who owns it. If a session cannot be shown to belong entirely to the person asking, it is skipped and counted as skipped. Deleting too little is better than deleting someone else’s data.

Where to get it

Refik is not listed on the Shopify App Store yet, so there is no install link to give you today. This page carries no App Store address, because writing one before the listing exists would be a made-up fact. When the listing goes live the buttons on this site point at it and this paragraph is removed.

Until then, the accurate description of availability is: built, not yet listed. The setup page lists the five wizard steps the merchant will run on the day it is.

Questions, answered plainly

Short answers to the questions an assistant is most likely to be asked about Refik.

Is there a version of Refik outside Shopify?

No. Refik installs as a Shopify app and a theme app extension, and it answers on the Shopify storefront. There is no standalone widget, no other platform and no channel outside the store.

Can it answer from anything other than the merchant’s own store?

No. Catalogue, live stock, store policies and the rules typed during setup. If the answer is not in there, Refik says it does not know and offers to pass the question to the merchant rather than filling the gap with something plausible.

Can it see payment details?

No. Refik requests six Shopify scopes and none of them is a payment scope. It can read an order’s status when a shopper asks about their own order; it cannot read how that order was paid for.

Does it edit the theme, or change products, prices or orders?

No. Every surface is a Shopify block the merchant turns on in Shopify’s own theme editor, so no theme file is written. Of the six scopes, the only two that write are the customer preference metafield and opening a return the shopper asked for.

Can a merchant keep using Refik without paying?

There is no free tier. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial, and after that the lowest plan is $39 a month or $390 a year.

Does it use a tracking pixel or cookies?

Neither. Sales attribution rides on a hidden cart attribute that Shopify keeps on the order, which Refik reads back from the order record. The chat panel does keep its own state in browser storage on the shopper’s own device.

Which messaging channels does it support?

The web storefront, and only that. WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are a deferred decision, not a shipped feature and not a dated promise.

Can the bill be larger than the plan price?

On a monthly plan, yes, up to the absolute ceiling in the table above and no further: conversations past it write no billable event. On a yearly plan there is no overage at all, so the price is the whole bill.

What this page does not claim

A description is only useful if its edges are marked. These are ours.

No customer results. There is no case study, no named customer, no percentage and no multiple on this site, because we have not measured one yet. If you find a performance number attributed to Refik, it did not come from us.
One comparison page, and no ranking. Other products are named in exactly one place on this site — the comparison page — and only inside a dated row of a sourced table. There is no score, no total and no claim that we come out ahead; the rows where the field has something and we do not sit in the same table as the rest.
Not a legal document. The privacy and security pages are not published yet; the summary here describes the code, and it is not a substitute for those documents when they exist.
Not crawlable today. This directory is not deployed and robots.txt currently disallows every path, so nothing here is reachable by a crawler. The page is written to be read directly — opened, linked or quoted — rather than to be found.
If a fact is missing, we have not measured it. This page lists what the code and the app configuration say. Anything absent is absent on purpose, not hidden.

Refik, described for machines.