MCP Integration

What is MCP?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets AI assistants interact with external services through a standardized interface. ZeroShop is one of the first eCommerce platforms with native MCP support, giving you 130+ tools to manage your shop through natural language.

Instead of clicking through admin panels, you can tell Claude or ChatGPT things like "create a product called Winter Jacket for $89.99" or "show me today's orders" and the AI will execute it directly through your shop's MCP endpoint.

Connecting Your Shop

MCP clients connect to your shop at:

https://yourshop.zeroshop.io/mcp

The connection uses OAuth 2.1 with PKCE — your MCP client handles this automatically. When you first connect, you'll be asked to authorize the client and select which capabilities to grant.

For Claude Desktop: Add your shop URL to Claude's MCP server configuration. Claude will handle the OAuth flow in the browser.

For other MCP clients: Point the client at your shop's MCP endpoint. The client discovers the OAuth configuration automatically via /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource.

Available Capabilities

MCP tools are organized into categories. You choose which to enable when authorizing a client:

• Products — create, update, delete products; manage variants, images, bundles, and custom fields
• Categories — organize products into categories with facets
• Product Series — curate ordered collections of products with hero media and translations
• Orders — view orders, update status, payment, tracking, and shipments
• Customers — view customer profiles and order history
• Pages — create and edit custom storefront pages (including Tera body templates)
• Invoices — configure PDF branding and regenerate invoices on demand
• Shipments — fetch Easyship rates, buy labels, and refresh tracking
• AI Assistant — manage conversations, OpenRouter keys, and tool execution
• Settings — update shop configuration, SMTP, domain, and integrations
• Templates & Themes — customize your storefront (call get_template_guide first!)
• Translations — manage storefront strings and per-item content translations
• Vouchers — create and manage discounts
• Media — upload and manage files, including digital product downloads
• Subscriptions — manage recurring billing
• Notifications — view activity, logs, and alerts

Before editing a template, ask the assistant to call get_template_guide for the specific page — templates are validated on save and unknown variables are rejected, so working from the guide prevents avoidable errors.

The same template endpoints accept additional names beyond the 11 built-in pages: partials/<name> for reusable fragments, page/<slug> for custom storefront pages, and assets/css/<file>.css / assets/js/<file>.js for tenant CSS and JS served at /assets/<path>. CSS and JS are delivered verbatim (no Tera compilation).

Security & Permissions

MCP access is scope-controlled — you choose exactly which capabilities each client gets during authorization. You can revoke access at any time from your shop's admin panel.

All MCP operations use a two-step confirmation flow: the AI previews the change first (confirm=false), then executes it (confirm=true) only after you approve. This prevents accidental modifications.

Write tools that create products, upload media, upload digital files, or set a custom domain also enforce the shop's tenant tier caps. Preview shops (the default) are limited to 100 products, 250 MB of media, 10 MB single-file uploads, 10 MB of digital downloads, and cannot set a custom domain. Connecting a production Stripe Connect account promotes the shop to the Live tier and lifts these caps. The get_settings tool surfaces the current tier and usage; see the Tenant Tier reference for the exact numbers.