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Depict: Search & Merchandising is Depict’s native Shopify product: it merchandises your existing Shopify collections without any theme changes. The Search & Merchandising API is the REST API behind the app’s admin experience.

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Base URL

The Search & Merchandising API is served under the /api/lite prefix of the Depict portal backend:

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Authentication

The Search & Merchandising API is called by the Depict: Search & Merchandising app itself, which runs embedded in the Shopify admin. Every request carries the Shopify session token that App Bridge issues to the app, sent as a bearer token:
The shop is taken from the token. Where an endpoint takes a merchant_id parameter, it must be the merchant of that shop; multi-store endpoints take explicit merchant_id parameters for the connected stores. Session tokens are short-lived and are only issued inside the Shopify admin, so there is no standalone API key for this API.

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AI assistants and other outside callers

The session token above is the Depict: Search & Merchandising app’s own path. Callers outside the app, such as AI assistants, use Depict’s MCP server instead. Each store has its own endpoint:
It is protected with OAuth 2.1: clients register themselves (dynamic client registration), sign in with PKCE, and ask for the scopes depict:read and depict:write. A person with access to the store approves each connection in the Shopify admin. The authorization server is described at https://platform.depict.ai/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server, and each store’s endpoint at https://platform.depict.ai/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource?store_id=<merchant_id>. Through the MCP server, an assistant calls the operations of this API that are open to assistants, as the person who approved it. Connecting an assistant, the approval screen and revoking are described on the AI assistants page.

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What you can do with it

  • Collections — list, activate and configure merchandised collections, including the ordering that Depict pushes back to Shopify.
  • Boost & bury — manage per-collection and global boost/bury rules.
  • A/B testing — estimate how long a collection test needs, configure tests and read their results.
  • Recommendations — create and edit recommendation surfaces, their pins and hidden products, and read their performance.
  • Search — read and change the search configuration, including search’s own boost & bury rules, the content pages indexed for search and which product metafields are searchable.
  • Analytics — read the performance numbers shown in the app, and counts that describe your synced catalogue.
  • Multi-store — connect several Shopify stores and replicate collection configuration between them.
  • Onboarding & Shopify integration — ingestion status, markets, theme compatibility checks and setup state.