Most merchants optimize for individual products. This playbook is about something bigger: owning a topic. When AI agents are asked about a specific shopper need ("best gifts for new mums", "red light therapy for acne", "running shoes for flat feet") you want your products to fill the results, not just appear in them. This is how you build that position.
Goal: When you run any prompt from your theme library, your products fill at least half of the top 10 results.
Time to complete: 60–90 minutes to set up; ongoing as you expand the theme.
Features used: Prompt Libraries · Shopify Catalog · My Store → Agentic Product Listing (APL)
Step 1: Build a Theme-Based Prompt Library
Prompt Libraries — Step 1 Name & Describe, where the library description shapes the entire generation pipeline
The key difference from Playbook 1 is that this library is built around a theme or use case, not a specific product. The description you write here shapes every prompt the agent generates, so it needs to describe the topic and the buyer, not any particular item.
Go to Prompt Libraries and click + New library.
Give it a name that reflects the theme, not a product (for example, "Gifts for New Mums", "Red Light Therapy Use Cases", "Running for Flat Feet").
Write a description that frames the topic: who these shoppers are, what they're trying to accomplish, and what kinds of questions they ask when looking for a solution. Don't mention specific products. Describe the problem space.
Click Next and add sources. Use Discover subreddits to find communities where this topic is discussed: parenting communities, skincare forums, running clubs. Select two or three that surface the most relevant buyer conversations. If you're building your second or third theme over the same communities, Select existing sources reuses them without a re-crawl.
Leave Optimize with keyword volume checked, then click Generate Library. The next step depends on the scores it produces.
Step 2: Confirm the Theme Is Worth Owning
The Opportunity map — every prompt in the library plotted by Volume against Opportunity Score, colored by funnel step
Owning a topic is an hour of work plus ongoing upkeep, so it's worth thirty seconds to check the topic has demand behind it before you commit. Open the library and look at the Opportunity map.
A healthy theme has a cluster of prompts in the top right: real Volume, high Opportunity. Those are the prompts to build around.
If every prompt in the theme sits at the low end of the Volume axis, the topic isn't being asked about in numbers yet. Park it and pick a theme with more demand. This is the most useful thing the map will tell you, and it saves you the whole playbook.
Scan the Ranking column while you're there. Prompts reading 0 are the ones you don't currently show up for at all, which is a faster read on the gap than running each prompt by hand.
Step 3: Map Which of Your Products Should Own This Use Case
Shopify Catalog results — showing ranked products and the "My product" badge across multiple positions
Now use the library to audit the current landscape. You need to know which of your products are already showing up for this use case, and which should be but aren't.
Go to Shopify Catalog.
Click the Prompts button and select three to five prompts from your theme library. Take them from the top of the Opportunity sort rather than the top of the list, so you audit the prompts that actually matter.
Run each prompt and note which of your products appear (green "My product" badge) and at what positions.
Look for gaps: prompts where none of your products appear, or where only one product shows up when you have three or four that should be competing for that query.
Build a list of products that should be ranking for this theme but aren't, ordered by the Opportunity score of the prompt they're missing from. These are your APL targets, highest Opportunity first.
Step 4: Create Agentic Product Listings for Each Product in the Theme
For each product that should be ranking for this use case but isn't, create an Agentic Product Listing using prompts specific to the theme, not just to the product name. This is what tells the agent that your product belongs in conversations about this topic.
In My Store, find the first product on your APL target list in the Product Optimization Opportunities table.
Click Create APL (or View APL → Edit prompts if one already exists).
Select three prompts from your theme library. At least one should reference the use case directly (for example, "gifts for new mums under $50") rather than just the product type.
Click Run agentic listing. Review the generated fields (Unique Selling Point, Agentic Title, Agentic Description, Top Features) and edit inline if needed. The run takes a few minutes, so click Run in background to continue working.
Repeat for every product on your APL target list. Each product needs its own APL, since you can't share one APL across multiple products.
One-time setup: AI agents only see your APLs after the AgentIQ fields are mapped into your Shopify Catalog. If you haven't done this yet, follow Mapping Agentic Product Listings to Your Shopify Catalog.
📌 Note: The goal is for each product to have an Agentic Product Listing that explicitly connects it to the use case, not just its product category. A product optimized for "red light therapy for acne" will rank for that prompt even if its base listing only mentions "skincare device".
Step 5: Monitor and Expand
Return to Shopify Catalog after 24–48 hours and re-run your theme prompts.
Check how many positions in the top 10 your store now holds for each prompt. Count them. Your goal is at least half.
Switch to the My Catalog tab and check the alignment tags. Any product still showing "Unlikely" for a theme prompt has a structural gap, so click AI Audit to go directly to the listing and resolve it.
Rerun the theme library every few weeks. As your Ranking improves, those prompts drop down the Opportunity sort and the next tier of the theme rises to the top, which is your expansion list.
As you build confidence in one theme, apply the same process to a second. Merchants who own multiple use cases compound their advantage, because each theme adds a new set of prompts where they show up first.
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