Write Shopify Collection Descriptions Using AI

8 min setup
No coding required
Runs automatically

Effortlessly create compelling Shopify collection descriptions with AI-powered automation. This MESA workflow template uses ChatGPT to write high-quality descriptions whenever you add a new collection in Shopify, saving you time and sparking creativity. Perfect for busy merchants, this tool ensures consistent, engaging content that resonates with customers and enhances your store’s appeal.

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Collection Created
Retrieve Collection
Path 1 Rule (Smart Collection Check)
Prompt (Generate Smart Collection Description)
Update Smart Collection
Path 2 Rule (Custom Collection Check)
Prompt (Generate Custom Collection Description)
Shopify logo icon
Update Custom Collection

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How it works

8 steps to start generating AI-written descriptions for new Shopify collections

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Collection Created

App connector: Shopify • Time to complete: 0 minutes (Auto-configured)
Why this matters: This trigger monitors your Shopify store for newly created collections and kicks off the description generation workflow. Without this automation, you'd need to remember to write descriptions for every new collection you create, and blank descriptions hurt your SEO and provide no context for customers.

When any collection is created in Shopify—whether you're setting up a smart collection with automated product rules or a custom collection where you manually add products—this trigger captures the collection details including the title and ID. The trigger watches your store continuously and passes the collection data to the next step immediately after creation. The trigger automatically connects to your Shopify store once you authorize MESA, with no manual configuration needed.

Retrieve Collection

App connector: Shopify • Time to complete: 0 minutes (Auto-configured)
Why this matters: This step fetches the complete collection record including its type (smart or custom), which determines which Shopify API endpoint the workflow needs to use for updating the description. Without knowing the collection type, the workflow couldn't properly save the AI-generated description back to Shopify.

The step retrieves the full collection details using the collection ID from the trigger. Most importantly, it identifies whether this is a "smart" collection (uses rules to automatically include products) or a "custom" collection (products manually added). This collection type information gets used in the next step to route the workflow down the correct path, since Shopify requires different API calls to update each collection type.

Path 1 Rule (Smart Collection Check)

App connector: Paths • Time to complete: 0 minutes (Auto-configured)
Why this matters: This rule determines if the workflow should proceed down the smart collection path. It checks whether the collection type equals "smart," and if so, continues to generate a description and update using the smart collection API endpoint.

The step compares the collection type from Step 2 against the value "smart." If they match exactly, the workflow continues down this path to the AI prompt and smart collection update steps. If they don't match (meaning it's a custom collection), this path stops and the workflow routes to Path 2 instead. This is a hard-coded filter checking specifically for "smart" collection type—no configuration needed.

Prompt (Generate Smart Collection Description)

App connector: AI • Time to complete: 1 minute
Why this matters: This is where the AI actually writes the collection description for smart collections. The AI creates SEO-friendly, readable copy that gives customers and search engines context about what products this collection contains, all based on the collection name.

The AI receives the collection title and generates a 1-2 paragraph description formatted in clean HTML paragraph tags. The prompt instructs the AI to avoid bold text, highlighting, and code formatting markers, ensuring the output is clean HTML ready to display on your store. The temperature is set to 0.5 for a balance between creativity and consistency—high enough to create natural-sounding copy but controlled enough to stay focused and professional. You can customize the prompt to add specific instructions like mentioning your brand name, including keywords, or matching a particular tone of voice.

Update Smart Collection

App connector: Shopify • Time to complete: 0 minutes (Auto-configured)
Why this matters: This step saves the AI-generated description to your Shopify smart collection's body content, making it visible on the collection page. Without this update, the description would exist in the workflow but never appear in your store.

The step uses Shopify's smart collections API endpoint to update the collection identified in Step 1, specifically updating the "body_html" field with the AI response from the previous step. The body_html field is what displays as the main description text on your collection page in your theme. This automatically publishes the description to your live store, so customers and search engines see it immediately.

Path 2 Rule (Custom Collection Check)

App connector: Paths • Time to complete: 0 minutes (Auto-configured)
Why this matters: This rule determines if the workflow should proceed down the custom collection path. It checks whether the collection type equals "custom," and if so, continues to generate a description and update using the custom collection API endpoint.

The step compares the collection type from Step 2 against the value "custom." If they match exactly, the workflow continues down this path to the AI prompt and custom collection update steps. If they don't match (meaning it was a smart collection that already went down Path 1), this path stops. This ensures each collection only gets one description generated through the appropriate path. This is a hard-coded filter checking specifically for "custom" collection type—no configuration needed.

Prompt (Generate Custom Collection Description)

App connector: AI • Time to complete: 1 minute
Why this matters: This is where the AI writes the collection description for custom collections. Like the smart collection prompt, it creates SEO-friendly copy that provides context about the collection, but uses the custom collection update API in the next step.

The AI receives the collection title and generates a 1-2 paragraph description formatted in clean HTML paragraph tags, identical to the smart collection prompt in Step 5. The prompt instructions and temperature setting (0.5) are the same, ensuring consistent description quality regardless of collection type. You can customize this prompt independently if you want different description styles for custom versus smart collections, or keep them identical for consistency.

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Update Custom Collection

App connector: Shopify • Time to complete: 0 minutes (Auto-configured)
Why this matters: This step saves the AI-generated description to your Shopify custom collection's body content, making it visible on the collection page. Like the smart collection update, this ensures the description appears in your live store.

The step uses Shopify's custom collections API endpoint to update the collection identified in Step 1, specifically updating the "body_html" field with the AI response from the previous step. This uses a different API endpoint than the smart collection update (Step 6) because Shopify requires separate endpoints for each collection type, which is why the workflow needed the Paths branching structure. The description automatically publishes to your live store immediately.

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Make it your own!

Customize this workflow even further:

Customize descriptions based on collection tags or naming patterns
Modify the AI prompts to include conditional logic that checks the collection name or product types, then generates different description styles—for example, technical and feature-focused for "Tech Accessories" versus lifestyle and benefit-focused for "Summer Collection."
Include product count or featured items in descriptions
Add a step before the AI prompt that retrieves the products in the collection, then include the product count or names of featured items in the AI prompt so descriptions can reference specific details like "Browse our curated selection of 47 sustainable yoga products."
Generate SEO meta descriptions alongside body descriptions
Add a second AI prompt step that creates a shorter, 155-character meta description optimized for search results, then update both the collection's body_html and the meta description field in the same workflow for complete SEO coverage.
Translate descriptions for international stores
After generating the English description, add translation API steps that convert the description into other languages, then use Shopify's metafields or a translation app to store and display the translated versions for international customers.

Common questions

Can I edit the AI-generated descriptions after they're created?

What if I want longer or shorter descriptions than 2 paragraphs?

Will the AI understand what products are in my collection when writing descriptions?

Ready to start generating AI-written descriptions for new Shopify collections?

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