# Get your catalogue ready for AI > What to do first so AI works well in your store — the product data that decides the quality of every answer, then which of the three AI surfaces you actually want. Source: CBX documentation, version 3.x (released). Canonical page: https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/get-your-catalogue-ready-for-ai. Last updated 2026-08-28. --- > **Audience:** store owners and shop managers · **Scope:** preparing your catalogue so AI answers > well, and choosing which AI surfaces to run · **Last reviewed:** 2026-08-28 **Start here if you are new to the AI features.** CBX has three of them and they all read the same thing: your catalogue. Time spent on the catalogue improves all three at once — and no amount of configuring the assistants makes up for product data that does not say much. ## The three surfaces, in one table | | Who it talks to | Whose model | You should read | |---|---|---|---| | **AI product assistant** | visitors on your configurator pages | yours, your bill | [What the assistant is](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/) | | **Agentic storefront** | your customers' own assistants, headless | theirs | [Let customers use their own AI assistant](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/let-customers-use-their-own-assistant) | | **Your own assistant** | you, in the back office | yours | [Connect your own AI assistant](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/connect-your-own-ai-assistant) | They are independent. You can run one, two or all three, and turning one off does not affect the others. ## Step 1 — write the product data (this is the whole game) An assistant cannot invent facts about your product. Everything it says comes from what you have written, so **the quality of your answers is decided here, before you switch anything on.** In rough order of how much difference each one makes: 1. **Fill in the detail panes.** This is the single biggest win. Specifications, materials, delivery terms, warranty, what is in the box — everything a customer would ask a salesperson and cannot read off the configurator. See [Product detail panes](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/products/product-detail-panes). 2. **Describe your questions.** A question called "Lm/ft" means nothing to a customer. Its description is where you say what it is and how to choose. 3. **Describe your answers**, especially where the difference between two options is not obvious from their names. 4. **Say what a product is for** in its own description. "Who buys this and why" is what lets an assistant tell one of your products from another. **How to tell whether you have done enough:** ask the assistant something a customer would ask, and see whether it answers or says it does not know. It is built to admit the gap rather than invent — and to [file it on the wishlist](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/work-the-wishlist), which turns into your to-do list for this step. ## Step 2 — add advice where the data cannot say it Some things are true about a product but are not in any field. A sensible order to ask questions in. Which answer usually decides the rest. A constraint your rules cannot express. The words your customers use that your catalogue does not. Each product has an **Advice for AI assistants** field for exactly that ([Add a product](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/products/add-a-product)). It is read by assistants and never shown to customers. Keep it to what is specific to *this* product. Assistants already know how a configurator behaves in general, and repeating that crowds out the part only you know. > **Most products need nothing here.** A product whose questions and descriptions are well written is > already fully explained. Reach for this field when you catch an assistant getting something > reasonable-but-wrong, and write the sentence that would have prevented it. ## Step 3 — choose your surfaces **The AI product assistant** is the one most stores want first: visitors get help without leaving the page, and you find out what they ask. It needs an API key and is off until you set one — [Set up the assistant](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/set-up-the-assistant). **The agentic storefront** is already on. There is nothing to install and nothing to switch on; a customer points their own assistant at your store's address and approves it in their browser. You may want to narrow what it can do — see [Let customers use their own AI assistant](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/let-customers-use-their-own-assistant), which also covers what customers see and how they turn one off. **Your own back-office assistant** is for building and running the store rather than for selling — [Connect your own AI assistant](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/connect-your-own-ai-assistant). ## Step 4 — set the house rules Both customer-facing surfaces take **house rules**: your standing instructions, in your words. Shop facts, what to emphasise, what never to promise. They are separate settings because the two surfaces are separate audiences, and a rule that makes sense on your own panel ("offer the extended warranty") may not be one you want given to a customer's own assistant. Write them as plain sentences, one per line. Two that most stores want: - Something you never want promised — a delivery date, a discount, a compatibility claim. - How to handle "can you do X?" when the answer is no. ## Step 5 — watch what actually happens The assistant keeps a record of every conversation, and it is worth reading in the first weeks: - [The conversation journal](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/read-the-conversation-journal) — what was asked, and what it answered. - [The wishlist](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/work-the-wishlist) — the questions your catalogue could not answer. This is step 1's to-do list, written for you by your visitors. - [Conversation Insights](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/run-the-insights-report) — the patterns across many conversations. Customers with a connected assistant of their own get their own version of this on their account page: what it has done, and a button to turn it off. ## A note on languages If you run more than one language, the things a **person** reads are per language — the assistant's greeting, and your extra note on the consent screen. You will see one input per language on those. The things a **model** reads are not: house rules, and the per-product advice. An assistant applies instructions written in one language perfectly well while talking to a customer in another. If you want it to answer in the customer's language, write that as one of your house rules. ## Related - [What the assistant is](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/) - [Set up the assistant](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/set-up-the-assistant) - [Let customers use their own AI assistant](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/ai-assistant/let-customers-use-their-own-assistant) - [Product detail panes](https://docs.configbox.at/docs/admin-guide/products/product-detail-panes)