How to integrate Shopify MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK

GET STARTED FOR FREE
Framework Integration Gradient
Shopify Logo
open-ai-agents-sdk Logo
divider

Introduction

This guide walks you through connecting Shopify to the OpenAI Agents SDK using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Shopify agent that can create a new product called 'summer t-shirt', add product id 1234 to 'holiday specials' collection, delete the image with id 5678 from product id 4321, create a new customer with email john@example.com through natural language commands.

This guide will help you understand how to give your OpenAI Agents SDK agent real control over a Shopify account through Composio's Shopify MCP server.

Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

TL;DR

Here's what you'll learn:
  • Get and set up your OpenAI and Composio API keys
  • Install the necessary dependencies
  • Initialize Composio and create a Tool Router session for Shopify
  • Configure an AI agent that can use Shopify as a tool
  • Run a live chat session where you can ask the agent to perform Shopify operations

What is open-ai-agents-sdk?

The OpenAI Agents SDK is a lightweight framework for building AI agents that can use tools and maintain conversation state. It provides a simple interface for creating agents with hosted MCP tool support.

Key features include:

  • Hosted MCP Tools: Connect to external services through hosted MCP endpoints
  • SQLite Sessions: Persist conversation history across interactions
  • Simple API: Clean interface with Agent, Runner, and tool configuration
  • Streaming Support: Real-time response streaming for interactive applications

What is the Shopify MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The Shopify MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Shopify account. It provides structured and secure access to your store, so your agent can perform actions like managing products, processing orders, handling collections, organizing images, and managing customers on your behalf.

  • Product management and automation: Let your agent create new products, update existing listings, or delete products from your Shopify store quickly and accurately.
  • Order creation and fulfillment: Direct your agent to generate new orders, associate them with customers, and streamline your sales process with minimal manual input.
  • Collection organization: Ask your agent to create custom collections, add products to collections, or remove collections to keep your store categories organized and up to date.
  • Product image handling: Have your agent add new images to products, count existing images for inventory tracking, or remove outdated images from your catalog.
  • Customer management: Automate the creation of new customer records, making it easy to onboard shoppers and keep your CRM current without lifting a finger.

Supported Tools & Triggers

Tools
Add product to custom collectionAdds a product to an existing *custom collection*, optionally specifying its `position` if the collection is manually sorted.
Count product imagesRetrieves the total count of images for a shopify product, useful for inventory management or display logic; the provided `product id` must exist in the store.
Create a custom collectionCreates a new custom collection in a shopify store, requiring a unique title for manually curated product groupings (e.
Create CustomerTool to create a new customer in shopify.
Create an orderCreates a new order in shopify, typically requiring line items; if `customer id` is provided, it must correspond to an existing customer.
Create a productCreates a new product in a shopify store; a product title is generally required.
Create Product ImageTool to create a new product image for a given product.
Delete custom collectionPermanently deletes a custom collection from a shopify store using its `collection id`; this action is irreversible and requires a valid, existing `collection id`.
Delete a productDeletes a specific, existing product from a shopify store using its unique product id; this action is irreversible.
Delete product imageDeletes a specific image from a product in shopify, requiring the `product id` of an existing product and the `image id` of an image currently associated with that product.
Get All CustomersRetrieves customer records from a shopify store, with options for filtering, selecting specific fields, and paginating through the results.
Get collection by IDRetrieves a specific shopify collection by its `collection id`, optionally filtering returned data to specified `fields`.
Get collectsRetrieves a list of collects from a shopify store, where a collect links a product to a custom collection.
Get collects countRetrieves the total count of collects (product-to-collection associations) in a shopify store.
Get custom collectionsRetrieves a list of custom collections from a shopify store, optionally filtered by ids, product id, or handle.
Get custom collections countRetrieves the total number of custom collections in a shopify store.
Get CustomerRetrieves detailed information for a specific customer from a shopify store, provided their valid and existing `customer id`.
Get customer ordersRetrieves all orders for a specific, existing customer in shopify using their unique customer id.
Get order listRetrieves a list of orders from shopify using default api settings and filters.
Get order by idRetrieves a specific shopify order by its unique id, which must correspond to an existing order.
Get productRetrieves details for an existing shopify product using its unique product id.
Get product imageRetrieves detailed information for a specific product image, identified by its id and its associated product id, from a shopify store.
Get Product ImagesRetrieves all images for a shopify product, specified by its `product id` which must correspond to an existing product.
Get productsRetrieves a list of products from a shopify store.
Get products countRetrieves the total, unfiltered count of all products in a shopify store.
Get products in collectionRetrieves all products within a specified shopify collection, requiring a valid `collection id`.
Get Shop DetailsRetrieves comprehensive administrative information about the authenticated shopify store, as defined by the shopify api.
Update OrderUpdates the phone number for an existing shopify order, identified by its id; pass `phone=none` to remove the current phone number.

What is the Composio tool router, and how does it fit here?

What is Tool Router?

Composio's Tool Router helps agents find the right tools for a task at runtime. You can plug in multiple toolkits (like Gmail, HubSpot, and GitHub), and the agent will identify the relevant app and action to complete multi-step workflows. This can reduce token usage and improve the reliability of tool calls. Read more here: Getting started with Tool Router

The tool router generates a secure MCP URL that your agents can access to perform actions.

How the Tool Router works

The Tool Router follows a three-phase workflow:

  1. Discovery: Searches for tools matching your task and returns relevant toolkits with their details.
  2. Authentication: Checks for active connections. If missing, creates an auth config and returns a connection URL via Auth Link.
  3. Execution: Executes the action using the authenticated connection.

Step-by-step Guide

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:
  • Composio API Key and OpenAI API Key
  • Primary know-how of OpenAI Agents SDK
  • A live Shopify project
  • Some knowledge of Python or Typescript

Getting API Keys for OpenAI and Composio

OpenAI API Key
  • Go to the OpenAI dashboard and create an API key. You'll need credits to use the models, or you can connect to another model provider.
  • Keep the API key safe.
Composio API Key

Install dependencies

pip install composio_openai_agents openai-agents python-dotenv

Install the Composio SDK and the OpenAI Agents SDK.

Set up environment variables

bash
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...your-api-key
COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your-api-key
USER_ID=composio_user@gmail.com

Create a .env file and add your OpenAI and Composio API keys.

Import dependencies

import asyncio
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv

from composio import Composio
from composio_openai_agents import OpenAIAgentsProvider
from agents import Agent, Runner, HostedMCPTool, SQLiteSession
What's happening:
  • You're importing all necessary libraries.
  • The Composio and OpenAIAgentsProvider classes are imported to connect your OpenAI agent to Composio tools like Shopify.

Set up the Composio instance

load_dotenv()

api_key = os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")
user_id = os.getenv("USER_ID")

if not api_key:
    raise RuntimeError("COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set. Create a .env file with COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_key")

# Initialize Composio
composio = Composio(api_key=api_key, provider=OpenAIAgentsProvider())
What's happening:
  • load_dotenv() loads your .env file so OPENAI_API_KEY and COMPOSIO_API_KEY are available as environment variables.
  • Creating a Composio instance using the API Key and OpenAIAgentsProvider class.

Create a Tool Router session

# Create a Shopify Tool Router session
session = composio.create(
    user_id=user_id,
    toolkits=["shopify"]
)

mcp_url = session.mcp.url

What is happening:

  • You give the Tool Router the user id and the toolkits you want available. Here, it is only shopify.
  • The router checks the user's Shopify connection and prepares the MCP endpoint.
  • The returned session.mcp.url is the MCP URL that your agent will use to access Shopify.
  • This approach keeps things lightweight and lets the agent request Shopify tools only when needed during the conversation.

Configure the agent

# Configure agent with MCP tool
agent = Agent(
    name="Assistant",
    model="gpt-5",
    instructions=(
        "You are a helpful assistant that can access Shopify. "
        "Help users perform Shopify operations through natural language."
    ),
    tools=[
        HostedMCPTool(
            tool_config={
                "type": "mcp",
                "server_label": "tool_router",
                "server_url": mcp_url,
                "headers": {"x-api-key": api_key},
                "require_approval": "never",
            }
        )
    ],
)
What's happening:
  • We're creating an Agent instance with a name, model (gpt-5), and clear instructions about its purpose.
  • The agent's instructions tell it that it can access Shopify and help with queries, inserts, updates, authentication, and fetching database information.
  • The tools array includes a HostedMCPTool that connects to the MCP server URL we created earlier.
  • The headers dict includes the Composio API key for secure authentication with the MCP server.
  • require_approval: 'never' means the agent can execute Shopify operations without asking for permission each time, making interactions smoother.

Start chat loop and handle conversation

print("\nComposio Tool Router session created.")

chat_session = SQLiteSession("conversation_openai_toolrouter")

print("\nChat started. Type your requests below.")
print("Commands: 'exit', 'quit', or 'q' to end\n")

async def main():
    try:
        result = await Runner.run(
            agent,
            "What can you help me with?",
            session=chat_session
        )
        print(f"Assistant: {result.final_output}\n")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Error: {e}\n")

    while True:
        user_input = input("You: ").strip()
        if user_input.lower() in {"exit", "quit", "q"}:
            print("Goodbye!")
            break

        result = await Runner.run(
            agent,
            user_input,
            session=chat_session
        )
        print(f"Assistant: {result.final_output}\n")

asyncio.run(main())
What's happening:
  • The program prints a session URL that you visit to authorize Shopify.
  • After authorization, the chat begins.
  • Each message you type is processed by the agent using Runner.run().
  • The responses are printed to the console, and conversations are saved locally using SQLite.
  • Typing exit, quit, or q cleanly ends the chat.

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with Shopify and open-ai-agents-sdk:

import asyncio
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv

from composio import Composio
from composio_openai_agents import OpenAIAgentsProvider
from agents import Agent, Runner, HostedMCPTool, SQLiteSession

load_dotenv()

api_key = os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")
user_id = os.getenv("USER_ID")

if not api_key:
    raise RuntimeError("COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set. Create a .env file with COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_key")

# Initialize Composio
composio = Composio(api_key=api_key, provider=OpenAIAgentsProvider())

# Create Tool Router session
session = composio.create(
    user_id=user_id,
    toolkits=["shopify"]
)
mcp_url = session.mcp.url

# Configure agent with MCP tool
agent = Agent(
    name="Assistant",
    model="gpt-5",
    instructions=(
        "You are a helpful assistant that can access Shopify. "
        "Help users perform Shopify operations through natural language."
    ),
    tools=[
        HostedMCPTool(
            tool_config={
                "type": "mcp",
                "server_label": "tool_router",
                "server_url": mcp_url,
                "headers": {"x-api-key": api_key},
                "require_approval": "never",
            }
        )
    ],
)

print("\nComposio Tool Router session created.")

chat_session = SQLiteSession("conversation_openai_toolrouter")

print("\nChat started. Type your requests below.")
print("Commands: 'exit', 'quit', or 'q' to end\n")

async def main():
    try:
        result = await Runner.run(
            agent,
            "What can you help me with?",
            session=chat_session
        )
        print(f"Assistant: {result.final_output}\n")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Error: {e}\n")

    while True:
        user_input = input("You: ").strip()
        if user_input.lower() in {"exit", "quit", "q"}:
            print("Goodbye!")
            break

        result = await Runner.run(
            agent,
            user_input,
            session=chat_session
        )
        print(f"Assistant: {result.final_output}\n")

asyncio.run(main())

Conclusion

This was a starter code for integrating Shopify MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK to build a functional AI agent that can interact with Shopify.

Key features:

  • Hosted MCP tool integration through Composio's Tool Router
  • SQLite session persistence for conversation history
  • Simple async chat loop for interactive testing
You can extend this by adding more toolkits, implementing custom business logic, or building a web interface around the agent.

How to build Shopify MCP Agent with another framework

Claude Agent SDK

Claude Agent SDK

Use Shopify MCP with Claude Agent SDK

Google ADK

Google ADK

Use Shopify MCP with Google ADK

LangChain

LangChain

Use Shopify MCP with LangChain

Vercel AI SDK

Vercel AI SDK

Use Shopify MCP with Vercel AI SDK

Mastra AI

Mastra AI

Use Shopify MCP with Mastra AI

LlamaIndex

LlamaIndex

Use Shopify MCP with LlamaIndex

CrewAI

CrewAI

Use Shopify MCP with CrewAI

Claude Code

Claude Code

Use Shopify MCP with Claude Code

FAQ

What are the differences in Tool Router MCP and Shopify MCP?

With a standalone Shopify MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of Shopify tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from Shopify and many other apps based on the task at hand, all through a single MCP endpoint.

Can I use Tool Router MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK?

Yes, you can. OpenAI Agents SDK fully supports MCP integration. You get structured tool calling, message history handling, and model orchestration while Tool Router takes care of discovering and serving the right Shopify tools.

Can I manage the permissions and scopes for Shopify while using Tool Router?

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Shopify scopes and actions are allowed when connecting your account to Composio. You can also bring your own OAuth credentials or API configuration so you keep full control over what the agent can do.

How safe is my data with Composio Tool Router?

All sensitive data such as tokens, keys, and configuration is fully encrypted at rest and in transit. Composio is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and follows strict security practices so your Shopify data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

Used by agents from

Context
Letta
glean
HubSpot
Agent.ai
Altera
DataStax
Entelligence
Rolai
Context
Letta
glean
HubSpot
Agent.ai
Altera
DataStax
Entelligence
Rolai
Context
Letta
glean
HubSpot
Agent.ai
Altera
DataStax
Entelligence
Rolai

Never worry about agent reliability

We handle tool reliability, observability, and security so you never have to second-guess an agent action.

Book a call↗Get started for free