Shopify is drawing a line in the sand on agentic AI — a type of bot that autonomously completes tasks on its own, without human inputs — with new language across merchant websites that appears aimed at blocking agentic AI systems. Shopify now includes a warning in the code that powers merchant storefronts, telling bots what they can and can’t do. The message appears in each site’s robots.txt file — a standard tool websites use to give instructions to automated crawlers like search engines. The new line states: “Automated scraping, ‘buy-for-me’ agents, or any end-to-end flow that completes payment without a final review step is not permitted.” The updated language suggests it wants tighter control over how automated agents operate within its ecosystem. The move is likely not an outright rejection of agentic AI. The added language directs “legitimate integrators” to use its official Checkout Kit. In other words, the change shows Shopify is thinking ahead, drawing early boundaries between controlled integration and unregulated automation. Shopify merchants could theoretically override the robots.txt file, as Shopify is a content management system. But the default setting suggests the platform is trying to protect its ecosystem by discouraging unauthorized AI scraping and checkout automation.