Catalog & data
Metafield
Definition
Shopify's native mechanism for structured custom product data — a typed, named field (material, fit, dishwasher_safe) attached to a product, variant, or category, defined once and readable by themes, Search & Discovery filters, APIs, and AI surfaces.
Defined in Shopify Metafields vs. a PIM: Where Should Product Data Live?.
Where Metafield comes up
The guides that put this term to work, rather than just defining it.
- ShopifyShopify Theme Choice for the Agentic Era
- Catalog for AIVariant Data That Doesn't Confuse AI Agents
- ShopifyBuilding a Shopify Product Page AI Agents Can Read
- Catalog for AIEnriching a 10,000-SKU Catalog Without a Team of Ten
- For AgenciesHiring an Agentic Commerce Lead: A Role Scorecard
- ShopifyMigration to Shopify Without Losing Rankings or Data
- For AgenciesThe Agency Playbook: Adding Agentic Commerce Services in 2026
Related terms
- Structured attribute
- A named, machine-readable field with a discrete value — material: leather, sleeve_length: short — as opposed to the same fact buried in a marketing sentence.
- Shopify metafield
- A custom structured field on a Shopify product, collection, or variant — the mechanism most mid-market merchants use to add attributes without a separate PIM.
- Product taxonomy
- The hierarchical category structure a catalog is organized under, which agents use to scope what "kind" of product they're reasoning about before checking specific attributes.
- Category attribute template
- A fixed, reusable list of the attribute fields every SKU in a given category must carry — e.g. every hiking boot gets material, closure, waterproof rating, sole type, weight — built once per category and then applied to every SKU in it.
- Compatibility data
- Structured "works with" or "fits" relationships between products, which agents rely on heavily because shoppers frequently ask compatibility questions by exact model or part.
- Constraint query
- A shopping request framed by conditions the answer must satisfy — a device it must fit, a system it must work with, a situation it must handle — rather than by a product category alone.
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