Use when fixing the debris an audit found in a Shopify catalog: bulk-archive dead/discontinued/zero-inventory products, clean up catalog debris, kill ghost review stars (empty star ratings a theme still renders after a review app was uninstalled), remove orphaned metafields left by an uninstalled app, strip HTML artifacts from product descriptions (double-nested bold, fully-bold paragraphs, empty tags), or fix messed-up / mangled product descriptions in bulk. Mutating cleanup work: archive vs delete, metafieldsDelete, description rewrites. Not for FINDING what's wrong (use shopify-catalog-audit) or filling missing metadata like SEO titles and alt text (use shopify-seo-metadata).
Use when a store has missing SEO titles or meta descriptions and you want to backfill them: "backfill missing SEO titles/descriptions", "meta description sweep", "SEO meta backfill across products/collections/pages/blog posts", "missing page titles", "fix blank search-appearance metadata", "generate SEO meta for products". Safe-mode: fills only the empty search-appearance fields (SEO title, meta description) on products, collections, pages, and blog articles, never touching human-written values. Not for image alt text (use shopify-alt-text) or JSON-LD (use shopify-json-ld).
Use when backfilling missing image alt text on a Shopify store: images with no alt attribute, accessibility alt text for product images, alt text for Files library images, image SEO, or a WCAG/accessibility pass that flags images missing text alternatives. Triggers: "backfill alt text", "fill in missing alt text", "images have no alt", "add alt attributes for accessibility", "image SEO sweep". One mutation, fileUpdate, covers both product media and the Files library. Not for meta titles/descriptions (use shopify-seo-metadata).
Use when someone wants to find product-data problems across a Shopify catalog: "audit my catalog", "find PDP problems", "which products have missing photos / thin or missing descriptions / pricing anomalies", "$0 or compare-at-inverted prices", "products missing type or vendor", "catalog quality sweep", "product data health check", "which listings are broken", "run a catalog audit before a big sale". Read-only: it locates and ranks problems, it does not change anything. Not for FIXING the problems it finds (use shopify-catalog-cleanup for debris/archiving, shopify-seo-metadata for missing SEO meta, shopify-alt-text for missing image alt text).
Use when you assign the Shopify Standard Product Taxonomy category, "set the product category", "categorize the catalog", or fill the category / taxonomy metafields: the admin "Category metafields" panel (Color, Size, Material, Caffeine content), a.k.a. product category attributes / taxonomy attributes, including the attributes a Google feed asks for. Covers bulk classification, discovering a category's attributes and allowed values, minting the reserved value metaobjects, and writing them safely. Also: "category metafields show blank/null", "my Color attribute won't save". Not for bulk CSV data loads (Matrixify can't do this; see shopify-matrixify for bulk data).
Use when adding structured data / JSON-LD / schema markup to a Shopify store: recipe, FAQ, Article/BlogPosting, CollectionPage, AboutPage, or Organization schema; chasing Google rich-results / rich-snippet eligibility; debugging a Search Console "Invalid object type" or "missing field" schema error; or a request like "add schema to my store", "add recipe schema", or "why isn't my product showing rich results". This skill adds SUPPLEMENTAL JSON-LD the theme cannot emit dynamically, stored in a metafield and rendered by one Liquid snippet. Not for meta titles, meta descriptions, canonical tags, or Open Graph (use shopify-seo-metadata for those).
Use when you need to map a pile of old URLs to live pages and turn them into 301 redirects on a Shopify store: fix 404s, bulk redirects after a migration/replatform/catalog restructure, turn a Google Search Console 404 export into live redirects, or WordPress→Shopify URL transforms (/YYYY/MM/slug/ → /products/slug). Trigger phrases: "map old URLs", "fix our 404s", "redirect the dead links", "we relaunched and lost our rankings". Recovers SEO equity and rescues users after a URL structure changes. Not for creating a single one-off redirect (do it in admin).
Use when [the specific situations, symptoms, and phrases someone would type or think when they hit this problem]. Pack real trigger words and store-owner symptoms. Describe ONLY when to use it, never summarize the workflow inside. Keep the whole frontmatter under 1024 characters. End by naming what this skill is NOT for, pointing at the sibling skill that covers it.