Agent runbooks
The Support
The Support agent polls your inbox every hour. For each unread customer message, it pulls live order context from Shopify, drafts a reply that quotes your policies verbatim, and puts it in your approval inbox. It cannot send email. Drafts only.
What the Support agent reads
- -Your Gmail inbox (unread customer messages).
- -Shopify order records for any order number or email address mentioned in the message.
- -Your company handbook: return policy, escalation list, banned topics, response tone.
The triage logic
Escalation check first
Before drafting, the Support agent checks the message against your always_escalate list. If it matches, an urgent escalation card is created and no draft is produced. You handle it yourself.
Order context pull
For every message, the agent looks up the customer by email in Shopify and fetches their order history. The draft reply includes relevant order details (tracking status, order date, total) so your reply is specific, not generic.
Policy-verbatim drafting
Return, refund, and exchange replies quote your handbook policies word for word. The agent does not paraphrase policies. If the message is ambiguous, the draft asks a clarifying question rather than guessing.
Schedule
Every hour in your business timezone.
You can override the polling interval in your handbook. For example, to check more or less often, update the schedule section. Response time for a customer who writes at 09:00 is at most the polling interval plus your approval time.
What to do when a draft is wrong
Policy misquoted or outdated
Update the policy in your handbook immediately. The agent quotes what is there verbatim. Wrong policy in the handbook means wrong policy in the reply.
Missing order context
Check that the Shopify MCP is connected (see Shopify reconnect). If the connection is healthy, the customer may be using a different email address in Shopify. Edit the draft to add the correct context.
Tone is too formal or too casual
Add the relevant example to the writing_samples section of your handbook. The most effective calibration is a real customer reply you wrote that exemplifies the tone you want.
Data sources
Gmail (read-only), Shopify (read-only). See MCP setup.