Gorgias AI Agent Playbook: Skills, Actions and Real Costs

Gorgias AI is mostly one product: AI Agent, an add-on that answers shoppers and sells, and from Basic up it also changes orders through Actions. It works only with a connected Shopify store. It is billed per automated interaction on top of the help desk plan. On Pro, AI Agent adds $190 a month billed monthly or $171 a month billed annually for 190 included interactions, which works out to $1.00 or $0.90 each. Past the included amount, every plan pays $1.50 per automated interaction.^[1] The catch is a double meter. Every conversation AI Agent resolves also counts as a billable helpdesk ticket. Our verdict: strong for Shopify brands drowning in order questions, a poor fit off Shopify.

Two roles under one AI Agent subscription

Gorgias splits AI Agent into two jobs. The Support Agent handles post-purchase questions such as tracking, address changes and cancellations. The Shopping Assistant handles pre-purchase work: product recommendations, add to cart, AI FAQs on product pages, search assist and an ask-anything prompt. Both come in one subscription for accounts that signed up after 28 May 2025. Subscribers from before 16 July 2025 may need to upgrade, and accept the updated pricing, to get the Shopping Assistant role. The older self-service tools, Flows, Order Management and Article Recommendations, are included with the subscription as well.

The sales side has real dials. You pick one of three selling styles (Educational, Moderate or Promotional) and one of four discount levels, from No discount to Generous, with a fixed percentage the assistant may offer. Discount codes it creates are unique, single-use and valid for 3 days. Tagging a product gorgias_do_not_recommend in Shopify keeps the assistant from ever discussing it.

Everything above needs Shopify. Gorgias's compatibility page says AI Agent is not supported on BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce or PrestaShop. BigCommerce and Magento 2 stores still get Flows and Article Recommendations with an AI Agent subscription, but no AI Agent and no Order Management. That is the biggest filter in this playbook. On WooCommerce and PrestaShop, there is no AI layer at all. On Shopify, you get a dedicated AI Agent per connected store; our Shopify guide covers the rest of that depth.

Teaching it: knowledge, guidance and skills

AI Agent writes its own replies. It does not use your macros, which stay with human agents, except macros titled with [AI Compatible], which it reads as knowledge. Knowledge comes from guidance, help center articles, your store website, single-page URLs and uploaded documents in PDF, DOCX, PPTX or XLSX; images inside documents are not processed. Guidance is internal instruction shoppers never see: up to 100 enabled per store, 30,000 characters each. Gorgias recommends writing guidance in English, even though AI Agent replies in 80+ languages.

Skills are the structured layer. A skill runs only when AI Agent detects one of its linked intents, and Gorgias defines and detects the intents, not you. Each intent links to one skill at a time, and moving it can switch the original skill off. Instructions run to 30,000 characters, built from a template, from scratch or by converting guidance. A skill cannot tag, assign or add notes, so routing stays with Rules, which run before AI Agent acts. Each skill reports ticket volume, handover rate and average CSAT, with version history and restore.

The AI coverage page, formerly Intents, ties it together. Every intent is listed with its ticket share, handovers, linked skill and a status of AI handling or Handing over; an intent with no skill is answered from knowledge alone. Tone of voice sits on top, set once as a base tone and fine-tuned per channel with greetings, sign-offs, blocked phrases and an emoji allow list. Mind the gate. Brand voice and guardrails, like Actions, start on Basic with AI Agent, and Starter can buy AI Agent but gets neither.

Actions: where AI Agent changes real orders

Actions move AI Agent from answering to doing, and Gorgias's AI Agent page claims 130+ of them in its library. On Shopify, the documented set is cancel order, edit shipping address, remove item, replace item, reship for free and add an order note. Cancellations and address edits apply only to unfulfilled orders and are not passed to 3PL or fulfillment apps. Replace item handles a single item and hands over if the payment must increase. Irreversible actions ask the shopper to confirm automatically. If any step fails, AI Agent leaves a note on the ticket and hands it to your team.

Subscription apps carry a quieter limit. With Recharge, Skio and Loop Subscriptions, most cancel, skip or pause actions run only when the shopper has a single subscription; with several, AI Agent hands over. Recharge has no true pause state, so AI Agent pushes the next charge to a resume date the shopper picks. Connecting an app adds its actions to the library automatically, but those installed actions run only inside a skill or guidance. Custom actions can chain ordered steps across apps, and the advanced editor sends HTTP requests to any API. Once converted to that editor, an action cannot go back.

Handovers and channels: guardrails you cannot switch off

AI Agent hands over for three reasons: built-in signals, your handover topics and answer quality. The built-in signals cover anger, a request for a human and sensitive subjects such as self-harm, legal threats or financial account details, and they cannot be turned off.^[2] You can add up to 10 handover topics of 100 characters each, for medical or legal questions. A Rule that adds the ai_ignore tag keeps AI Agent off those tickets entirely. Handed-over tickets carry an ai_handover tag you can route on.

Channels have grown fast. AI Agent works on email, chat and the contact form, on SMS with the SMS add-on, and since 14 October 2026 it is generally available on Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Social has limits. It answers direct messages only, not comments or mentions, and only inside Meta's 24-hour window. Instagram and Messenger share one toggle. It also keeps replying if a teammate answers from the Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp app, and stops only once someone replies in the Gorgias inbox. Vision reads shopper images on every channel except SMS.

What the AI meter costs, by our arithmetic

The AI Agent fee sits on top of the help desk plan. Pro with AI Agent comes to $550 a month billed monthly or $471 a month billed annually. Included interactions cost $1.00 each on monthly billing and $0.90 each on annual billing. Past the included amount, every plan pays $1.50 per automated interaction. The help desk side bills its own overage per ticket as volume grows, so check both allowances in our pricing breakdown before you pick a plan.

What counts matters more than the rate. An interaction bills as automated only if the shopper does not reach a human within 72 hours; if they do, you pay the ticket fee only.^[3] When AI Agent resolves a request alone, you pay the ticket fee and the automation fee. Flows, Order Management and Article Recommendations resolutions carry only the automation fee. A shopper who clicks an AI FAQ question but never replies costs a ticket fee, and an ignored search-assist message costs nothing. Playground test conversations and Flows test mode are not billed.

Here is a busy month. Take Pro with AI Agent billed monthly, 190 interactions included, and 300 automated interactions. The 110 over the limit cost 110 × $1.50 = $165 extra, by our arithmetic. Those 300 interactions also use 300 of the plan's 2,000 helpdesk tickets. The latest 3 days in AI reports are never final, so check Billing and usage before month end; its Manage button raises a usage limit ahead of time. Gorgias's Fall 2026 release says AI Agent can be tried free, without publishing a trial length.

Compare allowances before rates. Zendesk includes 5 or 10 automated resolutions per agent a month, then charges $1.50 per extra resolution bought ahead or $2.00 pay-as-you-go. eDesk lists $0.99 per AI outcome as its base rate. Help Scout lists $0.75 per AI resolution and gives new accounts 3 months of free unlimited AI Answers. All three rivals price the help desk itself per agent or user. Gorgias bills its help desk by ticket instead. The Gorgias rate also arrives with a helpdesk ticket attached. So compare the full cost of one resolved conversation, not the sticker rate.

Quality checks, Gaia and your data

Auto QA switches on by default with AI Agent and scores closed tickets on resolution completeness, communication and language; it skips Facebook, Instagram and phone tickets. Gaia is a different tool: an assistant inside Gorgias, in open beta on every plan, and it may not yet be available to every account. It investigates tickets and drafts rules, macros and skills, waits for approval by default and creates rules turned off. It never writes or sends customer replies.

Data use needs a careful read. Gorgias's Master Subscription Agreement lets it use Customer Data, usage data and AI output to build and improve its own models. It will not use Customer Data to train third-party provider models, and its AI providers run under zero data retention. The help center adds that AI Agent learns from interactions of other brands, with safeguards against leaking confidential data.^[4] The models come from OpenAI and Anthropic plus Gorgias's own fine-tuned ones. If your legal team bars cross-customer learning, raise it before signing.

Treat the headline numbers as marketing. Gorgias claims AI Agent can automate 60% of support and was pre-trained on 1B+ conversations, and says it automated 9.67M interactions in 2025. Gorgias's own blog puts AI Agent CSAT 0.6 points below human agents. Your automation rate depends on how many tickets are order lookups rather than judgment calls. Measure it in a pilot month before any annual commitment.

The bottom line

Gorgias AI Agent is a capable tool for one kind of store: a Shopify brand whose inbox is full of tracking, address and cancellation requests. Skills, Actions and AI coverage give you real control, and the handover rules are sensible. The costs need watching. Each resolution draws on two meters, and past the included amount every interaction costs $1.50. Actions and brand voice need Basic or higher. Off Shopify, look elsewhere. On Shopify, start with your top five intents, test in the Playground, and read the bill after the first month.