How it works
How products are picked and ranked, and why shoppers never wait on AI.
From product to list
- Candidates: the product's up-sells and cross-sells, then WooCommerce's related products (shared categories and tags), then best sellers to fill up.
- Ranking: approved AI picks first (AI + Rules), then the rule-based ranking fills the rest.
- Checks: every product is re-checked before it's shown.
- Cache: the list is cached for an hour and refreshed sooner when the product or its ranking changes, or when settings are saved.
Rule-based ranking
| Signal | Product page | Cart |
|---|---|---|
| Up-sell of the product | +6 | +3 |
| Cross-sell of the product | +5 | +6 |
| Each shared category · tag | +2 · +1 | +2 · +1 |
| Sales volume · rating | up to +1 · +0.5 | up to +1 · +0.5 |
Rules work without AI and are the fallback whenever AI picks aren't ready.
AI ranking
- AI is never called while a page loads. The first time a product's list is shown, that product is queued for a background ranking (WooCommerce's Action Scheduler, or WP-Cron).
- The AI receives the product and up to 20 candidates from your catalog, and returns up to 12 picks, best first. It can only re-order products that exist in your store; any other ID in its answer is ignored.
- Rankings are refreshed weekly, or sooner when too many picks become unavailable. A failed attempt waits an hour.
- Only published products whose lists are actually viewed get ranked; there's no catalog-wide batch. A product needs at least 2 other products to rank. Use Generate now for a specific product.
- Nothing is queued while the engine is Rules Only, no provider is configured, the product is excluded from AI, or a request limit is reached.
- A list for the cart contents uses the AI picks of up to 5 cart products, taking turns between them so no single item dominates.
- With Require My Approval, new picks wait in the product editor.
What can be recommended
Published, visible, purchasable products with a price. Never the product itself, variations, password-protected or hidden products, or external/affiliate products. Out-of-stock products are hidden while Hide Out-of-Stock Products is on.
Costs
- Your provider bills your own account; the plugin adds no charge. A ranking is one small request; its answer is capped by Max Response Tokens (400 by default).
- At most 60 AI requests per hour (fixed) and 500 per day (setting), site-wide. Failed requests count; cached answers don't.
- Identical requests reuse cached answers for 24 hours by default.
Privacy
- Only catalog data is sent to the AI: product id, name and categories, plus the fields you choose (short description, tags, attributes, price).
- Never customer, order, cart or browsing data. Free sets no cookies and stores no shopper data.
- Products in a shopper's cart may be queued for their own ranking, without any shopper information.
- Excluding a product from AI stops ranking for it, but it can still be sent as a candidate for other products.
Performance
No storefront script of its own (cards use WooCommerce's own add to cart script); one small stylesheet only where a list shows. Lists are cached and contain product IDs only.
Languages
WPML and Polylang are supported: each language has its own lists and AI rankings. Translate the heading with string translation.