Metafields are the custom fields you add to products in Shopify — fabric content, fit notes, care instructions, anything beyond Shopify's standard fields. Osello imports them alongside your products and hands them to the AI that fills your marketplace fields, which is often the difference between the AI knowing an answer and having to work one out.
What imports
Osello imports metafields on both products and variants. By default it reads Shopify's most common namespaces — custom, shopify, mm-google-shopping, mc-facebook, and google — and you can add more namespaces in your Shopify integration's settings if your metafields live elsewhere.
To see a product's imported values, open the product and click its Metafields tab.
Grouping metafields
Osello recognizes style- and group-related metafields and uses them to group related products together — typically when
one style is split into several products, one per color. It matches by naming convention, in any namespace:
| What it sets | Metafield key ends with |
|---|---|
| Group code | group_code, style_code, style_id, group_number, … |
| Group title | group_title, style_name, group_name — or group_description if you have no title key |
| Group variation attribute | group_variation_attribute, style_variant_type, … |
| Group variation value | group_variation_value, style_variant_name, color_name, … |
A marketplace_ prefix works too, so custom.marketplace_style_title matches just as custom.style_title does.
The group title is the shared, canonical name for everything with the same group code — the style name without the
part that varies. If your products are titled "Night Shirt Pima Knit Stripes - Blue" and "... - Ivory", the group title
is "Night Shirt Pima Knit Stripes". Set it in Shopify and Osello uses it for the marketplace listing's title instead of
inferring one from your product titles. Titles longer than 255 characters are shortened to fit.
You can also set or correct any of these by hand on a product's Edit page — look for the fields named after your
store's Style (or Group) caption.
How Osello uses metafields
When a Prompt fills a listing field — fabric composition, care instructions, a style attribute — the AI reads everything it knows about the product, and metafields are a first-class part of that. A custom.material metafield saying "100% organic cotton" means the AI reports exactly that instead of inferring it from your description.
Metafield values can also flow straight into listing fields when a marketplace field maps directly to something your source data already holds.
Metafield Definitions
Open the store menu at the bottom of the sidebar and choose Metafield Definitions to see every metafield key Osello has encountered. Definitions are created automatically the first time a key appears during import, so the list builds itself. Each definition has:
- Name — a friendly label, auto-generated from the key and yours to improve.
- Key — the
namespace.keyidentifier. It's permanent once set and must match exactly what your integration sends. - Data Type — String, Array of Strings, Number, or JSON. This hints to Osello's AI how to interpret the values. String is the safe default.
- Description — optional notes about how the metafield is used.
- Ignored — when enabled, Osello's AI and listing generation skip this metafield's values entirely.
You can also add a definition ahead of time with New Metafield Definition.
Keep the signal clean
The AI reads your active metafields on every run, so a little housekeeping pays off:
- Ignore the noise. Internal flags, app-generated bookkeeping fields, and anything a shopper would never care about — mark them Ignored so the AI focuses on real product data.
- Name definitions clearly. "Fabric Composition" tells the AI more than a raw key ever will.
- Set the right data type for list-like or numeric fields, so values are interpreted the way you intend.