Virelo – Shopping Assistant for WooCommerce

Description

Your catalog usually has the right product. Shoppers just can’t find it with dropdowns and keyword search.

Virelo adds a conversational shopping assistant to your WooCommerce store. A shopper types something like “a rain jacket for hiking, under $80” and Virelo answers with real products from your indexed catalog — including a short reason for each match, the live price, the current stock status, and a working link to the product page.

Every recommendation is grounded. The AI model can only choose from products Virelo retrieved from your database, and price and stock are verified against WooCommerce right before the card is rendered. No invented products, no dead links, no stale prices.

This plugin is an independent product and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Automattic or WooCommerce.

How it works

1. Index — Virelo builds a searchable index of your products in your own WordPress database, in batches, in the background.
2. Retrieve — a shopper question is turned into a filtered, ranked shortlist using price, stock, attributes, keyword signals, and embedding similarity.
3. Ground — only that shortlist is handed to the language model, so answers cannot drift outside your catalog.
4. Verify — product identity, price, and stock are re-checked live before the recommendation is shown.

What shoppers get

• Plain-language search instead of filter stacking
• Multi-turn chat that keeps context — budget, colour, size, occasion, or “show me something else”
• Clarifying questions when the request is too vague to answer well
• Match reasons so the recommendation is explainable, not a black box
• Live price and stock at render time
• Optional voice input using the browser Web Speech API
• Add to cart directly from a recommendation for simple, in-stock products

What merchants get

• Bring your own AI provider — OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, LongCat, OpenRouter, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or WordPress AI Client connectors on WordPress 7.0+
• No external vector database — hybrid retrieval runs inside your WordPress database
• Optional local embeddings so you can run retrieval without paying for an embeddings API
• Parent or variation indexing so size and colour rows can be matched individually
• Analytics for shopper queries, matches, and click-through
• Unmatched demand insights — see what shoppers asked for that your catalog could not answer, then buy or write accordingly
• Tunable retrieval — result count, similarity threshold, and candidate pre-filter limit
• Abuse-protection rate limits for anonymous and logged-in visitors
• Background indexing via Action Scheduler, so large catalogues do not block admin
• Privacy tooling — integrates with WordPress personal data export and erase

Place it anywhere

• Floating bubble across the site
• Search bar in a hero, header, or any section
• “Ask Virelo” button that opens the assistant
• Full embedded chat panel
• Gutenberg block, plus shortcodes: [virelo type="search"], [virelo type="button"], [virelo type="panel"], [virelo type="floating"]

Styling and branding

Set your own widget title and accent colour so the assistant matches your theme. The “Powered by Virelo” attribution is optional and off by default — it appears only if you deliberately switch it on.

Privacy first

Virelo does not phone home. Outbound requests go only to the AI provider you configure, optionally to WordPress AI connectors on your site, and optionally to a webhook URL you set. Nothing is sent until you save credentials and a feature is actually used. See the External services section for a full per-provider breakdown.

External services

This plugin connects to external services that you choose and configure. It does not send data until credentials (or a webhook URL) are saved and a feature is used (catalog reindex or shopper chat/search). No requests are made to the plugin author’s servers.

OpenAI

• Why: optional AI chat and embeddings provider.
• When: only after an administrator selects OpenAI, saves an API key, and reindexes or a shopper uses Virelo.
• Data transmitted: product titles, descriptions, and related catalog fields for embeddings; shopper prompts (up to 500 characters) and short catalog candidate snippets for chat.
• Endpoint: https://api.openai.com/v1
• Terms of Service: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use
• Privacy Policy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy

Anthropic Claude

• Why: optional AI chat provider (embeddings may use local hashing or another configured embedding mode).
• When: only after an administrator selects Claude, saves an API key, and a shopper uses Virelo (or related configured features).
• Data transmitted: shopper conversation messages and product/catalog snippets required for grounded recommendations.
• Endpoint: https://api.anthropic.com/v1
• Terms of Service: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms
• Privacy Policy: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy

Google Gemini

• Why: optional AI chat and embeddings via Gemini’s OpenAI-compatible endpoint.
• When: only after an administrator selects Gemini, saves credentials, and reindexes or a shopper uses Virelo.
• Data transmitted: catalog text for embeddings; shopper prompts and candidate product snippets for chat.
• Endpoint: https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/openai
• Terms of Service: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms
• Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

LongCat

• Why: optional AI chat provider (https://api.longcat.chat/openai/v1).
• When: only after an administrator selects LongCat, saves an API key (and any required configuration), and a shopper uses Virelo or another feature that calls the chat API. No LongCat requests occur until then.
• Data transmitted: conversation messages; product information and catalog candidate snippets required to generate grounded AI responses; model and request parameters needed for the API call.
• Terms of Service: https://longcat.chat/platform/private/
• Privacy Policy: https://longcat.chat/platform/private/POLICY.html

OpenRouter

• Why: optional AI chat and embeddings gateway to models you choose in settings.
• When: only after an administrator selects OpenRouter, saves an API key, and reindexes or a shopper uses Virelo.
• Data transmitted: catalog text for embeddings; shopper prompts and product snippets for chat.
• Endpoint: https://openrouter.ai/api/v1
• Terms of Service: https://openrouter.ai/terms
• Privacy Policy: https://openrouter.ai/privacy

Custom OpenAI-compatible API base

• Why: optional merchant-entered HTTPS base URL compatible with OpenAI-style chat/embeddings APIs.
• When: only after an administrator enters the base URL and credentials and uses reindex or chat.
• Data transmitted: same categories as above (catalog text and/or shopper prompts and product snippets), sent to the host you configure.
• Terms / Privacy: governed by the service behind the URL you enter; review that provider’s policies before use.

WordPress AI Client connectors (WordPress 7.0+)

• Why: optional site-level AI connectors configured in WordPress instead of (or alongside) a direct provider API key.
• When: only when connectors are available/configured on the site and Virelo uses them for a chat request.
• Data transmitted: shopper prompts and catalog candidate snippets required for grounded answers, via the connectors you enable in WordPress.
• Terms / Privacy: follow the policies of each connector/provider configured on your WordPress site.

Optional merchant webhook

• Why: notify your own systems about search-related events.
• When: only after an administrator saves a webhook HTTPS URL and a configured feature fires the webhook.
• Data transmitted: anonymized search-related payload for your own integrations.
• Terms / Privacy: your destination URL; you control that endpoint.

Fonts (Outfit) are bundled locally under the SIL Open Font License. No remote font CDN is used.

Privacy

• Shopper search text and session tokens may be stored in your WordPress database for analytics for up to 90 days.
• Search text may be sent to your configured AI provider as described under External services.
• Use Tools → Export Personal Data / Erase Personal Data for users who have an associated Virelo session token.
• Suggested privacy policy text is registered with WordPress via the Privacy Policy guide.
• Store owners should also review their AI provider’s privacy policy and disclose Virelo on their storefront privacy page.