Ask Sidekick what a recipe costs

Costcraft is for merchants who make what they sell. The numbers that matter day to day are not on the product page: which materials are low, what a recipe actually costs, and how many units you can still make. Shopify Sidekick can ask those questions in plain language, as long as the app gives it a way to read the data.

Where Ask Sidekick appears#

Costcraft shows Ask Sidekick in the secondary actions on three pages: the app home, a material, and a recipe. The button is not there for every shop. Before it renders the control, Costcraft asks Shopify whether Sidekick is enabled. If the shop does not have Sidekick, the call is refused, or the embedded app has no Sidekick API, the button is left out.

Nothing opens when the page loads. Sidekick starts only after a click. If that launch fails, Costcraft shows a short notice that Sidekick is not available right now. Closing the app inside Sidekick has the same result: the button may be visible, but the conversation does not open.

Each page sends a question that matches what is on screen:

• Home asks which materials are below their reorder point, and what to reorder.
• A material asks how many units you can still make with it, and which recipes use it.
• A recipe asks for the unit cost, the margin, and how many units that recipe can still make.

The question is about Costcraft's own data. A conversation started from the app does not call another app's tools, and it does not ask Sidekick to change the Shopify shop along the way.

What Sidekick is allowed to look up#

Sidekick calls Costcraft's read-only tools. Each call is limited to the current shop and returns at most ten rows. Amounts use the shop currency. A margin of 0.4 means 40 percent. "How many you can make" uses stock at the shop's default location.

The tools cover the questions a maker actually asks:

• A store snapshot: stock value, how many materials are low or out of stock, open purchase orders, and material use and production over the last 30 days.
• Materials at or below the reorder point, with a suggested reorder quantity and a link to the low-stock list.
• Search by material name or SKU. You can limit that search to active, low, or archived materials, and to raw materials or sub-assemblies you make yourself.
• One material: its cost, stock at each location, quantity on order, the supplier's name, and the recipes that use it.
• Search for a recipe by product, variant, SKU, or sub-assembly, with unit cost, margin, and how many you can make.
• One recipe: its materials, the batch cost and the unit cost, the margin, how many you can make, and whether materials come off the order or when a production run is finished.
• Production runs by status: planned, in progress, completed, or cancelled.
• Purchase orders by status. Open orders are drafts, placed orders, and partial receipts. The amount still to receive is an estimate of what has not arrived yet, and shipping stays in the order total.
• Suppliers by name: the name, how many materials they supply, how many purchase orders are still open, and the lead time.

A single material or recipe is opened by Costcraft's own id, not by the Shopify product id. Sidekick is expected to search first, then use the id from that result.

From an answer to the right page#

A result can include a link that opens the matching Costcraft screen, so the reply is not a dead end. Those links open:

• the material
• the low-stock list
• the recipe
• a new production run for that recipe
• a new purchase order for that material
• the reorder draft built from what is low
• the inventory valuation report

Sidekick can use the link in its answer. You still do the work on the page. The tools do not click the button for you.

What it will not do#

The tools do not create or edit materials, recipes, production runs, purchase orders, or stock. To change a number, open the linked page and change it there.

Supplier email, phone, and contact names are dropped before a response is sent. Customer data is not read. Without an active plan, the reply says a subscription is required. It does not compare plans or push an upgrade.

Lists stop at ten rows. When more exist, the response says so. That keeps an answer short enough for Sidekick to use, and it keeps a broad question from dumping the whole catalog into the chat.

Sidekick is a way to ask what the shop already knows. The recipe, the production run, and the purchase order stay where you edit them, in Costcraft.