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This guide walks through building a Strategy end to end. It introduces each part you’ll touch as you go; when you need the exhaustive list of every trigger, operator, action, and filter, keep the Strategy rules reference open alongside it. Click Strategies in the left sidebar (or click here) Aftersell left sidebar with the Strategies menu item highlighted You’ll see your existing Strategies, or an empty state prompting you to create your first.

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Creating a Strategy

Click Add Strategy to open the Strategy editor to create a new Strategy. Strategies page empty state with the Add Strategy button highlighted Click the pencil icon in the top left to give the Strategy a descriptive name - it’s how you’ll recognize it in the dashboard later. Strategy editor with the Edit name pencil icon highlighted From here, you build the Strategy by adding rules.

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Creating a rule

A rule is a pair: triggers decide when it applies, and actions decide what it returns. A Strategy can hold many rules. when you’ve created your first strategy, it comes with an empty rule that’s ready to be defined. Strategy editor highlighting a rule with its When and Then sections

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Set the triggers

Triggers are the conditions a shopper’s context has to meet for the rule to fire. To add one, click “Add trigger”, choose a trigger type, pick an operator, and enter a value. For example, Customer Tag equals VIP. If you add multiple triggers, you’ll see an AND/OR option between the triggers. This decides whether both triggers need to be true to match (AND), or if only one of them needs to be true (OR) to match. The rules reference lists every trigger type and the operators each one accepts.
Not every surface sends every signal. See each surface’s respective documentation to see what is and isn’t available as a signal.
Rule with two customer tag triggers combined by an AND operator

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Set the actions

Actions decide what the rule returns when it fires. Pick your products from any combination of sources. Hand-picked products, a whole collection, product attributes like tag or vendor, or a dynamic selector such as Most popular, Recently purchased, or AI Recommendations. Everything you choose feeds one pool, deduplicated automatically. The rules reference covers every action type and exactly how the pool is assembled, sorted, and filtered. Action category menu listing Product, Dynamic, Filters, and Settings sources Rule Then section with a Collection action set to VIP Exclusives

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Rules ordering

When a Strategy has several rules, they’re evaluated top to bottom in steps - Step 1 first. Drag rules to reorder them. Products from every matching rule are pooled together, deduplicated, and trimmed to the Strategy’s maximum (20 by default), so the rules nearer the top effectively get first claim on the slots.

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Configuring a catch all

The Catch all is a special rule with no triggers that fires whenever no other rule matches - so your recommendation slot is never empty. Toggle it on and give it products the same way you would any other rule; a safe collection or a dynamic selector works well as a fallback. Leave it off, and a shopper who matches no rule simply gets nothing back.

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Applying global filters

Global filters trim products out of every rule at once, so you don’t have to repeat the same exclusion rule by rule. Open them from the filter icon next to the Strategy name. The common ones exclude out-of-stock products, exclude the product a shopper is currently viewing, or exclude by tag, metafield, or product ID - the rules reference has the full set.

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Saving your Strategy

The editor won’t save while any rule is incomplete - each one needs at least a trigger (or Always match) and an action. Incomplete rules show an inline error telling you what’s missing; fix the rule or delete it, and the Strategy saves once every rule is valid.

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Next: serve your Strategy on a surface

With your Strategy saved, point a surface at it to start showing recommendations. See the Implementing Strategies guides for post-purchase, checkout, thank-you, and cart.