Safety Features

title: WooCommerce Add-on Safety description: How the WooCommerce add-on protects your store: product duplication, limited order modifications, and read-only sensitive settings.

Safety model for WooCommerce stores

The WooCommerce add-on protects revenue, stock levels, and customer trust while still giving you practical AI assistance.

Use this page to understand exactly what AI can and cannot do in your store, and how to recover quickly if something goes wrong.

Product safety: duplicate before edit

Product edits use a duplicate-first workflow so AI never rewrites your only copy of a product.

How product duplication works

When AI needs to change a product, it:

1. Duplicates the original product.
2. Applies the requested edits to the duplicate.
3. Leaves the original product untouched.

You can then review, compare, and manually publish or discard the duplicate from WooCommerce.

What is preserved in a duplicate

The duplicate product preserves almost everything that matters for continuity and testing:

• Core product data

  • Name, slug, short and long descriptions
  • Product type (simple, variable, grouped, etc.)
  • SKU, visibility, catalog/search settings

• Images and media

  • Featured image
  • Gallery images
  • Downloadable files (for digital products)

• Variations and attributes

  • Global and custom attributes
  • Variation combinations
  • Variation-level pricing and stock configuration

• Meta and settings

  • Custom fields and meta used by themes or plugins
  • Shipping class, tax class, and product-specific tax overrides
  • Linked products (upsells, cross-sells, grouped items)

Because the duplicate keeps all of this, you can safely test changes without risking broken variations, missing images, or lost theme-specific data.

Example: safe product-edit prompt

Use prompts like this when you want AI to improve a product via the duplicate workflow:

Take the "Organic Cotton Hoodie" product and create a duplicate with:
- A more compelling title that still mentions "Organic Cotton Hoodie"
- Updated long description focused on comfort and sustainability
- Bullet-point features that are clear and scannable
Do not change prices, taxes, or stock quantities.

After the run, verify:

• The original "Organic Cotton Hoodie" product still exists unchanged.
• The duplicate has the revised content and the same variations, images, and meta.

Order safety: limited, non-financial changes

Orders are financially sensitive objects. The add-on restricts AI to non-destructive, non-financial order operations.

What AI is allowed to change on orders

AI can make changes that improve operations and communication but do not alter what was sold, for how much, or under which terms:

• Order status
  • Moving orders between statuses such as on-hold, processing, completed, cancelled, and refunded (subject to your WooCommerce configuration).
• Customer details
  • Billing name, company, email, phone
  • Shipping name, company, addresses, phone
• Internal and customer notes
  • Adding private admin notes
  • Adding or updating customer-facing order notes where WooCommerce allows it
• Metadata that does not affect totals
  • Tags and internal flags used for fulfillment or support workflows

What AI is NOT allowed to change on orders

To protect your revenue and accounting integrity, AI cannot:

• Modify line items
  • No adding, removing, or swapping products on an existing order
• Change quantities
  • No increasing or decreasing quantities of existing line items
• Touch monetary values
  • No changing item prices
  • No modifying shipping costs
  • No altering applied coupons or discounts
  • No adjusting taxes or fees
• Create or apply refunds
  • No issuing refunds
  • No changing refund amounts or types

Status changes and email triggers

WooCommerce can send automatic emails to customers when the order status changes. When AI updates an order status:

• WooCommerce uses your existing email templates and settings.
• Any enabled status-based notifications still send as usual.

Before enabling AI status changes in a live store:

• Review your WooCommerce → Settings → Emails configuration.
• Confirm which statuses send customer emails and that their wording matches your policies.

If a status change triggers an email you did not intend, you can:

• Manually revert the order status to the previous state.
• Add a customer note explaining the correction.
• Adjust email settings to prevent future unwanted notifications.

Inventory safety: confirm and warn

Inventory and stock levels affect backorders, customer expectations, and your cash flow. The add-on requires explicit confirmation before applying stock edits and highlights risky changes.

Confirm-before-apply for inventory edits

When AI prepares an inventory change, it:

1. Analyzes current stock levels and product settings.
2. Proposes specific stock adjustments.
3. Waits for your explicit confirmation before applying changes.

You always see:

• Which products will change.
• Current and proposed stock quantities.
• Any products moving to or from low-stock or out-of-stock states.

If something looks off, cancel instead of confirming, then refine your prompt.

Low-stock warning behavior

The add-on highlights changes that might push products into low or zero stock. For example:

You are about to reduce inventory:

- Organic Cotton Hoodie (SKU HOODIE-OC-1)
  Current stock: 7
  New stock: 1
  This product will be marked as low stock and may trigger low-stock alerts.

- Linen Summer Shirt (SKU SHIRT-LN-2)
  Current stock: 3
  New stock: 0
  This product will be out of stock and hidden from your catalog if backorders are disabled.

Read-only sensitive areas

Some WooCommerce settings remain strictly read-only for AI. The add-on can read them to understand your store configuration but never modifies them.

Payment gateways (read-only)

Payment gateways determine how customers pay and how money reaches you. AI:

• Can read which gateways you have enabled.
• Can see gateway names and some configuration to better understand your checkout.
• Cannot enable, disable, install, or reconfigure any payment gateway.

This prevents:

• Accidentally disabling your only live gateway.
• Misconfiguring credentials that would block payments.
• Changing transaction behavior outside your control.

Shipping zones and methods (read-only)

Shipping settings affect customer costs and your margins. AI:

• Can read shipping zones, methods, and high-level rules.
• Can use that to write accurate copy or explanations for customers.
• Cannot create, delete, or edit shipping zones, methods, or rates.

Keeping these read-only avoids unintended cart price changes or broken shipping flows.

Tax settings (read-only)

Tax configuration has legal and accounting implications. AI:

• Can read your tax classes, basic rates, and whether taxes are included or excluded.
• Can use that context to avoid suggesting non-compliant pricing strategies.
• Cannot change tax rates, tax classes, or inclusive/exclusive settings.

Permission controls and opt-in safety

You stay in control of what the WooCommerce add-on can touch in your store.

Default enabled vs opt-in permissions

By default, the add-on enables only conservative, low-risk capabilities. Higher-impact capabilities require explicit opt-in.

Common patterns:

• Enabled by default

  • Reading products, orders, and settings for context
  • Creating product duplicates
  • Proposing non-destructive changes that you then approve

• Opt-in (require your explicit consent)

  • Applying product changes to duplicates
  • Changing order statuses
  • Applying inventory updates after confirmation

When you adjust permissions:

• Document who changed them and why.
• Revisit permissions after major workflow changes, theme or plugin updates, or staff turnover.

Audit logging and retention

Every meaningful AI action in your WooCommerce store is recorded in an audit log so you can see what changed, when, and by whom.

What the audit log records

The audit log typically includes:

• Timestamp of the action.
• Actor identity (for example, site owner, specific team member).
• High-level action type (product duplicate, order status change, inventory adjustment).
• A summary of what changed.
• Tool or workflow used to make the change.

This gives you a traceable history for compliance, debugging, and trust.

Retention periods

Audit log entries are kept for a limited time based on your plan:

• Starter plan: 30 days of audit history.
• Agency plan: 90 days of audit history.
• WooCommerce add-on log retention: same retention as your core plan (Starter or Agency).

Older entries expire automatically and are no longer visible.

Viewing the WooCommerce audit log

Access logs from the WordPress admin:

1. Go to WP Admin → Respira → Audit Logs.
2. Filter by:
   • Date range
   • Object type (product, order, inventory)
   • Action type
3. Drill into an entry to see what changed and the related prompt or operation.

Use this when:

• You want to double-check what AI changed yesterday.
• A colleague asks why a product or order looks different.
• You need evidence for compliance or internal reviews.

Grace period and expiry behavior

When your subscription or plan coverage changes, the WooCommerce add-on degrades safely instead of failing abruptly.

Day 1–7: grace period

If your subscription expires or payment issues occur:

• For the first 7 days, the WooCommerce add-on continues to function under a grace period.
• You keep normal access to:
  • Product duplication workflows
  • Allowed order and inventory operations
  • Audit logs (subject to retention)

During this time, resolve billing issues or decide whether to renew.

Day 8 and beyond: automatic disable

If no valid subscription is active after 7 days:

• AI-driven WooCommerce operations are disabled.
• AI cannot:
  • Create new product duplicates
  • Change order statuses
  • Propose or apply inventory edits
• Your existing WooCommerce setup continues to run normally, just without AI assistance.

Reactivating after expiry

When you reactivate:

• The WooCommerce add-on resumes operation using your latest permissions and settings.
• Audit logs are still limited by your plan retention window (Starter 30 days, Agency 90 days).
• You do not need to reinstall or reconfigure the add-on; your previous configuration is preserved.

Best practices for safe WooCommerce use

Follow these habits to keep financial and customer-impact risk low while getting real value from AI.

Start in staging or with low-risk products

• Test workflows on a staging or development copy of your store first.
• If staging is not available:
  • Use low-traffic or internal products.
  • Avoid bestselling or mission-critical products in early experiments.

Keep money-touching changes human-reviewed

• Always have a human review:
  • Any proposed change that affects prices, discounts, or fees (even if AI cannot apply them automatically).
  • Status changes on high-value or high-risk orders.
• Use duplicates to preview content, then manually adjust pricing or discounts yourself where needed.

Use clear, constrained prompts

Write prompts that make safety expectations explicit:

• State which fields AI may change and which it must leave alone.
• Clarify that taxes, shipping costs, and payment settings are off-limits.
• Reference SKUs or product IDs where precision matters.

For example:

For the products with SKUs HOODIE-OC-1 and SHIRT-LN-2:
- Improve titles, short descriptions, and long descriptions
- Keep SKUs, prices, tax classes, and stock levels exactly as they are
- Create duplicates instead of modifying live products
Summarize all changes at the end.

Monitor early runs closely

For the first few days:

• Check the audit log daily.
• Spot-check:
  • New product duplicates
  • Order status changes
  • Any inventory adjustments you confirm

If you see anything surprising, tighten permissions or revert to more conservative workflows.

When things go wrong

Even with guardrails, mistakes can happen: a confusing prompt, an unintended status change, or a stock adjustment you regret. Use this section as a quick recovery playbook.

Scenario 1: Wrong product content live on site

Symptom

• A product shows confusing or incorrect content that AI helped generate.

Likely cause

• You published a duplicate with content you later want to undo, or manually merged AI changes into the original product.

Fix

• Use the audit log to find:
  • When the content changed.
  • Which product or duplicate was affected.
• Restore from:
  • A previous duplicate that still has the correct content, or
  • A backup or manual snapshot you keep elsewhere.
• Revert the live product to the known-good content.

Then:

• Improve your prompts.
• Keep a clearly labeled backup copy of important product descriptions.

Scenario 2: Unwanted order status change and email sent

Symptom

• An order moved to a new status, and WooCommerce emailed the customer unexpectedly.

Likely cause

• AI changed the order status, triggering your configured WooCommerce email for that status.

Fix

• Change the order status back to the correct one.
• Add a customer note explaining any correction if needed.
• Review WooCommerce → Settings → Emails:
  • Consider disabling certain status-based emails.
  • Or updating their wording to better match your workflows.

If this happens more than once, temporarily disable AI status changes through permission controls.

Scenario 3: Inventory edited in a way you do not like

Symptom

• Stock levels are lower or higher than you intended after you confirmed a change.

Likely cause

• A prompt with overly broad instructions, or a confirmation click where not all proposed changes were double-checked.

Fix

• Use the audit log to find exactly which products and quantities changed.
• Manually adjust stock for those SKUs in WooCommerce to correct values.
• Tighten your prompts and confirmation habits:
  • Be explicit about which SKUs are in scope.
  • Double-check all proposed adjustments before hitting confirm.

Scenario 4: Someone enabled risky permissions

Symptom

• You notice AI has access to more actions than you expected (for example, widespread order status changes).

Likely cause

• Another admin enabled additional permissions without fully communicating it.

Fix

• Review and reduce permissions to a safer baseline.
• Use the audit log to see when permissions changed and by whom, if tracked.
• Agree internally on:
  • Who is allowed to modify AI/WooCommerce permissions.
  • How changes are communicated to the wider team.

Getting help and support

You are not on your own when something feels off or you want a second opinion.

• Email support: word@respira.press
• Typical response time: around 24 hours on business days
• Who you are talking to: Mihai, who builds and maintains the system

When you reach out:

• Include a brief description of what you were trying to do.
• Attach any relevant prompts.
• Share screenshots or copy from the audit log around the time of the issue.
• Note whether this is a production or staging store.

The more context you provide, the faster you will get a precise, actionable response.

Further reading

Use these pages to deepen your understanding of how safety works across the whole system, not just WooCommerce.