Sync your products
Import a copy of your catalog so the AI knows what it is writing about — and learn to use the product list to find everything that still needs text.
Why a sync is needed
krasslabs never writes content straight out of your live shop. It works on an imported copy of your catalog: product names, numbers, categories, manufacturers, languages and pictures. That copy is what the AI reads when it writes a description, and it is what the review screen shows you as “the text that is in your shop today”.
The consequence is simple: if it is not in the copy, it does not exist here. A product you added in Shopware this morning cannot be selected in a job until you have synced.
Syncing never changes anything in your Shopware shop. It reads. The only moment content flows the other way is when you deliberately send it — see Sending content to your shop.
Run your first sync
- In the left sidebar of your shop, open All products. The page is titled Products.
- Press Sync now at the top right.
- You get the message “Catalog sync started.” and a progress card appears.
That is the whole thing. Depending on the size of your catalog it takes anywhere from a few seconds to a good few minutes.
Owners, Managers and Editors see the Sync now button. Auditors do not — they can look at the catalog but cannot trigger anything.
If there is no button
The button only appears once a connection exists. Without one the page shows No store connected and “Connect your store first — then the catalog can be synced here.” As an Owner you get a Set up connection button straight to the right page; everyone else is told “Ask the shop owner to configure the connection.” See Connect your shop.
What gets imported
One sync brings over everything the generation tasks need:
- Languages — every language your shop sells in, including which one is the main language. Without this you cannot pick languages in a job.
- Categories — the full category tree, with their names and descriptions.
- Manufacturers — used as background information and as a filter when selecting products.
- Products — names, product numbers, variants, existing descriptions, meta texts and custom fields.
- Translations — the existing text of each product and category, per language, so the AI can see what is already there and you can compare against it.
- Media — your product pictures and the other images in your shop’s media library, which is what the alt-text and image tasks work on.
Prices, stock, orders and customers are not imported. krasslabs deals with content only.
Watching the progress
While a sync runs, the products page shows a card titled Catalog sync in progress with a progress bar and a live counter in the form 120 / 4,300 products. The counter updates by itself — you do not have to reload. The Sync now button is disabled and relabelled Sync running… so you cannot start a second run by accident.
The sync runs in the background on the server. You can leave the page, work in another shop or close the browser entirely; it carries on. When you come back, the products page shows the finished catalog and Last sync with the date and time.
The page also detects when the server has lost contact and tells you so: “We have lost contact with the server, so this page may be out of date. We keep trying — reload the page if it does not recover.” Reloading is safe — it does not restart the sync.
When a sync does not finish
The sync stalled
If a run stops responding, the page says “This sync has stopped responding. Start it again to retry.” Press Sync now again. The stuck run is cleaned up automatically and you get the message “The previous sync stopped responding, so we started a new one.” Nothing is lost — everything already imported stays.
The sync failed
A red card appears: The last catalog sync did not finish, followed by a plain-language explanation. If the cause could not be identified, it says “We could not tell what went wrong. Please try the sync again.”
- Press Sync now once more — temporary hiccups (your shop was briefly unreachable, a timeout) fix themselves on the second attempt.
- If it fails again, go to Settings › Connection and press Test connection. A failing connection is by far the most common cause. See Connect your shop.
- Still failing? Open Technical details under the error and send that text to whoever maintains your shop.
The same problem also shows up on the shop Overview as the banner The last catalog sync did not finish with a Retry button.
“Worth a look after the last sync”
This amber card means the sync itself succeeded, but something in your catalog changed in a way that deserves a human glance — for example your main language moved, or entries vanished from your shop that are still referenced by existing jobs here. Read the note, check the relevant part of your shop, and carry on.
Messages you may see when pressing the button
- “A sync is already running. Please wait until it has finished.” — one sync per shop at a time.
- “Configure a shop connection before syncing.” — no access data has been saved yet.
- “Too many sync attempts. Please wait a minute before syncing again.” — a safety limit so your shop is not overloaded. Wait a minute.
How often should you sync?
There is no schedule and no automatic sync — you decide when. A good rule: sync before you start a batch of work, and always after your catalog has changed.
- You added or renamed products.
- You changed descriptions, meta texts or custom fields directly in Shopware.
- You uploaded new pictures, or you want to write alt texts for images added recently.
- You added a language or restructured your categories.
- You sent content from here to your shop and want the review screens to show the new state as “current”.
The shop overview warns you when it gets old: Catalog last synced N days ago — “Generations run against the imported copy, so new or edited products are missing.” Working from a stale copy means the AI can silently rewrite text you have already improved by hand in Shopware, and brand-new products will not even be selectable. Sync first; it costs no credits.
The product list
Once the sync is done, All products becomes the place where you decide what to work on. The subtitle tells you how many products were synced and when the last sync ran.
Search
Type into Search by product number or name… and press Search. It matches both the name and the product number, so pasting an article number from Shopware works.
“Only products without a description”
This is the single most useful control on the page. Tick the checkbox and press Search, and the list shrinks to exactly the products that have no description in your main language — your actual to-do list. Above the table you then see how many of your products match, for example “312 of 4,300 products match.”
Use Clear to drop the search term and the filter and get the full list back.
Every product with no description shows the red badge No description — write one. It is a link: clicking it opens the description job wizard with that product already selected, so you can generate a text for a single product in a few clicks. See Generating content.
Reading the table
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Product | The product name in your main language. Products without a name are listed as Untitled product. |
| Number | The product number from Shopware — the quickest way to match a row against your shop. |
| Variants | How many variants the product has. Only the main product is listed; its variants are counted here. |
| Media | How many pictures are attached. A dash means none — relevant for image and alt-text tasks. |
| Description | The state of the description in your main language, as a coloured badge (see below). |
| Status | Active or Inactive in your shop. Inactive products can be worked on too — but ask yourself whether it is worth the credits. |
The description badge comes in three flavours:
- No description — write one (red) — nothing there at all, and a link into the wizard.
- Short · N chars (amber) — there is text, but under 300 characters. Usually a one-liner worth replacing.
- N chars (green) — a description of a reasonable length exists.
Paging
The list shows 25 products per page, with Page 3 of 172 and Previous / Next buttons at the bottom. Search term and filter are kept while you page. For a large catalog, filtering first is far quicker than paging through everything.
What next
With the catalog imported you can start producing content. Either take the shortcut from a No description — write one badge, or go the regular way: Generating content. If you want to set your tone of voice first, look at Configuration.