AI Insights Panel on the Dashboard
Automatically generated insight cards on the MerchantFlow dashboard surface ad spend, profit, fulfillment, and data quality findings without you asking.
AI Insights Panel on the Dashboard
The AI Insights panel is a card grid on the main MerchantFlow dashboard that surfaces automatically generated findings about your store - things like falling ROAS, profit-leak products, sync issues, and data-quality gaps - without you having to ask. It is a passive, always-on companion to the conversational Flow AI assistant.
What's the difference? AI Insights = cards generated for you, shown on the dashboard. Flow AI = a chat panel where you ask your own questions. They share the same data foundation but serve different workflows.
How AI Insights Work
A pipeline of eleven rule-based generators runs against your synced data and produces signals, each with a priority and a severity. They are ranked, the top 8 are kept, and those are then rewritten by an LLM for cleaner phrasing before appearing in the dashboard panel scoped to your selected timeframe.
The rewrite is fact-checked before it ships: any number the model produces that cannot be traced back to the underlying signal, or any causal claim the data does not support, is discarded and the original template wording is shown instead. Cards that survived the rewrite are marked AI-enhanced at the top of the panel.
Each card includes:
- A severity indicator (
positive,neutral,warning,negative) shown as a coloured left border - emerald, slate, amber, and rose respectively - A short headline (up to 80 characters) and one or two sentences of context (up to 160 characters)
- A deep link into the relevant dashboard page when applicable, labelled View details by default
Where the Panel Appears
You'll find the AI Insights panel on the main dashboard at /dashboard, second from the top, directly under your North Star KPI cards. It updates whenever you change the global timeframe selector at the top of the page.
The panel is a dashboard widget (ai_insights), so you can hide or reorder it from the layout editor.
Insight Categories
The panel covers eight categories:
| Category | What it surfaces |
|---|---|
| Ad spend | ROAS drops, sudden spend increases, channels under-performing |
| Profit | Margin compression, profit-leak products |
| Revenue | Significant up- or down-trends vs prior period |
| Fulfillment | Cost spikes, missing 3PL data |
| Data quality | Missing COGS, low attribution coverage |
| Product | New best-sellers, stalled products |
| Sync health | Failed syncs, stale credentials, integration warnings |
| ROAS | Per-channel ROAS shifts |
How to Maximize Insight Quality
Insights only surface what your data supports. To get the most out of the panel:
- Connect all relevant integrations - GA4, ad platforms, Search Console, Merchant Center
- Configure COGS for at least your top revenue products - see COGS Management
- Run an initial sync so historical comparisons have a reference period
- Enable tax rules if tax materially affects profit in your business
Low data coverage shows up explicitly as a data_quality insight rather than failing silently.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are AI Insights and Flow AI the same thing?
No. AI Insights is the always-on card panel on the main dashboard. Flow AI is the conversational chat at /dashboard/ai where you type questions and get answers. Both share the same underlying data, but they're different surfaces. Flow AI requires the Pro or Plus tier; AI Insights cards appear on every tier.
How fresh are the insights?
Insights are recalculated after every sync completes, and on demand when you open a timeframe that has not been evaluated recently. There is no separate schedule. Results are cached for 5 minutes before the AI rewrite and for 1 hour afterwards, and the panel revalidates hourly while the dashboard is open. Moving the timeframe re-evaluates the panel.
On a cold load you may briefly see the plain template wording before the AI-enhanced version replaces it a few seconds later.
Can I dismiss or hide individual insights?
Insight cards are read-only in the current product. Severity ranking ensures the most important items appear first.
Why is my insights panel sparse or empty?
Most likely your store has just connected. The panel's empty state says insights appear once your store has synced at least two days of data, and comparison-based findings need enough history to compare against. Generators also have minimum-volume floors, so a very quiet period may legitimately produce nothing.
Related Guides
- Flow AI Assistant - the conversational counterpart at
/dashboard/ai - Daily Email Summary - get a written digest of yesterday's data in your inbox
- KPI Metrics - the underlying metrics insights are built from
- Sync Status - keep insights accurate with healthy syncs
Last updated: August 23, 2026
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