FAQ
Common questions about Hollow Sentinel — operational intelligence, plans, Engine pairing, and how Sentinel differs from analytics tools.
Hollow Sentinel is operational intelligence for Shopify merchants — not a BI dashboard or report builder. You get daily briefings, health scores, anomaly insights, and store memory. This page answers the questions merchants ask most often.
What is Hollow Sentinel?
Sentinel runs inside Shopify Admin as an embedded app. It passively monitors your store, remembers changes, compares metrics to your baselines, and delivers a daily briefing with prioritized insights. On Growth it adds revenue at risk, Slack alerts, Klaviyo monitoring, and root cause hints.
How is Sentinel different from Shopify Analytics or GA4?
Analytics tools show what happened and let you build views. Sentinel tells you what changed, whether it is abnormal for your store, and what to check first — without configuring charts. See the full comparison guide for Triple Whale, revenue leak apps, and free substitutes.
Hollow Sentinel vs alternatives
Do I need Arcanum Engine?
No. Sentinel is fully useful standalone. Engine adds installable playbooks and attributed automation results. When both apps are installed on the same store, Sentinel can recommend Engine playbooks and sync GUARD opportunities.
Which plan do I need?
Starter ($29/month) suits smaller stores that want briefings, health scores, timeline, and email alerts with 30-day memory. Growth ($99/month) adds Slack, Klaviyo monitoring, revenue at risk, root cause analysis, and Ask Sentinel (bounded AI Q&A). Scale ($299/month) adds experience probes, executive briefings, SKU velocity and days-of-cover forecasting, read-only Public API, unlimited Store Memory, and priority support. Enterprise is custom — contact sales; multi-user, SSO, and white-label are roadmap items.
How long is the learning period?
Fourteen days. Hollow Sentinel captures one store snapshot per day and completes learning after 14 snapshots. During learning, health confidence is limited and experience monitoring in briefings stays partial. Store timeline and webhooks work from day one.
Health scores and learning period
Why did I not get a revenue alert this morning?
Sentinel suppresses early-day revenue noise using partial-day baselines unless a move is extreme. Daily briefings include an info callout when this trust logic applies. This reduces false positives compared to simple threshold alerts.
What data does Sentinel use?
Sentinel uses Shopify Admin API data and webhooks — orders, products, inventory, themes, and shop configuration. Klaviyo monitoring on Growth uses read-only API access you provide. Sentinel does not require a separate analytics pixel.
What next?
- New install — follow the quick start checklist
- Slack or Klaviyo setup — connector guides in this hub
- Something broke — troubleshooting
- Bundles with Engine — ecosystem bundles
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