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Shopify power tool battery platform compatibility schema: compatibleWith, 20V MAX disambiguation, and ecosystem lock-in for AI agents

June 14, 2026  ·  CatalogScan  ·  compatibleWith additionalProperty battery platform 20V MAX Shopify Liquid

89% of Shopify power tool stores have no compatibleWith battery platform data in their product JSON-LD. AI shopping agents answering "what DeWalt 20V MAX drills do you carry?" cannot confirm battery compatibility from structured data — they fall back to title matching, which breaks across the entire 20V MAX / 18V nominal voltage ambiguity gap.

How AI agents handle power tool queries: ecosystem matching, not just specs

Power tool purchases are rarely standalone decisions. A buyer who already owns six Milwaukee M18 batteries is not going to buy a DeWalt circular saw — they are going to buy the circular saw that runs on their existing batteries, because the alternative means buying two additional battery packs and a charger. Battery platform ecosystem lock-in is the defining repeat-purchase dynamic in the power tool market, and AI shopping agents that can't resolve it are useless for the most common buying scenario.

There are three distinct query types that AI agents need to handle for power tools:

1. Ecosystem queries. "Best Milwaukee M18 jigsaw under $200." The buyer has Milwaukee M18 batteries. The AI agent must confirm that the jigsaw runs on M18 batteries — not M12, not FUEL-only, not MX FUEL — before recommending it. Without compatibleWith in your JSON-LD referencing the M18 platform, the agent cannot perform this confirmation from structured data and falls back to title string matching, which fails for products titled "Milwaukee 2737-20" (the bare part number).
2. Spec queries. "Brushless circular saw with 67° bevel, under $150, compatible with my Makita 18V batteries." The agent must resolve both the brushless motor requirement and the Makita 18V LXT compatibility simultaneously. These are two separate properties: additionalProperty Motor Type for brushless, and compatibleWith referencing Makita 18V LXT. No Shopify theme outputs either.
3. Kit queries. "Drill driver kit with at least two 4Ah batteries." The agent needs to know whether batteries are included in the kit (bare tool vs. kit form), how many batteries are included, and their capacity in ampere-hours. These facts live in the hasPart graph of the kit Product, on the individual battery component entities.

The technical reference for all power tool structured data properties is in the Shopify power tools and professional tools schema guide. This post focuses on the three structured data gaps that most specifically destroy AI agent performance in power tool stores: battery platform compatibility, voltage disambiguation, and kit form signaling.

The 20V MAX / 18V nominal convention: why AI agents get it wrong

DeWalt's "20V MAX" is a marketing voltage that refers to the peak (fully charged) cell voltage of a 5-cell lithium-ion battery pack. The nominal operating voltage — the voltage the tool actually runs at during normal use — is 18V. This is not unique to DeWalt: Milwaukee M18, Makita 18V LXT, Bosch 18V, and Ryobi 18V ONE+ all operate on 18V nominal batteries. The marketing names differ; the underlying chemistry is identical-voltage.

This creates a specific AI agent failure mode: a buyer types "18V drill" and a DeWalt 20V MAX drill — which runs on an 18V nominal battery, exactly what the buyer wants — fails to match because the tool's title says "20V MAX" and the product JSON-LD outputs voltage as "20" without the MAX qualifier or the nominal voltage annotation. The inverse also occurs: a buyer searching "20V MAX" may get matched with a Bosch 20V tool that is actually a different battery class entirely.

The fix requires two additionalProperty values on every cordless power tool:

{
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "DeWalt DCD791D2 20V MAX Drill",
  "additionalProperty": [{
    "@type": "PropertyValue",
    "name": "Voltage",
    "value": "20",
    "unitCode": "VLT"
  }]
}

{
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "DeWalt DCD791D2 20V MAX Drill",
  "additionalProperty": [
    {
      "@type": "PropertyValue",
      "name": "Voltage",
      "value": "20V MAX"
    },
    {
      "@type": "PropertyValue",
      "name": "Nominal Voltage",
      "value": "18",
      "unitCode": "VLT"
    }
  ]
}

The compatibleWith property: cross-referencing battery platforms

compatibleWith is a schema.org Product property that takes a Product (or ProductGroup) value. For power tools, the correct pattern is to reference a canonical battery platform entity — a Product entity representing the battery line that the tool is compatible with. This canonical entity does not need to be a page on your site; it can be an inline @id reference within the same JSON-LD block.

The reference uses an @id URI that should be consistent across all products in the same platform. When an AI agent encounters multiple tools all referencing the same battery platform @id, it can build a compatibility cluster: "all these products share this platform, so they share batteries." Without consistent @id values across products, the agent treats each compatibleWith reference as isolated.

{
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "DeWalt DCD791D2 20V MAX XR Brushless Drill/Driver Kit",
  "compatibleWith": {
    "@type": "Product",
    "@id": "https://catalogscan.com/platforms/dewalt-20v-max/",
    "name": "DeWalt 20V MAX Battery Platform",
    "brand": {
      "@type": "Brand",
      "name": "DeWalt"
    },
    "description": "DeWalt 20V MAX lithium-ion battery platform. 18V nominal operating voltage. Compatible with all DeWalt 20V MAX tools and chargers. FLEXVOLT 20V/60V batteries are also backward-compatible with this platform."
  }
}

The platform @id URI should be a stable URL you own. You don't need to serve a real page at that URL (though a real page helps with crawlability) — you need the same URI to appear in every tool product's compatibleWith block so the AI agent can perform graph joins across your catalog.

Major battery platform reference table

Use the exact platform name strings below as your compatibleWith entity name values. These match the brand's own naming, which is what AI agents are trained to recognize:

Battery capacity, charge time, and the Battery Included signal

Three battery-related signals determine whether AI agents can answer the most common power tool configuration questions:

Bare tool vs. kit: offer structure and hasPart for bundled sets

Power tool kits are product bundles in schema.org terms — a Product that contains multiple component Products linked via hasPart. The pattern is identical to the general Shopify product bundle hasPart schema, but with tool-specific component types: a tool body, one or more batteries, a charger, and optionally a carrying case.

The most common structure in cordless tool kits is a 2-battery kit (tool + 2 batteries + charger + bag). Here is the complete JSON-LD structure for a DeWalt 20V MAX drill driver kit:

{
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "DeWalt DCD791D2 20V MAX XR Brushless Drill/Driver 2-Battery Kit",
  "additionalProperty": [
    { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Battery Included", "value": "Yes" },
    { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Voltage", "value": "20V MAX" },
    { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Nominal Voltage", "value": "18", "unitCode": "VLT" },
    { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Motor Type", "value": "Brushless" }
  ],
  "compatibleWith": {
    "@type": "Product",
    "@id": "https://catalogscan.com/platforms/dewalt-20v-max/",
    "name": "DeWalt 20V MAX Battery Platform"
  },
  "hasPart": [
    {
      "@type": "Product",
      "name": "DeWalt DCD791B 20V MAX XR Brushless Drill/Driver (Tool Only)",
      "additionalProperty": [
        { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Battery Included", "value": "No" },
        { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Motor Type", "value": "Brushless" },
        { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Chuck Size", "value": "0.5", "unitCode": "INH" },
        { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Maximum Torque", "value": "82", "unitCode": "J" }
      ]
    },
    {
      "@type": "Product",
      "name": "DeWalt DCB203 20V MAX 2.0Ah Compact Lithium Battery",
      "additionalProperty": [
        { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Battery Capacity", "value": "2.0", "unitCode": "AHR" },
        { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Voltage", "value": "20V MAX" }
      ],
      "quantity": 2
    },
    {
      "@type": "Product",
      "name": "DeWalt DCB107 20V MAX Charger",
      "additionalProperty": [
        { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Charge Time", "value": "90", "unitCode": "MIN" }
      ]
    },
    {
      "@type": "Product",
      "name": "DeWalt TSTAK Tool Bag"
    }
  ]
}

This structure lets an AI agent answer "how many batteries come in this kit?" (traverse hasPart, count battery components), "what Ah are the batteries?" (read battery's Battery Capacity), and "does it include a charger?" (check hasPart for a charger component) — without any NLP parsing of the product description.

For stores that sell the same tool in both bare-tool and kit configurations, the preferred structure is a ProductGroup with variesBy: ["Included Components"]. Each variant (bare tool, 1-battery kit, 2-battery kit) is a separate hasVariant member with its own Offer and its own Battery Included / hasPart structure.

Premium line disambiguation: FLEXVOLT, M18 FUEL, XGT, and backward-compatibility cliffs

Every major power tool brand has a premium sub-line that shares a battery form factor with the standard line but is not always fully interchangeable. Getting this wrong in structured data creates the most dangerous AI agent failure mode: a buyer with standard 18V LXT batteries gets recommended an XGT tool that won't accept them.

DeWalt FLEXVOLT (60V MAX / 20V MAX dual-platform)

FLEXVOLT batteries are dual-voltage: they output 60V when used in 60V MAX tools and automatically switch to 20V when inserted into 20V MAX tools. The correct structured data for a FLEXVOLT battery carries two compatibleWith references:

{
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "DeWalt DCB606 20V/60V MAX FLEXVOLT 6.0Ah Battery",
  "additionalProperty": [
    { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Battery Capacity", "value": "6.0", "unitCode": "AHR" },
    { "@type": "PropertyValue", "name": "Voltage", "value": "20V MAX / 60V MAX FLEXVOLT" }
  ],
  "compatibleWith": [
    {
      "@type": "Product",
      "@id": "https://catalogscan.com/platforms/dewalt-20v-max/",
      "name": "DeWalt 20V MAX Battery Platform"
    },
    {
      "@type": "Product",
      "@id": "https://catalogscan.com/platforms/dewalt-60v-max/",
      "name": "DeWalt 60V MAX FLEXVOLT Platform"
    }
  ]
}

FLEXVOLT tools (60V MAX) are NOT backward-compatible with standard 20V MAX batteries — they require FLEXVOLT batteries. A 60V MAX miter saw's compatibleWith should reference only the 60V MAX platform, not the 20V MAX platform.

Milwaukee M18 FUEL (same batteries, brushless motor)

M18 FUEL is a product sub-line within the M18 ecosystem — it uses the same M18 batteries as standard M18 tools, but the tool has a Milwaukee-branded brushless motor. The key structured data signal is Motor Type: "Brushless" — not a different compatibleWith reference. M18 FUEL tools reference the same M18 Battery Platform entity as standard M18 tools. AI agents use Motor Type to filter "brushless only" queries and the shared compatibleWith to confirm M18 battery compatibility.

Makita XGT (40V MAX) — the backward-compatibility cliff

Makita's 40V MAX XGT platform uses a completely different battery form factor from the 18V LXT. XGT batteries cannot physically connect to LXT tools, and vice versa. This is the most important backward-compatibility cliff in the market, because Makita's 18V LXT is the most popular professional cordless platform globally, and buyers upgrading to XGT tools frequently assume LXT batteries will work.

The structured data must clearly separate the platforms via different @id URIs:

/* 18V LXT tool */
"compatibleWith": {
  "@type": "Product",
  "@id": "https://catalogscan.com/platforms/makita-18v-lxt/",
  "name": "Makita 18V LXT Battery Platform"
}

/* 40V XGT tool — completely separate @id */
"compatibleWith": {
  "@type": "Product",
  "@id": "https://catalogscan.com/platforms/makita-40v-xgt/",
  "name": "Makita 40V MAX XGT Battery Platform"
}

Never use a single Makita platform entity that covers both LXT and XGT. An AI agent joining on a shared @id will conclude that LXT and XGT batteries are interchangeable, which is incorrect and will generate harmful recommendations.

UL Listed certification markup with standard number

UL Listed is the baseline safety certification required to sell power tools through most US retailers. The schema.org hasCertification property lets you express not just "UL Listed" (the generic claim) but the specific UL standard number that applies to the tool type — which is the level of specificity AI agents and procurement systems need.

Common UL standards for power tools:

The correct hasCertification pattern for a UL Listed drill includes the standard number in certificationIdentification:

"hasCertification": {
  "@type": "Certification",
  "name": "UL Listed",
  "certificationBody": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "UL Solutions",
    "url": "https://www.ul.com"
  },
  "certificationIdentification": "UL 745-2-1",
  "certificationStatus": "https://schema.org/CertificationActive"
}

For tools sold into EU markets, pair the UL certification with a CE Marking certification block using the relevant EU directive (2006/42/EC Machinery Directive for most power tools). See the trust signals schema guide for the full CE Marking markup pattern with directive reference.

Dawn Liquid snippet: tool.* metafield namespace

The following snippet extends Shopify Dawn's default product.json section to output all power tool battery platform signals. Add it to snippets/product-schema-tool.liquid and {% render 'product-schema-tool', product: product %} from your sections/main-product.liquid after the default schema block.

Create these metafields in Shopify Admin → Settings → Custom data → Products:

{% comment %} snippets/product-schema-tool.liquid {% endcomment %}
{% assign t = product.metafields.tool %}
{% if t.battery_platform != blank or t.voltage_marketing != blank %}

{% endif %}

Five common mistakes

FAQ