Shopify Sidekick
AI agent built into the Shopify admin that carries out merchant operations from natural language, grounded in the store's own commerce data, with an app extension platform that lets partner apps expose their data and actions to it.
Shopify Sidekick is Shopify's built-in AI assistant for merchants, living inside the Shopify admin and reachable from the purple glasses icon or the mobile app. Launched in early 2025 and included with every Shopify plan, it lets store owners run their business through natural-language conversation instead of clicking through menus, and it respects each staff member's permissions so people only act on data they are authorized to see.
Unlike a generic chatbot, Sidekick is a function-calling agent wired into Shopify's own APIs. It reads a store's real data, runs ShopifyQL queries against live orders and analytics, and can take action in the admin, always surfacing the changes for the merchant to approve before applying them. A merchant can ask why sales dropped last week, set up a discount for a collection, create customers, edit store policies, or adjust a theme, all in plain language.
Sidekick is powered by Shopify Magic, Shopify's commerce AI stack. Where Magic is the set of embedded generate buttons for product descriptions, images, and emails, Sidekick is the conversational agent that spans the whole admin and ties those capabilities together. Recent releases have pushed it from a reactive helper toward a proactive coworker: Sidekick Pulse monitors store data in the background and surfaces opportunities and anomalies, such as a conversion drop or an underperforming product, before the merchant asks.
It has also grown more agentic. Merchants can describe a workflow in plain English, like alerting a team and tagging a product when inventory falls below a threshold, and Sidekick builds the corresponding Shopify Flow automation. On eligible plans it can even generate simple custom admin tools and mini-apps, writing the code against Shopify's components and Admin API.
Sidekick is an internal operations tool, not a customer-facing chatbot, so it does not answer shopper questions or see data outside Shopify. Within those bounds it works across Shopify's ecosystem as an always-available commerce expert, helping merchants set up, run, and grow a store with far less manual navigation.
Vendor details
Canonical URL
https://www.shopify.com/sidekick
Category
GTM / revenue agent
Subcategory
E-commerce — merchant assistant
Company status
independent
Use cases & customers
Primary use cases
Target customers
Deployment options
In practice
You're staring at the admin wondering why last week's sales dipped. Ask Sidekick in plain language and it queries your store's live data, compares periods, and surfaces the trend, then helps you act on it.
Setting up a promotion means touching discounts, an email, and the homepage banner separately. Tell Sidekick to run a 20% discount for repeat customers and it executes the steps, showing the changes for your approval first.
You want an alert when stock runs low but don't know Shopify Flow. Describe it to Sidekick, like tagging a product and pinging Slack under 10 units, and it builds the automation for you.
Agentic Index coverage score
8.0 / 14 capabilities · 57%
| Integrations & Tool CallingIntegration is the app ecosystem itself rather than a connector list. Sidekick reaches natively across the whole Shopify surface (admin on every screen, the Shopify mobile app, and Apple Watch) and, since the Winter and Spring 2026 Editions, INTO THIRD PARTY APPS through Sidekick App Extensions, which come in two forms: data extensions that surface a partner app's data when a merchant asks a relevant question, and action extensions that route the merchant to the right place inside an app and stage the change. Launch partners named by Shopify include Klaviyo, Loop, Smile, Judge.me, Matrixify, Avia, Seguno, Checkout Links and Yotpo. Underneath sits the full Shopify Admin and Storefront API surface. THE STRUCTURAL POINT: because Shopify owns the platform, Sidekick's tool surface expands as the app ecosystem builds toward it rather than as Shopify writes connectors. shopify.dev Sidekick documentation and Shopify Spring 26 Edition developer announcement 2026-07-30 | Full |
|---|---|
| Workflow OrchestrationReal execution inside Shopify admin: Sidekick interprets a natural language request and carries it out rather than describing how, creating discount codes, modifying themes, generating product copy and images, surfacing underperforming products, and in the Winter 2026 Edition generating whole applications from a prompt. Spring 2026 added background multi tasking. WHAT KEEPS THIS AT PARTIAL is the initiation and completion pattern. Sidekick is merchant initiated and conversational rather than trigger driven, and its DOCUMENTED third party action pattern is explicitly stage and confirm: Shopify's own wording is that Sidekick routes merchants to the right spot inside an app and STAGES CHANGES FOR CONFIRMATION, with the merchant acting. That is the champify and autobound shape at the boundary of the platform. The release claim that AI agents now handle entire workflows end to end is announcement framing with no documented unattended trigger to completion path behind it, and was not credited under the roadmap versus shipped ruling. shopify.dev Sidekick documentation, Winter and Spring 26 Edition announcements 2026-07-30 | Partial |
| Knowledge Grounding & RAGUPGRADED FROM THE UNSOURCED GRID, which carried Partial, and this is the axis where owning the platform pays off most. Grounding covers the merchant's ENTIRE COMMERCE SYSTEM OF RECORD natively, with no integration step and no sync lag: catalogue, inventory, orders, customers, policies and historical performance. ON TOP OF THAT SITS FEDERATED CROSS APP RETRIEVAL, which is the part no competitor can match. Through data extensions, a merchant question causes Sidekick to QUERY MULTIPLE INSTALLED THIRD PARTY APPS SIMULTANEOUSLY, rank the results, fuse them with Shopify store context and return a single answer with branded cards, so email, loyalty, review and analytics data from separate vendors arrive as one grounded response. Structurally this is the same shape that earned zendesk Full on permission based retrieval across many content sources, and here the underlying commerce data is first party rather than indexed. shopify.dev Sidekick documentation and Winter 26 Edition developer announcement 2026-07-30 | Full |
| Human Oversight & GuardrailsTwo independent mechanisms, one at run time and one before anything reaches a merchant at all. AT RUN TIME: action extensions STAGE CHANGES FOR CONFIRMATION, so when Sidekick acts inside a third party app the merchant confirms rather than discovers, which makes the confirmation gate a property of the platform contract rather than a setting a vendor might omit. BEFORE PUBLICATION: Shopify enforces a content and safety policy over every Sidekick extension and scans against it automatically, blocking non compliant tools from appearing to merchants at all. Third party analysis of building for the surface notes the rules exist specifically to protect merchant trust in the assistant, and that Shopify is selecting partners into the preview. TAKEN TOGETHER this is oversight designed into the extension contract so it applies uniformly across every third party agent capability, which is a materially different and stronger construction than per vendor guardrail settings. shopify.dev Sidekick documentation and developer ecosystem analysis 2026-07-30 | Full |
| Security, Identity & GovernanceA NEW BENCHMARK FOR THIS AXIS, and stronger than the one it resembles. Every Sidekick app extension EXECUTES INSIDE SHOPIFY'S SANDBOX UNDER SHOPIFY AUTH with access to exactly the same API scopes as the parent app, so a third party agent tool cannot exceed the permissions the merchant already granted that app. On top of that, Shopify runs an AUTOMATED SECURITY SCAN (target extensions/security_scan) on every preview and every deploy, records the outcome as a Sidekick event in the app's logs in the Dev Dashboard, and BLOCKS FAILING EXTENSIONS FROM APPEARING TO MERCHANTS, with a status of OK or Error. In development a fix triggers hot reload and reruns the scan. WHY THIS BEATS THE EXISTING BENCHMARK: the Salesforce AppExchange security review credited to regie-ai and champify is a human review at a point in time; this is automated, continuous, and re run on every deployment, so it catches regressions rather than certifying a snapshot. Add to the Sec benchmark list as PLATFORM ENFORCED CONTINUOUS SCANNING OF THIRD PARTY AGENT TOOLS. shopify.dev Sidekick app extensions documentation 2026-07-30 | Full |
| Observability & AuditabilityObservability exists but it points at DEVELOPERS, not merchants, which is the split this grade turns on. Extension builders get Sidekick events written to their app's logs in the Dev Dashboard, carrying the security scan outcome, the scan target and the time it ran, so they can confirm whether an extension integrated or was blocked. WHAT THE MERCHANT GETS IS NOT DOCUMENTED: no audit log of what Sidekick did on their behalf, no record of which extension or data source answered a question, no attribution of an admin change to the agent versus the user, and no retention policy. A DOCUMENTED GAP WORTH RECORDING, from Shopify's own developer education material: builders CANNOT SEE SIDEKICK'S UI DURING DEVELOPMENT, so comprehensive logging is described as the best debugging tool available. That is an acknowledged blind spot in the build loop for a surface Shopify is asking an ecosystem to build on. shopify.dev Sidekick documentation and Shopify developer education material 2026-07-30 | Partial |
| Memory & State PersistenceThe same persistent data layer versus agent memory distinction applied to demandbase and tofu in this pass, and Shopify has the strongest version of the data half. Sidekick sits on the merchant's complete and permanently held commerce record, which Shopify's VP of Product describes as extensive knowledge about the merchant and their store, and background multi tasking implies task state surviving across a session. WHAT IS NOT DOCUMENTED is memory as an agent property: no cross session conversational recall, no learned merchant preferences carried between conversations, no per agent state store and no retention or forgetting control exposed to the merchant. Third party commentary anticipating merchant fine tuning of Sidekick on their own catalogue and customer data is FORWARD LOOKING SPECULATION, not a shipped feature, and was refused under the roadmap versus shipped ruling. Shopify product documentation and Winter 26 Edition coverage 2026-07-30 | Partial |
| Deployment & Data ResidencyDOWNGRADED FROM THE UNSOURCED GRID, which carried Partial on no evidence. Sidekick is bundled into Shopify's multi tenant SaaS with NO CUSTOMER CONTROL OF ANY KIND over where it runs or where its data sits: no region selection, no on premises, no private VPC, no single tenant option and no documented data residency commitment attached to Sidekick. The Shopify sandbox that extensions execute in is RUNTIME ISOLATION, a security property already credited under Sec, and is not a deployment choice. THE AXIS MEASURES CUSTOMER CONTROL, so the scale of the underlying platform does not change the answer: a merchant has no lever here. SCOPE FLAG: Shopify platform level residency arrangements, if any exist for Plus or enterprise tiers, were not located on any first party surface in two passes and were not assumed. FLAGGED FOR RE VERIFICATION, since a documented Plus tier residency option would move this to Partial. shopify.dev documentation and Shopify 2026 Edition announcements 2026-07-30 | Unable to verify |
| Prebuilt Agents, Templates & PacksSIDEKICK IS ONE AGENT, NOT A CATALOGUE, which is the whole basis of this grade. There is no library of named purpose built agents comparable to demandbase's five, tofu's three or infor's hundred plus, and no agent template marketplace a merchant can browse and instantiate. What does exist and earns the Partial is a growing CAPABILITY catalogue arriving through the ecosystem: Sidekick App Extensions launched with 15 plus named partners, each contributing data and action tools, so the set of things Sidekick can do expands without Shopify shipping new agents. Scaffolding templates exist on the builder side through the Shopify CLI. THE DISTINCTION THIS AXIS DRAWS: extensions are tools added to a single agent, not prebuilt agents added to a library, and a merchant cannot compose or clone agents. shopify.dev Sidekick documentation and Spring 26 Edition announcement 2026-07-30 | Partial |
| Triggers & Channel CoverageSurface coverage is broad but it is ONE PRODUCT SURFACE ACROSS DEVICES rather than multiple channels: Sidekick is available on every screen of the Shopify admin, throughout the Shopify mobile app without a full screen takeover, and answers business questions from Apple Watch, with background multi tasking added in Spring 2026. Some proactive behaviour is documented, including inventory alerts and discount optimisation prompts. WHAT IS ABSENT is a trigger framework: no event driven trigger library, no configurable conditions, and no outbound channels at all, because Sidekick faces the merchant rather than the buyer. The buyer facing surfaces in Shopify's 2026 stack, Agentic Storefronts, Store AI and the Universal Commerce Protocol, are ADJACENT PRODUCTS OUTSIDE THIS RECORD'S SCOPE under the incumbent scoping ruling, and were not credited here. Shopify Spring 26 Edition and Sidekick product documentation 2026-07-30 | Partial |
| Model Flexibility & RoutingNo model provider named and no customer facing model control of any kind. Across two passes covering shopify.dev, the Winter and Spring 2026 Edition announcements and the developer ecosystem material, Shopify does not disclose which models power Sidekick, offers merchants no selection or routing, and provides no bring your own model or bring your own key path. Extension developers register tools; they do not choose the model that calls them. THE READ FOR THE BUYER, per the standing note on this axis: this is a PLATFORM OWNER'S DELIBERATE ABSTRACTION rather than either single vendor dependency or the vertical integration seen on omilia and leena-ai. Shopify is treating the model as swappable infrastructure it manages on the merchant's behalf, which is coherent for a product bundled into a commerce platform and sold to non technical merchants, but it leaves the merchant with no lever and no disclosure. Fourth consecutive build in this pass with an undisclosed model provider. shopify.dev documentation and Shopify 2026 Edition announcements 2026-07-30 | Unable to verify |
| APIs, SDKs & MCP ExtensibilityONE OF THE STRONGEST Ext CASES IN THE INDEX. Sidekick App Extensions are a full third party build surface with first party documentation at shopify.dev/docs/apps/build/sidekick: scaffold through the Shopify CLI, declare capabilities in tools.json and instructions.md, target modules, run a local round trip against the Sidekick preview, and deploy atomically. Two extension types ship, data and action. Launched with 15 plus named partners and open to any developer in the ecosystem through Shopify Partners. AROUND IT SITS A DELIBERATE MCP ESTATE: a Dev MCP server distributed as @shopify/dev-mcp connecting Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Codex and VS Code to Shopify's docs and API schemas, plus Storefront, Catalog and Checkout MCP servers, plus the Universal Commerce Protocol co developed with Google and backed by Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce, Stripe, Etsy, Target and Wayfair. Spring 2026 REMOVED THE APPROVAL REQUIREMENT for agentic commerce, so developers self register an agent profile and call the public MCP endpoint. THE ONE REAL LIMITATION, worth recording: SIDEKICK EXTENSIONS ARE MCP LIKE BUT NOT MCP. Shopify is explicit that an existing MCP server cannot be reused, because tools must run in Shopify's sandbox under Shopify auth against a Shopify specific schema that is statically indexed to keep Sidekick fast. Portability is therefore lower than the surrounding MCP estate implies. shopify.dev Sidekick documentation, Shopify developer announcements and ecosystem analysis 2026-07-30 | Full |
| Testing, Debugging & OptimizationTHE SAME DEVELOPER VERSUS MERCHANT SPLIT AS Obs, and it is what caps this axis. Extension builders get a genuine test loop: a local round trip running the app against the Sidekick preview, hot reload that automatically reruns the security scan on save, pass or fail status surfaced as Sidekick events, and an atomic deploy that rejects an unsupported intent type outright rather than shipping it broken. That is real pre production testing of agent tools. WHAT THE MERCHANT GETS IS NOTHING: no sandbox to rehearse Sidekick against their own store, no evaluation of answer quality, no regression check when the catalogue or an installed app changes, no scoring and no A/B comparison. Under this axis's rule, which asks what the CUSTOMER can test, the merchant is the customer of Sidekick and the developer is the customer of the extension platform, so only half the axis is served. shopify.dev Sidekick documentation and Shopify developer education material 2026-07-30 | Partial |
| Browser & Computer UseNone, and this row is the CONSISTENCY CHECK that keeps the two Comp upgrades earlier in this pass coherent. Sidekick does operate a user interface, navigating the Shopify admin, modifying themes, auto filling forms and generating applications, but THAT INTERFACE IS SHOPIFY'S OWN PRODUCT. Operating your own software through your own APIs is ordinary product functionality, not computer use. The distinction that makes this axis meaningful: closely and salescloser-ai earned Partial in this pass because they drive THIRD PARTY software their vendor does not control, LinkedIn's web session and the customer's own product on a live screen share, where no API exists to call instead. Sidekick has the APIs, owns them, and calls them. No browser control, no screen operation, no robotic process automation and no capability to act in software outside the Shopify surface was found in two passes. shopify.dev documentation and Shopify 2026 Edition announcements 2026-07-30 | Unable to verify |
The Agentic Index coverage score grades every vendor Full, Partial or Unable to verify against the same 14 buyer facing capabilities, from public evidence only. Each capability links to how all vendors in the index score on it. How this evidence is graded
Recent platform changes
CedCommerce has introduced an integration with Shopify Sidekick, bringing AI-powered marketplace intelligence directly into the Shopify admin. Merchants can now ask Sidekick questions about their marketplace orders, shipments, and setup, and the assistant will retrieve the relevant information from their connected CedCommerce app.
Bears on: Integrations
View sourceShopify has overhauled its Collections merchandising tool, allowing merchants to use Sidekick AI to build or edit product collections through plain-language requests. The update also enables Sidekick to pull live product sources from apps that track bestsellers or trends and keep them synced across collections and workflows.
Bears on: Agent capability
View sourceShopify opened Sidekick App Extensions to all developers in its Spring '26 Edition, letting third-party apps expose data and functionality inside Sidekick in the Shopify admin. Merchants can now reach partner app capabilities through the same conversational agent they use for native Shopify tasks.
Bears on: Integrations
View sourcePricing
In merchant plans
flat
Included quota
All plans (including Basic): the conversational Sidekick agent - store-data Q&A, ShopifyQL analytics, form filling, Shopify Flow automation building, saved prompts, memory, voice, 20 admin languages, approve-before-save actions. Grow/Advanced/Plus/Enterprise add custom app generation (Polaris + GraphQL Admin API) within hourly/weekly quotas, plus advanced Pulse/multi-agent capabilities.
What is public
Shopify Sidekick is Shopify's native AI commerce assistant (powered by Shopify Magic), included FREE with every Shopify plan - no separate subscription or standalone price. It lives in the admin and reads your store data, runs ShopifyQL queries, fills forms, builds Shopify Flow automations, and takes multi-step actions with approve-before-save. The one pricing nuance: custom app generation is plan-gated to Grow, Advanced, Plus, and Enterprise (Basic had grace access through April 2026), with hourly/weekly generation quotas.
Billing mechanics
No direct billing - Sidekick is bundled into the merchant's Shopify subscription (Basic, Grow, Advanced, Plus, Enterprise). Every staff member can use it per their admin permissions. 'Features and usage limits vary by plan' (Shopify's own caveat): the conversational assistant, data Q&A, and automation help are on all plans; heavier features (custom app generation, advanced Pulse/multi-agent workflows) require higher plans and carry generation quotas. Cost is therefore whatever your Shopify plan costs, not a Sidekick line item.
Cost watchouts
No Sidekick fee, but capability is tied to your Shopify plan tier (app generation needs Grow+; Basic merchants lost grace access April 2026), generation quotas (hourly/weekly), and any third-party apps it suggests; documented hallucinations on tax/regulatory questions (verify independently)
Variable cost rationale
No variable Sidekick cost - it's bundled into a flat monthly Shopify plan; the only 'cost' lever is upgrading the Shopify subscription tier to unlock heavier features
Additional watchouts
It's a merchant-side admin tool, NOT a customer-facing storefront chatbot (a separate third-party 'Sidekick AI' app is different); capability scales with your Shopify plan; verify tax/legal/financial answers - documented hallucinations
Overage / add-ons
No usage-based overage - app generation is rate-limited by hourly/weekly quotas rather than billed; exceeding capability tiers requires upgrading the underlying Shopify plan. Third-party apps Sidekick recommends/integrates carry their own pricing.
Sales call required
No, self serve available
Commercial notes
Function-calling agent over Shopify's internal APIs (not an LLM wrapper); approve-before-save model; Sidekick Pulse (proactive recommendations); 12,000+ custom apps built in Q1 2026; weekly active shops +385% YoY; ~42% of Shopify merchants use Shopify AI (Sidekick + Magic); part of the Winter '26 Edition agentic-commerce push; context limited to the Shopify admin (can't see Klaviyo/Sheets/third-party app data yet)
Key ambiguities
Shopify states 'features and usage limits vary by plan' without a full public matrix of which Sidekick features unlock at which tier or the exact generation quotas; the plan-gating (app generation -> Grow+) is the main documented gate
Cancellation / refund
Tied to the Shopify subscription itself (monthly or annual Shopify billing); no separate Sidekick contract; cancel/downgrade follows the merchant's Shopify plan terms
Support SLA / resale
Inherits Shopify plan support; Plus/Enterprise merchants get the deepest capability (Flow generation, custom analytics, advanced Pulse, multi-agent workflows) and the most ROI; respects staff admin permissions/access controls
Missing data
Shopify doesn't publish a full per-plan Sidekick feature/quota matrix; exact app-generation quotas and which advanced features gate to which tier aren't fully detailed. Seed 'In merchant plans' is accurate - Sidekick is bundled free, with app generation gated to Grow+.
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Alternatives to Shopify Sidekick
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Similarity is computed from each vendor's Agentic Index coverage score evidence, axis by axis, not from the totals. How this evidence is graded