Deep Dive: Shopify Sidekick's Evolution — From Basic Chatbot to Agentic Copilot
When Shopify first launched Sidekick in Summer 2024, adoption was modest. Merchants tried it, found it limited, and went back to clicking through menus. But Shopify didn't give up — they went back to the drawing board and re-architected the entire system. The result, shipped in the Winter '26 RenAIssance Edition, is a fundamentally different product.
This post takes a deep dive into what changed, how Sidekick works now, and why it matters for both merchants and developers building on Shopify.
The Problem with Sidekick v1
The original Sidekick was a reactive assistant. You could ask it questions — "How many orders did I get last week?" or "Change my homepage banner" — and it would try to help. But it had significant limitations:
- Narrow action scope — it could only perform a small set of predefined tasks
- No proactive insights — you had to know what to ask
- Limited context — it didn't deeply understand your store's unique data patterns
- No developer extensibility — third-party apps couldn't plug into Sidekick
Merchants who needed more than basic Q&A quickly hit a ceiling.
What Changed: The Re-Architecture
In spring 2025, Shopify undertook what they described as a "re-architecture shift" for Sidekick. The changes were fundamental:
- From reactive to proactive — Sidekick now initiates conversations, not just responds
- From narrow to broad actions — it can generate apps, build workflows, and edit themes
- From closed to extensible — developers can now plug their apps into Sidekick
- From generic to contextual — it analyzes your store's specific data signals
Sidekick Pulse: Your Always-On Business Analyst
The flagship new capability is Sidekick Pulse — a background analysis engine that continuously monitors your store and surfaces up to 5 tailored recommendations at any time.
How Pulse Works
Pulse runs continuous analysis against two data sources:
- Your store data — sales, traffic, conversion rates, inventory levels, customer behavior
- Shopify-wide market signals — trends across millions of Shopify merchants
When it detects an anomaly or opportunity, it generates a recommendation card with:
- Clear context — what's happening and why it matters
- Supporting data — with citations so you can verify the insight
- Actionable next step — one click hands it to Sidekick for execution
Example Scenarios
| Signal Detected | Pulse Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Conversion drops mid-week for a product with rising traffic | "Run a flash sale on Product X — traffic is up 40% but conversion fell 15%" |
| A product category is trending across Shopify | "Your competitors are seeing 3x sales in [category] — consider featuring it on your homepage" |
| Checkout abandonment spike on mobile | "Mobile checkout drop-off increased 22% — review your shipping options display" |
| Seasonal pattern from last year approaching | "Last year, sales of [product] spiked in the next 2 weeks — consider restocking" |
The key insight: Pulse functions as a continuous analyst that catches things you'd normally only discover in a monthly report — or never discover at all.
App Generation with Natural Language
One of the most striking new capabilities: Sidekick can now generate custom Shopify apps from natural language descriptions.
A merchant can describe what they need — "Build me an app that shows a countdown timer on product pages during my sale" — and Sidekick generates a working app that runs in the Shopify admin. This leverages Shopify's app framework and UI extension system to produce real, functional code.
For simple internal tools and admin utilities, this eliminates the need to hire a developer or find a suitable app in the App Store.
Workflow Automation via Shopify Flow
Sidekick now integrates directly with Shopify Flow, Shopify's workflow automation engine. Instead of manually configuring triggers, conditions, and actions through a visual builder, merchants can describe workflows in plain language:
- "When a customer places their third order, tag them as 'loyal' and send a thank-you email"
- "When inventory drops below 10 units, notify my operations channel on Slack"
- "Auto-archive products that haven't sold in 90 days"
Sidekick translates the description into a Flow automation, shows the merchant what it built, and activates it on approval.
AI Image Editing
Sidekick now includes enhanced AI image editing capabilities:
- Flexible prompting — describe changes to product images in natural language
- Generative image expansion — extend photos beyond their original edges (useful for creating banner-ready images from product shots)
- Background replacement — swap backgrounds to match campaign aesthetics
- Batch operations — apply similar edits across multiple product images
For merchants without design resources, this turns basic product photography into polished marketing assets.
Sidekick App Extensions: Opening the Platform to Developers
Perhaps the most significant long-term change is Sidekick App Extensions, introduced in December 2025. This allows third-party app developers to integrate their apps directly with Sidekick.
What Developers Can Build
With Sidekick App Extensions, apps can:
- Surface app data in Sidekick conversations — when a merchant asks about reviews, loyalty points, or shipping rates, Sidekick can pull data from the relevant app
- Answer questions with app context — "How many 5-star reviews did Product X get this month?" answered by the reviews app through Sidekick
- Navigate merchants to the right place — Sidekick can direct users to specific pages within an app
- Perform scoped actions — edit templates, update configurations, create records — all within the merchant's control and approval
How It Works
Developers scaffold an extension using Shopify CLI:
shopify app generate extension --template app_tools
The extension runs in Shopify's sandbox with access to the same APIs as the main app. It registers "tools" that Sidekick can invoke, along with metadata describing what each tool does and what data it can access.
Why This Matters
Sidekick App Extensions turn Sidekick from Shopify's AI assistant into an orchestration layer across the entire Shopify ecosystem. Instead of merchants needing to switch between 10 different app dashboards, they can ask Sidekick a question and get a unified answer that draws from all their installed apps.
This is a classic platform play: by opening Sidekick to developers, Shopify creates a network effect where every new app integration makes Sidekick more valuable.
Developer Preview: Sidekick App Extensions are currently in developer preview. Shopify is selecting partners for early access — submit interest here.
What This Means for Merchants
The new Sidekick represents a shift in how merchants interact with their Shopify admin:
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| You check dashboards for insights | Pulse brings insights to you |
| You hire developers for custom tools | Sidekick generates simple apps |
| You configure Flow automations manually | You describe what you want in plain language |
| You switch between app dashboards | You ask Sidekick, which queries all your apps |
| You edit images in external tools | Sidekick handles image editing inline |
The underlying thesis is clear: the admin interface of the future is conversational. Instead of navigating menus and clicking through settings, merchants describe what they want and the AI handles execution.
What This Means for AI Chat Solutions Like CHATTERgo
Sidekick's evolution reinforces a broader trend: AI is becoming the primary interface for commerce operations. While Sidekick handles the merchant-side admin experience, solutions like CHATTERgo handle the customer-facing side — AI product consultation, customer support, and multi-channel engagement.
The two are complementary:
- Sidekick helps merchants run their stores with AI
- CHATTERgo helps merchants sell through AI conversations with customers
With Sidekick App Extensions, there's also potential for tools like CHATTERgo to surface analytics and customer insights directly within the Sidekick interface, creating a unified AI-powered commerce cockpit.
Key Takeaways
- Sidekick Pulse turns Shopify's AI from reactive to proactive, surfacing opportunities merchants would otherwise miss
- App generation and workflow automation lower the bar for customization dramatically
- Sidekick App Extensions transform Sidekick into an orchestration layer across the entire app ecosystem
- The trajectory is clear: conversational interfaces are replacing traditional admin dashboards in commerce
Sources: Shopify Winter '26 Edition · Sidekick Pulse Changelog · Sidekick App Extensions · AI Image Editing · The AI Economy