Shopify's Winter '26 RenAIssance Edition: Every AI Feature Merchants Need to Know

2025-12-12 · CHATTERgo Team · Shopify, AI, eCommerce, Product Updates

On December 10, 2025, Shopify dropped its Winter '26 Edition — codename RenAIssance — with over 150 product updates. The message was clear: Shopify is going all-in on AI, and every part of the platform is being reshaped around it.

Here's a breakdown of the AI features that matter most for merchants.

Sidekick: From Assistant to Proactive Collaborator

Shopify's AI assistant Sidekick has evolved significantly. It's no longer just a chatbot that answers questions — it's becoming a proactive business partner.

Sidekick Pulse

The biggest Sidekick update is Pulse — a system that proactively analyzes your store data and market trends to deliver personalized business recommendations. Instead of waiting for you to ask, Sidekick now surfaces insights like:

"Your top product's sales dropped 15% this week — here's what might be happening"
"Competitor pricing has shifted in your category — consider adjusting"
"Your holiday inventory might run short based on current trends"

Conversational App Generation

Sidekick can now generate custom apps through conversation. Describe a business need — "I need an app that automatically tags VIP customers based on lifetime value" — and Sidekick builds it. This is a remarkable capability for merchants who have specific needs but no development team.

Multi-Step Task Handling

Sidekick now handles complex, multi-step workflows through natural language. Edit your theme, create automations, generate analytics reports, and manage products — all through conversation.

Universal Catalog: Search Billions of Products

The Shopify Catalog is one of the most strategically significant features in this edition. It gives developers a single API to search across billions of products from merchants across the entire Shopify platform.

How It Works

Two main tools power the Catalog:

search_global_products — Search all Shopify merchants based on queries, price ranges, shipping preferences, and more
get_global_product_details — Get detailed product info including variants, pricing, and availability

Results are deduplicated using Universal Product IDs (UPIDs), showing price ranges across merchants and direct checkout URLs.

Why It Matters

The Universal Catalog enables any AI agent — whether it's ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or a custom-built assistant — to discover and recommend products from Shopify merchants. Combined with the Agentic Commerce Protocol and Google's Universal Commerce Protocol, this positions Shopify as the infrastructure layer for AI-driven commerce.

For merchants, this means your products are automatically discoverable by AI agents across the ecosystem — as long as your product data is complete and accurate.

Agentic Storefronts: Sell in AI Conversations

Shopify's Agentic Storefronts feature lets merchants sell directly inside AI conversations on:

ChatGPT (via OpenAI's Instant Checkout)
Perplexity
Microsoft Copilot
Google's AI Mode and Gemini (via UCP)

One setup in the Shopify Admin enables discovery and checkout across all these platforms. Merchants maintain:

Full brand control
Customer relationship ownership
Complete attribution tracking
Order management through the existing Shopify workflow

This is the practical implementation of the agentic commerce vision — your store, present in every AI conversation where your products are relevant.

AI-Native Developer Platform

Shopify's developer platform is now fully AI-native, with major implications for building and extending Shopify stores.

Dev MCP Server

The new Dev MCP Server works across Cursor, Claude, and shopify.dev. AI coding agents can now handle complete development workflows:

Scaffold new Shopify apps from scratch
Run GraphQL operations against the Admin API
Generate validated code for UI Extensions, Liquid templates, and Hydrogen storefronts
Debug and test with full context awareness

AI Testing Tools

Shopify has introduced AI-powered testing capabilities that help developers validate their apps and extensions more efficiently. Combined with the Dev MCP Server, this enables a workflow where AI agents write code, test it, and iterate — significantly reducing development time.

GraphQL and API Enhancements

The Admin API and Storefront API have been enhanced with better AI agent support, including improved tool descriptions for function calling and more structured response formats.

What This Means for Merchants

The RenAIssance Edition sends a strong signal: AI is no longer a feature — it's the platform.

Immediate Actions

Ensure your Shopify Admin is up to date and explore the new Sidekick capabilities. Sidekick Pulse's proactive recommendations alone could surface revenue opportunities you're missing.
Audit your product data. With the Universal Catalog making your products discoverable to AI agents everywhere, data quality directly impacts visibility. Complete descriptions, accurate pricing, high-quality images, and proper categorization are essential.
Enable Agentic Storefronts. Opt in to selling through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI. This is a new sales channel with zero additional cost for discovery.
Review your AI agent strategy. Agentic Storefronts handle discovery on third-party AI platforms. But when customers visit your store directly, you need an AI agent that represents your brand. CHATTERgo integrates natively with Shopify and complements these new platform features.

The Bigger Picture

Shopify is positioning itself as the commerce infrastructure for the AI era — the layer between merchants and every AI agent. For merchants, this is both an opportunity and a call to action.

The opportunity: your products can now be discovered and purchased in AI conversations across every major platform, with Shopify handling the complexity.

The call to action: you need great product data, a comprehensive knowledge base, and an AI agent strategy to capitalize on this shift.

CHATTERgo is a Shopify-native AI agent that complements the RenAIssance Edition features. While Agentic Storefronts drive discovery on third-party AI platforms, CHATTERgo delivers personalized AI assistance directly on your store — product recommendations, customer support, and multilingual engagement, all in your brand's voice.

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