1. What Shopify Sidekick is
Shopify Sidekick is a conversational AI built directly into the Shopify admin. You can ask it questions about your store, navigate to any admin section, create discounts and automations, and take actions — in plain language, without clicking through menus.
Shopify positions Sidekick in five roles: Designer (theme and store customization via natural language), Photo Editor (enhances product photos), Writer (product descriptions, marketing copy, email campaigns), Tech Support (domain setup, store configuration), and Marketer (social content, promotional strategy).
As of Winter '26, Sidekick is available on every Shopify plan globally — not just Plus. Weekly active shops using it grew 385% year-over-year. It's also available through voice on desktop and mobile, and via voice-only on Apple Watch.
Supported languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Simplified Chinese. Sidekick adapts to your store's language setting automatically.
Orders, products, customers, inventory levels, discounts, and sales analytics — native Shopify data. It can answer "what was my AOV yesterday vs last week?" or navigate to "abandoned checkouts from Tuesday" in seconds.
What it cannot access without help: anything managed by the apps you install. Loyalty points, subscription plans, return requests, booking calendars, custom analytics — none of that exists in Sidekick's world unless an app explicitly exposes it via Shopify's App Extension API (currently in developer preview for selected partners).
2. What Sidekick can do natively
Before getting to the Shopivibe extension, it helps to understand what Sidekick can do with native Shopify data — this is what every merchant gets on any plan.
Analytics and reporting
Sidekick answers natural-language questions about store performance: AOV trends, top-selling products, unfulfilled orders, customer segments, revenue by channel. A merchant experiencing a revenue drop can ask "why did sales fall 34% this week?" and get a specific answer — refund spikes, mobile traffic changes — within seconds, without navigating multiple admin sections.
Discount and promotion automation
During high-traffic events like BFCM, merchants use Sidekick to collapse multi-step discount creation into a single prompt: "Create a 20% off code called WELCOME20, valid for first-time customers only, expires in 30 days." Sidekick builds the discount, previews it for confirmation, and creates it on approval.
Workflow automation
Winter '26 added the ability to build Shopify Flow automations from plain language: "When inventory drops below 10 units, send a Slack alert and tag the product as low-stock." Sidekick composes the workflow and shows it for review before activating.
Content generation at scale
Stores with large catalogs use Sidekick to generate product descriptions in bulk, specifying features, target personas, and tone. The product description generator now accepts competitor product links for differentiation and SEO keyword targets.
Custom app generation
New in Winter '26: Sidekick can build custom Shopify admin apps from natural language descriptions. This is what Shopivibe does — except Shopivibe generates production-grade apps with full code ownership, Sidekick-generated apps are lighter admin tools limited to your own store.
All of the above works on native Shopify data. The moment you install a third-party app — loyalty, subscriptions, returns, inventory forecasting — that app's data is invisible to Sidekick. Shopivibe's extension fixes this, and it's generated automatically with every app you build.
3. How the Shopivibe extension works
When Shopivibe generates your app, it creates two things: the app itself (admin UI, customer portal, backend logic) and a Sidekick extension registered via Shopify's App Extension API.
The extension exposes two types of capabilities to Sidekick:
Query your app's live database and return answers to Sidekick instantly. Sidekick can reason over the results and answer follow-up questions.
"How many active subscribers?" "Which loyalty tier churns most?" "What's the most common return reason this month?"
Declare intent types (loyalty-program, return, review, etc.) so Sidekick knows when to navigate merchants directly to the right page in your app to perform a rich action.
"Give double points this week." → Sidekick opens the loyalty app pre-filtered to the right customers. You confirm in the app.
What about app types not in the 9 categories?
Shopify's action intent system supports exactly 9 content types. Apps that fall outside those categories — analytics dashboards, booking systems, inventory forecasters, B2B portals, and others — can't declare an action intent. Shopivibe solves this automatically.
For every app type, Shopivibe generates a data extension whose tools return results with an embedded adminUrl deep-link. When a merchant asks Sidekick about a subscription renewal or a booking slot and clicks the result, Sidekick navigates them directly to the right page inside your app — identical UX to an action intent, without needing a supported intent type.
Loyalty, returns, reviews, email campaigns, marketing campaigns, ads, FAQs, shipments, support tickets.
Get a dedicated action extension. Sidekick invokes the intent and navigates directly.
Subscriptions, analytics, bookings, inventory, B2B, memberships, and all other app types.
Get a data extension with navigable results. Clicking a result takes the merchant straight to the right page — same end result.
The extension is versioned alongside your app. When you add new capabilities — a new loyalty tier, a new return reason, a new analytics dimension — the Sidekick extension updates to expose that data automatically. No separate configuration step.
Deploy your app. Open Sidekick. That's it. The extension is registered with Shopify at deploy time. No API keys, no configuration panel, no manual linking.
4. What you can ask and do
Here are four real conversation flows showing how Sidekick works with Shopivibe apps. Every response comes from a live database query — not generated text.
S = Shopify Sidekick · M = Merchant · All numbers come from your live app database.
Beyond these examples, here's a broader picture of what Sidekick can handle once your Shopivibe app is installed:
"Why did conversion drop yesterday?"
"Which channel brought the highest-LTV customers?"
"Show revenue by category for the last 30 days."
"Show high-value orders that haven't shipped."
"Flag all orders over $500 for manual review."
"Send delay notifications to orders waiting 5+ days."
"Who are my top 10 members by lifetime spend?"
"Downgrade Gold members who haven't purchased in 90 days."
"Send renewal reminders expiring this week."
"Which time slots have the highest no-show rate?"
"Cancel all bookings for the venue on Dec 14."
"Send a reminder to tomorrow's appointments."
5. Sidekick Pulse — proactive insights
Winter '26 introduced Sidekick Pulse: a background analysis layer that surfaces personalized recommendations before you ask. Instead of waiting for questions, Pulse monitors your store and flags when something needs attention.
For merchants running Shopivibe apps, Pulse can surface insights from your app data too — not just native Shopify data. Examples of what Pulse surfaces proactively:
- Loyalty tiers with unusually high churn this week compared to baseline
- Subscriptions scheduled to renew while the product is out of stock
- Return request backlog growing faster than your team is processing it
- High-value customers approaching their subscription renewal with no recent engagement
- Inventory forecasts predicting a stockout within 7 days on a bestseller
When there's nothing anomalous, Pulse says so. There is no generic "here are some tips" filler. The recommendation engine is grounded in your actual data, and a clean week produces a clean report.
Pulse is currently available on Advanced and Plus plans. The core Sidekick assistant (reactive queries and actions) works on all plans.
6. Under the hood
The Sidekick extension Shopivibe generates uses Shopify's App Extension API (currently in developer preview). Each extension defines a set of tool schemas — names, descriptions, and input/output formats — that Sidekick uses to decide when and how to call them.
How Sidekick routes a question
When you ask Sidekick a question, Shopify's model determines which registered tools are relevant, calls them (potentially in parallel), and synthesizes the results into a plain-language response. The AI's job is understanding intent and presenting results — your app's code does the actual data retrieval.
Supported action intent types
Action extensions declare an intent type so Sidekick knows when to invoke your app. Shopify currently supports 9 types — each supporting both create and edit actions:
If none of the 9 types fit your use case, Shopify accepts requests for new types via the Shopify Developer Community.
Technical constraints for extensions
Shopify enforces hard limits on all third-party extensions:
Shopivibe's extension generation is designed around these limits — tool descriptions are optimized for routing accuracy, and database queries are structured to return within the 1-second window even for large datasets.
What the extension cannot do
- Embed promotional content or upsell merchants on anything
- Override Sidekick's decision-making or steer it toward vendor-preferred answers
- Execute write actions without explicit merchant confirmation
- Access data from other merchants' stores
- Read data your app doesn't have permission to access in Shopify
7. Why answers are accurate
Sidekick responses from your Shopivibe extension are not generated by the AI model from training data — they are live database queries executed at the time of your question. When Sidekick says "84 customers qualify," it ran a real query against your app's database and counted 84 rows.
The model's role is to: understand what you asked, select the right tool, call it, and present the result clearly. The numbers come from your database, not the model's weights. This is the fundamental difference between using Sidekick for your own app data (grounded, accurate) and asking it about general merchant strategy (where hallucination risk is real).
Sidekick is well-documented to hallucinate on product technical specifications, material claims, tax and regulatory questions, and any topic where it relies on training data rather than a live tool call. If you're asking Sidekick about your own app's data through the Shopivibe extension, the answers are accurate. If you're asking it to describe a competitor's product or interpret a regulation, verify with a professional.
For complex analytical questions — cohort analysis, churn attribution, trend comparison — the extension runs server-side calculations and returns structured results. Sidekick presents the numbers; your app's code did the math.
8. Privacy and data scope
The extension operates within your store's authenticated Shopify session. Sidekick can only access data that your Shopivibe app has permission to see — and only for your specific store.
Loyalty points, tiers, and transaction history
Subscription plans, billing status, customer records
Return requests, reasons, and resolutions
Inventory levels and reorder rules
Analytics aggregates and cohort data
Full payment card numbers (last 4 only if relevant)
Data from other merchants' stores
Shopify admin credentials or staff tokens
Data before your app was installed
Any data your app doesn't have Shopify permission for
All Sidekick interactions with your Shopivibe extension are logged in your app's admin panel. You can review what queries were made and what actions were taken, with timestamps.
9. Plan availability
As of Winter '26, the core Shopify Sidekick assistant is available on every Shopify plan globally — Basic, Shopify, Advanced, Plus, and development stores. It is free, included with every Shopify subscription.
Third-party app extensions — the Shopivibe integration — remain in developer preview: Shopify is selecting developer partners for limited early access. The extension is generated with every app you build; availability to merchants expands as Shopify opens access more broadly.
10. Limitations
Sidekick is powerful but not magic. Here's an honest list of current constraints.
Data extensions (read queries, navigable results) work in production for selected developer partners. Action intent types — the 9-category mechanism that declares what your app can edit — are in final stabilization. Shopify staff noted 'almost GA' in May 2026. Shopivibe generates both; data tools activate immediately, intent types activate when Shopify enables them for your app.
Shopify is hand-selecting developer partners for early access. You submit interest and Shopify reaches out. Once selected, both data and action extensions are deployable to your merchants.
Action extensions take merchants to the right page in your app — Sidekick doesn't directly mutate data. The merchant confirms and acts in your app UI. Data extensions (read queries) return results inline with no navigation.
Data extensions must respond within 1 second. Action extensions have a 3-second window. For very large datasets, queries may return sampled results to stay within the limit.
Sidekick lives in the Shopify admin. It cannot appear on your storefront or handle customer support conversations. It is a merchant-facing tool only.
Sidekick cannot read from Klaviyo, Gorgias, Google Sheets, Zendesk, or any platform outside Shopify without that platform's own app extension. Shopivibe's extension only covers data in your Shopivibe app's database.
Sidekick misunderstands a small but non-zero percentage of ambiguous requests — particularly around scope ('all customers' vs 'all active customers'). The confirmation step before write actions is your safety net. Review scope before confirming anything irreversible.
The extension can only query data that exists in your Shopivibe app's database. Pre-migration history from another platform isn't available unless you imported it during setup.
Apps that are purely front-end (countdown timers, size guides, product badges) don't manage structured data, so there's nothing for Sidekick to query. Extensions are generated for data apps only.
11. Getting started
There is no setup step for the Sidekick extension. Build your app with Shopivibe, deploy it to your Shopify store, and open Sidekick in the admin. The extension is registered at deploy time. First time you open Sidekick after installing a Shopivibe app, try these:
›"What's my current [loyalty / subscription / returns] status overview?"
›"Which customers are at risk of churning this month?"
›"What's the most common [return reason / cancellation reason] this month?"
›"Which products will run out of stock this week?"
›"Who are my top 10 customers by loyalty points?"
›"Show me the trend in [metric] over the last 30 days."
›"Which [tier / plan / segment] contributes the most revenue?"
›"Are there any anomalies in my data this week?"
Start with read queries to build confidence in the accuracy of answers. Once you're comfortable, try a write action on a small scope first — "give 100 bonus points to the 5 customers who spent the most today" — before running a broad action across your full customer list.
12. FAQ
Does every Shopivibe app get a Sidekick extension?
Yes — any app that manages structured data (loyalty, subscriptions, returns, orders, inventory, analytics, memberships, bookings) gets a Sidekick extension generated automatically at build time. No extra setup, no extra cost. Activation depends on Shopify's developer preview access.
Do I need Shopify Plus for this?
Shopify doesn't currently list a specific plan requirement for app extensions — the feature is in developer preview and Shopify is selecting partner developers for early access. The core Sidekick assistant is available on all plans.
Can Sidekick make changes without my approval?
No. Every write action shows exactly what will change and waits for your one-click confirmation. Read queries are instant and have no side effects. You can review scope, narrow the action, or cancel before anything is committed.
How is this different from Sidekick without Shopivibe?
Shopify Sidekick out of the box only sees native Shopify data: orders, products, customers. It has no access to loyalty points, subscription plans, return requests, or any app-specific data. The Shopivibe extension gives Sidekick live access to everything your app manages.
What if the AI misunderstands my question?
For write actions, the confirmation step is your safety net — Sidekick shows you the affected records and scope before executing. For read queries there are no side effects. If a response is wrong, you can rephrase the question or be more specific about scope.
Does this work for all app types you build?
Apps that manage structured merchant data work best: subscriptions, loyalty, returns, inventory, analytics, orders, memberships, bookings. Purely display apps (size guides, countdown timers, badges) don't have data for Sidekick to query and don't get extensions.
Is my customer data safe?
Yes. Sidekick operates within your store's authenticated session and can only access data your app has permission to see. The extension is shop-scoped — other merchants cannot access your data. Shopivibe apps never store payment card numbers.
Is the App Extension API stable?
It's in developer preview as of June 2026. Shopify is hand-selecting developer partners for early access. Shopivibe generates extensions compliant with the current spec — 9 supported intent types, up to 5 intents and 20 tools per app — and updates them as the API evolves toward general availability.
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