Shopify Sidekick & What’s New in Shopify Editions Winter ’26 (2026) — A Complete Guide for Store Owners

If you remember the moment when Tobi introduced Shopify Sidekick, the idea was simple but powerful. Every entrepreneur is a hero, and every hero needs a sidekick. That’s exactly where Sidekick fits in—designed to support merchants, guide decisions, and remove friction from daily store operations. The Renaissance-style artwork and those purple glasses weren’t just for show; they set the tone for how Shopify sees the future of AI inside its ecosystem.

With the latest Shopify Editions, especially the Shopify Winter Editions, Sidekick has clearly moved to the center of Shopify’s AI strategy. And the biggest highlight this time? Sidekick Pulse.

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Sidekick Pulse: Personalized Insights Inside Shopify Admin

The first major update introduced in this edition is Sidekick Pulse, described as “the AI-powered Shopify expert who’s just as obsessed with your business as you are.” This is not just another chatbot feature—it’s something Shopify has never rolled out before.

Sidekick Pulse works directly inside the Shopify admin. You’ll see your regular Sidekick conversations, but now Pulse adds an extra layer by proactively analyzing your store’s data. Instead of waiting for you to ask questions, Pulse researches your store and delivers personalized recommendations based on market trends and your own performance.

Each recommendation comes with a clear set of actionable tasks. These are not generic tips. They are built around your specific store setup, products, and sales patterns. For example, Pulse might suggest:

• Setting up abandoned cart recovery

• Launching a New Year or seasonal campaign

• A/B testing free shipping thresholds to increase average order value

The standout feature here is proactiveness. Sidekick Pulse doesn’t wait for prompts. It studies your data and nudges you toward improvements that actually make sense for your business. As you complete these tasks, your store gets optimized step by step—based entirely on real store data.

To activate Sidekick Pulse, Shopify requires Shopify Network Intelligence. This involves accepting certain terms and enabling data collection. It’s worth noting that Shopify always puts its most important feature at the top of any editions release—summer or winter—and Pulse taking that spot says a lot about Shopify’s priorities.

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Sidekick and Custom App Creation: AI Doing the Heavy Lifting

As the Renaissance (or AI-focused) editions continue, Shopify is pushing more advanced tasks directly into Sidekick. One of the most interesting updates is the ability to use Sidekick to build custom apps tailored to your business needs.

With simple prompts, you can ask Sidekick to create apps such as:

• An app that checks return and cancellation eligibility

• A tool that recommends products to reorder based on sales velocity

• A task tracker for your internal team

• A bulk B2B company importer using CSV files

• An event prep app that generates discounted checkout links for selected products

The workflow is straightforward. You describe your idea, Sidekick generates the app, and you refine it through follow-up prompts. Everything happens inside your Shopify admin, making it accessible even for merchants without technical backgrounds.

There is, however, a plan requirement. This feature is available only on the Grow plan, Advanced plan, and Shopify Plus. Merchants on Starter or Basic plans won’t have access, which may feel limiting for smaller stores.

What makes this update especially interesting is its timing. In a previous changelog, Shopify announced changes around custom apps, signaling a shift in how merchants build internal tools. Now, with Sidekick stepping in to generate apps through AI, it’s clear Shopify wants to simplify custom development without fully removing flexibility.

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Shopify Sidekick and the Shift in How Apps Are Built

Before diving deeper into what Shopify Sidekick can do today, it’s important to understand how apps traditionally worked in the Shopify ecosystem.

There are essentially two types of Shopify apps. The first type is public apps, which you’ll find listed in the Shopify App Store. These are built for many merchants and solve common problems. The second type lives inside your Shopify admin under app settings—these are developer apps or custom apps, built specifically for one store and one store only.

This is where things start to come full circle.

Earlier, Shopify announced changes around custom apps, and at the time, it wasn’t entirely clear why that shift was happening. Now, with Sidekick able to generate custom apps directly inside the admin, the strategy makes a lot more sense. Instead of relying on developers to build store-specific apps manually, Shopify is allowing Sidekick to do much of that work for you.

Of course, this feature is limited to select plans, which again signals how important Shopify considers it. In fact, this was the second-biggest announcement in this year’s Shopify Winter Editions, showing just how heavily Shopify is highlighting Sidekick’s role going forward.

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Workflow Automations Built with Sidekick and Shopify Flow

Next on the list is workflow automation, and this is where Sidekick becomes incredibly practical for day-to-day operations.

With this update, you simply describe the workflow you want to automate, and Sidekick builds it for you inside the Shopify Flow app. On one side, you see the Flow builder. On the other, you see Sidekick translating plain language into a working automation.

For example, you might say:
Create a workflow to email me when inventory for a variant drops below five for the first time.

Sidekick handles the structure—defining the trigger, setting conditions, and adding the final action. You can clearly see where the workflow starts, how the logic flows, and what happens at the end.

At launch, Shopify notes that generating workflows with Sidekick will roll out gradually. Merchants are encouraged to check their Shopify admin for availability. There’s no mention of limited-time access or additional pricing yet, which makes this even more interesting.

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This is a big deal because Shopify Flow is incredibly powerful, but also intimidating. You can automate almost anything imaginable, but understanding all the triggers, conditions, and actions—and making sure nothing breaks—is not easy. By letting merchants talk to Sidekick in plain language, Shopify removes a massive learning curve.

Flow already has a large community and gets updates almost every month. Yet many merchants still don’t use it simply because they don’t know what’s possible or how to build flows correctly. Bringing Flow into Sidekick could completely change adoption and usage.

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Custom Analytics and Segmentation with Sidekick

Two more areas that are already live inside the Shopify admin are custom analytics reports and customer segmentation—both powered by Sidekick.

Sidekick can now generate custom reports and data visualizations directly inside the Shopify QL query editor. It can also help build customer segments or generate them from scratch using simple instructions, such as:

• Show customers subscribed to marketing

• Show high-value customers from the last three months

If you’ve never seen SQL before, this is where things usually feel overwhelming. Shopify QL is Shopify’s version of SQL, designed to query large datasets and turn them into meaningful insights. While Shopify has been improving Shopify QL for years, it can still look intimidating to anyone without a data background.

This is exactly where Sidekick shines.

Instead of manually writing queries, you can ask Sidekick to pull data like net sales, items sold, average order value, or total orders. Behind the scenes, it’s writing the Shopify QL query for you—starting from sales data and structuring everything correctly for dashboards and reports.

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The result is faster insights without needing to learn a complex query language. For merchants who want data-driven decisions but don’t want to become analysts, this is a huge win.

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Shopify Sidekick Makes Data Queries Human Again

If you’ve ever worked with analytics tools, you already know how powerful (and intimidating) query languages can be. A simple request like show me product titles with totals from the last three months, order them by net sales, limit results to 20, and visualize the data usually requires structured logic and clean syntax.

That’s exactly what SQL was built for—and Shopify QL is Shopify’s version of that idea.

Traditionally, you would need to understand how to:

• Pull data from sales

• Group results by product title

• Sort them by net sales in descending order

• Limit the dataset

• Turn that output into a usable visualization

Over time, Shopify started easing that learning curve. Instead of forcing merchants to fully learn Shopify QL, they introduced ways to interact with it using simpler language. Now, with Shopify Sidekick, that process goes one step further.

You don’t talk to queries anymore—you talk to Sidekick.

Sidekick translates plain language into structured Shopify QL behind the scenes. It builds the coded query area for you and generates clean, usable reports automatically. This fits perfectly into what Shopify is calling its Renaissance or AI era, where more advanced tools are abstracted away and handed to merchants in an approachable form.

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Design Refined: Editing Your Theme with Sidekick

Another major upgrade in this edition focuses on design refinement. Instead of opening theme files, editing sections, or adjusting settings manually, you can now tell Sidekick what you want to change—and watch it happen instantly.

For example:

• Make this text bolder and more aesthetic

• Place two images side by side with centered text

• Make this section feel more editorial

Sidekick applies those changes directly to your theme layout. No guesswork, no trial and error. Just describe the update and see the result.

In the previous editions, Shopify introduced Horizon themes, which were fully AI-generated themes and layouts. For experienced Shopify users, these kinds of layouts—split image banners, centered logos, collection buttons—are already familiar and fairly easy to build manually.

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But for someone just starting out, especially in the AI era, this feature can be a huge time-saver. It removes the need to understand layout structures or theme logic. Sidekick becomes a real-time design assistant inside your store.

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Studio-Quality Images with Sidekick

The next update builds on something Shopify has been steadily improving over the past few years: AI-powered imagery.

With this feature, you can prompt Sidekick to:

• Change image backgrounds

• Add or remove elements

• Expand canvas size

• Adjust the overall visual tone

Early AI-generated images often felt unnatural or low quality. That’s changed significantly. The examples shown in this edition demonstrate cleaner compositions, stronger lighting, and more intentional design choices.

It’s important to note that this isn’t always about generating images from scratch. In many cases, you upload a base image and ask Sidekick to modify it—like placing a product into a skate park environment or adjusting the mood and background. For most merchants, that’s more than enough.

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What stands out here is the lack of restrictions. There’s no mention of limited-time access, no plan-based warnings, and no notes about temporary availability. In earlier editions, AI media features often came with conditions. This time, those disclaimers are noticeably absent, which is a very positive sign.

There are also brief mentions around IP and usage considerations, but overall, image creation and enhancement have clearly matured into something practical and production-ready.

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Sidekick on Mobile: Editing Without the Desktop

One underrated part of this update is that many of these image edits can be done directly inside the Shopify mobile app.

If you’re not aware, Shopify’s mobile app allows merchants to manage products, orders, analytics, and now even AI-powered design edits—without logging into a desktop admin. That means you can tweak visuals, adjust images, and refine content directly from your phone.

Taken together, these updates show a clear pattern across Shopify Editions. Shopify isn’t just adding AI features—it’s embedding Sidekick deeper into analytics, design, automation, and media creation. The result is a platform where complex tasks feel simpler, faster, and far more accessible, especially for merchants building in the Shopify AI era.

While many of these Sidekick features are available on the Shopify mobile app, it’s worth being realistic—mobile doesn’t have everything, and it usually receives updates a bit later than desktop. For quick edits and checks, the mobile app works fine, but if you’re doing deeper work with analytics, design, or workflows, using a computer is still the better experience.

That said, it’s good to know Sidekick is accessible on mobile, especially for merchants who like to manage parts of their store on the go.

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Editing Emails Faster with Sidekick

Another practical update in this edition is email editing with Sidekick. Inside the Shopify email editor, you can now ask Sidekick to help refine your email design and layout.

For example, you can prompt something like:

• Give this email a dark background

Sidekick handles the visual change instantly, without you manually adjusting styles or digging through email settings. This makes email creation faster and more approachable, especially for merchants who don’t enjoy designing emails from scratch.

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Shopify Messaging App: Email and SMS Finally Together

This update was a surprising one.

The mention of the Shopify Messaging app immediately raises curiosity—especially if you’ve been using Shopify for years and never heard that name before. It turns out, this isn’t a completely new app, but rather an evolution of something most merchants already use.

If you check the App Store, you’ll see the Shopify Messaging app with thousands of reviews and a strong rating. The reason it feels new is because of a name and capability shift. What used to be the Shopify Email app now includes SMS marketing, and that’s a big deal.

Most third-party email marketing apps already combine email and SMS. Shopify Email was falling behind in that area. With this update, Shopify Messaging now supports:

• Personalized email campaigns

• SMS marketing from the same app

If you already had Shopify Email installed and suddenly can’t find it, that’s why—it’s now branded as Shopify Messaging. The added SMS capability brings Shopify closer to competing directly with popular third-party marketing tools, all within its own ecosystem.

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This is also the first time Shopify has clearly positioned email and SMS together under one official app, which makes this update especially noteworthy.

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Sidekick Skills: Turning Prompts into Shortcuts

As we move deeper into the AI and Renaissance editions, Shopify keeps adding more efficiency tools to Sidekick. One of those is prompt shortcuts, also known as Sidekick skills.

This feature lets you save frequently used prompts so you don’t have to type the same instructions again and again. A skill is essentially a reusable command that you trigger with a shortcut.

For example:

• /SEO-optimization → Take my top-selling products and optimize them for SEO

Instead of rewriting that prompt every time, you save it once and reuse it whenever needed. These skills can be:

• Saved for personal use

• Shared with your team (if you have staff accounts)

• Shared with the wider Sidekick community

This feature isn’t completely brand new—it appeared in earlier changelog updates—but it’s now fully rolled out and emphasized in the Shopify Winter Editions. It fits perfectly with Shopify’s goal of reducing repetitive tasks and making Sidekick feel more like a true assistant than just a chat interface.

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The Bigger Picture for Shopify Sidekick

When you step back and look at all these updates together—mobile access, email editing, SMS marketing, reusable prompt skills—it’s clear that Shopify Sidekick is being positioned as a productivity layer across the entire platform.

Instead of switching between apps, editors, and tools, merchants are increasingly encouraged to just explain what they want. Sidekick handles the rest. That direction explains why Sidekick keeps appearing again and again across Shopify Editions—and why its role keeps expanding with every update.

One of the smartest parts of Shopify Sidekick is how it lets you turn repeated questions into reusable skills.Think about it this way—if you ask Sidekick the same or similar questions every week or every month, there’s no reason to type them out again and again. Instead, you can save those prompts as skills and trigger them instantly.

For example:

• /win-back → Create a customer segment to re-engage inactive customers

• /monthly-snapshot → Analyze my store’s performance for the last 30 days

• /sales-review → Analyze product sales from the last 30 days

Instead of rewriting long prompts, you just run the skill. It’s faster, cleaner, and much easier to build a routine around.

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Real-World Skill Examples Merchants Will Actually Use

Shopify showcases some very practical skill ideas that make Sidekick feel more useful in day-to-day work:

• Email campaign – Build an effective email marketing campaign

• Checkout drops – Identify why customers are abandoning checkout

• Retention check – Understand repeat purchases and retention patterns

• Brand image – Create a lifestyle image for Instagram featuring top products

These examples are shown with fun, smooth animations that load quickly and feel very “Shopify.” It’s not just about showing features—it’s about showing how merchants can realistically use them.

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The Skill Community: Learn From Other Merchants

This is where things get especially interesting.

Sidekick skills aren’t just private shortcuts—you can also share them with the Skill Community. Each shared skill can receive upvotes and reactions, just like content in other Shopify communities.

You’ll see:

• Upvote counts (hundreds in some cases)

• Reactions like 🔥, 👍, 👏

• Popular skills rising to the top

If someone builds a great skill, you can use it directly in your own store. This turns Sidekick into more than just an AI assistant—it becomes a community-powered knowledge tool. Instead of figuring everything out alone, you benefit from how other merchants are using Sidekick successfully.

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Multi-Step Tasks: Let Sidekick Handle the Flow

Another notable upgrade is multi-step task completion.

Sidekick can now plan and execute more complex workflows instead of handling just one action at a time. For example:

• Create a bestseller collection, then apply a discount to those products

For experienced merchants, this might feel like muscle memory. Creating collections and discounts is second nature if you’ve been running Shopify stores for years. But for newer merchants—or those who want to move faster—this kind of assistance can be genuinely helpful.

It also addresses earlier feedback that Sidekick felt limited. By handling chained tasks, Sidekick becomes more useful for real operations, not just quick answers.

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Voice Chats and Deeper Admin Awareness

Voice-powered chats with Sidekick on mobile aren’t brand new, but they’re still part of the broader AI push. If you’re using the Shopify mobile app, you can talk to Sidekick while on the move—useful for quick checks and actions.

There are also quieter but important improvements:

• Wide mode for Sidekick

• Contextual answers when clicking specific areas of the admin

• B2B support awareness

Some UI elements are harder to read than expected (surprising for Shopify), but the intent is clear: Sidekick is becoming more context-aware across the admin.

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Custom Theme Blocks and App-Level Actions

One update worth calling out is custom block generation. Sidekick can now create custom blocks for any Shopify theme. This was first mentioned in earlier editions but wasn’t clearly available. Now, it appears to be properly rolled out.

On top of that, Sidekick can:

• Help find, compare, and install apps

• Remember previous conversations

• Check balances and initiate transfers

These aren’t flashy features, but they point toward Sidekick becoming a true control layer inside Shopify—not just a chat box.

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What This Means for Shopify Editions

Across Shopify Editions, especially the Shopify Winter Editions, one pattern is obvious. Shopify isn’t trying to replace merchant experience—it’s trying to compress complexity.

With skills, community-shared prompts, multi-step execution, voice input, and theme block generation, Shopify Sidekick is evolving from “nice to have” into something merchants may actually rely on daily. Whether you’re new to Shopify or deeply experienced, the way Sidekick fits into workflows is starting to feel much more intentional—and much more powerful.