AI and agents
Merchants use AI assistants like Sidekick to get work done in the admin, and buyers use AI assistants to find and purchase products. If you want these agents to answer questions with your app's data or take actions in your app, then you need to expose that data and those actions in a form that agents can use.
This section covers how to make your app's data and actions available to AI agents.
This section covers making your app available to agents. If you're looking for tools to help you write your app, that's the Shopify AI Toolkit, which gives your coding agent Shopify's schemas, docs, and skills.
This section covers making your app available to agents. If you're looking for tools to help you write your app, that's the Shopify AI Toolkit, which gives your coding agent Shopify's schemas, docs, and skills.
Anchor to Sidekick for merchantsSidekick for merchants
Sidekick is the AI assistant built into Shopify. Your app connects to it with app extensions, and Sidekick can then search your app's data, answer questions using your app's context, and send merchants straight to the right page in your app.
You can also define scoped actions, such as editing an email template or updating a support issue. Sidekick proposes the change and opens your UI, and the merchant confirms the change before anything is saved.
There are two kinds of extensions: ones that surface your app's data for Sidekick to read and search, and ones that surface app actions that Sidekick can propose on the merchant's behalf.
Anchor to Storefront MCP for buyersStorefront MCP for buyers
Storefront MCP exposes real-time commerce data over the Model Context Protocol, so an AI assistant anywhere can search a catalog, answer product questions, and complete a purchase. Shopify runs the servers, and you build the agent experience on top. Start by connecting an assistant to a store, then test and tune how it behaves.
Anchor to Best practicesBest practices
Agents choose tools and interpret results by reading your descriptions, so clear metadata matters as much as the functionality itself. Follow these practices when you expose data and actions:
- Use plain, specific names and descriptions. An agent chooses a tool by reading its description, so describe what the tool does instead of using brand language.
- Keep actions small and focused. An action that does one thing is easier for an agent to invoke correctly than an action that does several things.
- Store your app's data as custom data instead of keeping it only in your own database, so that agents querying Shopify can access it.
- Ask for confirmation before writing data. Propose the change and show your UI so that the merchant can review it before anything is saved.