Shopify Introduces Canvas to Let Merchants Design Entire Stores With Sidekick

Shopify says the changes appear in real time as the agent edits the store’s underlying theme code. The feature is rolling out over the coming days; it is not yet a replacement for Shopify’s existing editor. Canvas brings store-wide design decisions into one surface.

A merchant can describe the look or behavior it wants, click an element directly or work through Sidekick’s chat. The company says the workspace renders the real code behind the store rather than a static mockup, so pages can be previewed with interactions, animation, different products and screen sizes.

Sidekick can make coordinated changes across theme files and then inspect its own results using code validation and screenshots. From page edits to a whole-store view The commercial significance is in the workflow, not simply that an AI tool can write code.

Product pages, collections and the homepage can be judged as one customer journey, which may help merchants spot inconsistencies across a store before committing to a redesign…