Shopify has introduced a new site-building tool called Canvas that lets merchants set up their Shopify store by chatting with AI. The company announced the tool on Thursday.
With Canvas, merchants chat with Shopify's AI agent Sidekick to create their site. As the AI makes changes, Canvas displays the results in real time, allowing merchants to see how the store looks as it comes together or zoom in on particular details.
According to Shopify, this is not a static preview but the real code behind the store being rendered. That means merchants can test the page's full interactivity and animation, and view pages as they would appear across different screen sizes. Sidekick also takes screenshots of the work so it can see the same thing the merchant sees as the site updates.
Shopify previously offered a no-code builder that involved editing a selected theme by rearranging modular sections and blocks, but deeper customisations required editing code or bringing in a developer. Merchants can still click on individual elements to make changes directly, though Shopify expects they will more likely tell Sidekick in a chat what they want to do.
Sidekick itself is not new, having already been used to write code, build apps, customise themes and make other edits. To make Canvas work, Shopify gave Sidekick the ability to work directly with the theme's files and simplified the theme architecture so the store's structure, logic and design would be easier for Sidekick to understand and change.
Canvas joins other AI-powered site-building tools from companies including Wix, Squarespace, Webflow and Framer, alongside vibe-coding platforms such as Lovable and Replit. Shopify said the product is still in its early days and there are areas where it will need to expand and improve.