December 23, 2025

Shopify Sidekick: The ecommerce AI Assistant You Want

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Running a Shopify store today is no longer about uploading products and waiting for orders. Modern ecommerce is layered with analytics, automation, marketing, design decisions, inventory management, financial tracking, and app coordination.

Most merchants do not struggle because they lack tools. They struggle because they lack clarity.

Shopify Sidekick was created to solve that problem. With the rolling out of Shopify Winter edition 2026, Shopify has introduced some of the most advanced improvements in Sidekick

Sidekick is a built-in assistant that lives directly inside your Shopify admin. It helps you understand what is happening inside your store, guides you toward better decisions, and assists with execution while keeping you in control.

This guide explains what this tool does, how it works in real stores, where it delivers real value, and what every merchant and agency should know before relying on it.

Table of content

What Is Shopify Sidekick?
How Shopify Sidekick Works Inside the Shopify Admin
Top 17 Ways You Can Use Sidekick to Amplify Your Shopify Store Performance
#1 By Giving Better Context
#2 Understand Your Store Performance
#3 Proactive Recommendations With Sidekick Pulse
#4 Automating Workflows Using Shopify Flow
#5 Managing Money Without Mistakes
#6 Creating Theme Blocks Quickly
#7 Filling Forms Faster
#8 Keeping Track with To-Do Lists
#9 Finding and Installing Apps
#10 Connecting Your Domain
#11 Editing Your Theme
#12 Quick Company Setup for B2B Stores
#13 Segmentation Support
#14 Better Memory
#15 Get Studio-quality Photos
#16 Edit Product Images On Your Phone
#17 Email Editing
Final Thoughts

What Is Shopify Sidekick?

Shopify Sidekick is an intelligent assistant available inside the Shopify admin interface. It is designed to help merchants and teams manage stores more efficiently by providing insights, guidance, and task support in real time.

Unlike external tools or dashboards, this tool understands your store context. It sees your products, customers, orders, analytics, themes, and workflows exactly as they exist in your admin.

You are not asking generic questions. You are asking questions about your business.

Also read: Shopify’s AI tools and how they’ll change the way we sell online

How Shopify Sidekick Works Inside the Shopify Admin

You can access this tool directly from your Shopify admin. It opens as a panel where you can type or speak instructions, ask questions, and receive guided assistance.

For more complex work, you can also enable its fullscreen mode.

You can activate Fullscreen by:

Holding Shift and clicking the Sidekick icon
Adding sidekick to your admin URL
Clicking the expand option inside the panel

Fullscreen mode is especially useful when reviewing reports, planning workflows, or managing large changes.

Top 17 Ways You Can Use Sidekick to Amplify Your Shopify Store Performance

Let us take a look at how this tool can help improve every aspect of your store.

#1 By Giving Better Context

The tool becomes more accurate when you provide content.

You can:

Mention specific products or collections
Reference customers or orders
Attach files from your admin
Upload files from your device
Enable Target mode to select parts of the admin

Target mode allows you to click on a specific screen or setting and ask Sidekick about exactly what you are viewing. This removes confusion and improves accuracy.

Also read: Shopify merchants can now sell directly in ChatGPT

#2 Understand Your Store Performance

One of the strongest features of this tool is its analytics assistance. So if you are someone who has access to data, Sidekick can help you to translate those data into clear explanations.

For instance, you can ask:

Why sales dropped last week
Which products drive repeat purchases
How a campaign performed compared to last month
Which traffic sources convert best

It will use ShopifyQL to generate and refine reports based on plain language requests. You can customize existing reports or create entirely new explorations without writing queries manually.

#3 Proactive Recommendations With Sidekick Pulse

Sidekick Pulse provides proactive recommendations based on your store data and broader market signals.

These recommendations focus on:

Inventory planning
Merchandising improvements
Marketing opportunities
Operational adjustments

Each recommendation includes actionable next steps so merchants know exactly what to do.

To use Pulse, Shopify Network Intelligence must be enabled in your store.

#4 Automating Workflows Using Shopify Flow

Sidekick integrates directly with Shopify Flow to help merchants automate tasks.

You can simply describe a workflow in simple language and this tool will build it inside Flow.

Examples include:

Tagging orders based on size
Notifying teams when stock is low
Applying discounts based on conditions

This tool can also explain how workflows function so merchants understand what they are enabling before activation.

#5 Managing Money Without Mistakes

Handling money in your store can feel stressful. Even a small mistake in transfers or balances can create problems that are hard to fix. Sidekick makes managing your Shopify Balance simple and accurate. You can check balances across multiple accounts and move money between accounts or to any external payees you have added.

Every transaction stays under your control. Before completing a transfer:

You get a preview so you can review the details
You can make changes instantly if any change is required to ensure accuracy.

This feature is especially useful during busy sales periods when you need to allocate funds quickly for promotions, shipping, or inventory.

#6 Creating Theme Blocks Quickly

Designing a professional-looking store often takes hours of coding and testing but now you can create new theme blocks in minutes. By simply describing what you want, this tool can generate a ready-to-use block with all the elements you need.

Here are some useful tips:

Be specific: Mention the headings, paragraphs, images, buttons, or forms you want included.
Suggest a layout: Describe how elements should be arranged, for example side by side, stacked for mobile, or full-width banners.
Include settings for customization: Specify colors, animation speeds, or button styles if needed.

Once generated, you can keep it if it fits your store, discard it if it doesn’t, or refine it with follow-up instructions. This process lets you update your store design quickly while keeping a polished, professional look without needing to write code.

#7 Filling Forms Faster

Adding new products, customers, or discounts manually can be tedious and prone to errors. Sidekick speeds up this process by filling in forms based on your instructions.

You can:

Create or edit products, discounts, and collections.
Add new customers with all relevant details.
Prepare forms for marketing campaigns or promotions.

For example, you could instruct: “Add a new customer named Alice with email alice@example.com and a shipping address in Mumbai.” Sidekick fills in all the required fields automatically, saving time and preventing mistakes, especially when handling large inventories or customer lists.

People Also Find: Shopify Store development | shopify seo solution

#8 Keeping Track with To-Do Lists

Running a Shopify store means juggling many tasks at once. But now you can stay organized by creating to-do lists for both guided workflows and custom tasks.

Guided workflows: Step-by-step instructions for onboarding or completing setup tasks.
Custom task lists: Create organized lists for projects such as adding products or updating collections.

For example, if you are adding a new product, you can break the process into clear steps: upload images, add descriptions, set prices, and assign inventory. This helps you to keep your workflow structured and minimizes errors.

#9 Finding and Installing Apps

Shopify offers thousands of apps, and choosing the right ones can be overwhelming. But this process has now become simple.

You can now simply:

Ask for apps by name or describe what you want to achieve.
Compare similar apps, including features and pricing.
Install apps directly from the chat.

For instance, if you need a gift card app, Sidekick will show top recommendations, highlight differences, and let you install the app quickly. This ensures your store uses apps that best meet your needs.

#10 Connecting Your Domain

Setting up a domain can be confusing, but Sidekick guides you through the process. You can:

Connect a new domain to Shopify.
Update DNS settings for an existing domain.
Troubleshoot common connection issues.

With clear, step-by-step instructions, you can complete your domain setup quickly and avoid delays in launching your store.

#11 Editing Your Theme

Keeping your store visually consistent and appealing is easy with Sidekick. It can suggest changes to:

Colors, fonts, and spacing.
Layouts of sections and blocks.
Shadows, roundness, and typography.

You decide which suggestions to apply, and Sidekick explains why certain design choices work.

#12 Quick Company Setup for B2B Stores

For stores selling to businesses, Sidekick simplifies creating companies and locations. You can:

Assign pricing, catalogs, and payment terms.
Manage checkout and shipping rules for each location.
Store additional information using metafields for customization.

This ensures all B2B customers see accurate pricing, catalogs, and checkout options. You can manage multiple locations and contacts under a single company profile, making bulk management efficient and reducing the chance of mistakes.

#13 Segmentation Support

Targeted marketing has never been easier. You can now create customer segments from scratch or generate them based on your store data.

This allows you to send personalized campaigns, improve engagement, and increase conversions without spending hours analyzing data manually.

#14 Better Memory

Sidekick remembers your chats and your unique preferences. Every time you return, it picks up right where you left off, saving you time and making each interaction more personalized.

#15 Get Studio-quality Photos

Product images play a huge role in conversions, and this tool is here to take it a notch higher. You can change image backgrounds, remove or add elements, and expand the canvas to make your visuals more polished and professional.

#16 Edit Product Images On Your Phone

Sidekick integrates with the Shopify mobile app file editor, allowing you to refine product images on your phone. You can adjust lighting, crop, resize, and enhance images to make them visually appealing, even while you’re away from your desktop.

#17 Email Editing

Sidekick can assist in editing emails directly in the Shopify Messaging app. You can rewrite copy, adjust subject lines, or polish the tone to make your marketing emails more engaging and professional.

Final Thoughts

Shopify Sidekick is not about replacing decision making. It is about removing friction from it. When routine tasks take less time and information becomes easier to understand, merchants can focus on strategy instead of administration.

That is exactly where an experienced Shopify plus agency adds real value. At Crawlapps, we help merchants turn insights into execution by optimizing stores, workflows, and conversions so Sidekick recommendations actually translate into measurable growth.