Shopify has introduced Canvas, a site-building tool that lets merchants create their online stores by chatting with Sidekick, the company’s AI agent. Previously, Shopify’s no-code builder required merchants to rearrange theme sections and blocks, with deeper customizations demanding code edits or a developer.
With Canvas, merchants describe what they want and see changes appear in real time, viewing the entire store or zooming in on specific details. Shopify says the display is not a static preview but the store’s actual code being rendered, allowing merchants to test interactivity, animations and layouts across screen sizes. Sidekick also takes screenshots of its work so it sees what the merchant sees as the site updates. Users can still click on individual elements to edit them directly.
To enable this, Shopify gave Sidekick direct access to theme files and simplified its theme architecture so the AI can more easily understand and modify a store’s structure, logic and design.
Canvas is still early. It is desktop-only and does not yet support third-party themes, app blocks and extensions, markets, translations, rollouts or theme updates, though Shopify said it plans to add these over time. The tool enters a crowded field alongside Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Framer, Lovable and Replit.
