AI-native, developer-ready: Unpacking Winter '26 Edition

Just like the original Renaissance redefined art, science, and possibility itself, AI is reshaping what it means to build, sell, and scale commerce. Shopify's Winter '26 Edition is our moment to help you find your place in this new landscape, with 150+ updates that make AI not just a feature, but a fundamental part of how you build.

For developers, this Edition is about one thing: less friction, more creation. AI agents can now handle entire workflows end-to-end, commerce data is universally searchable and actionable, and your apps can live wherever your users are—in the admin, on the Shop app, or embedded directly into partner sites. The grunt work gets automated. The creative work gets amplified. 

Here's what's new.

The entire Shopify dev platform is now AI-native 🤖

Build faster with an AI assistant that deeply understands the Shopify platform, powered by the same Dev MCP Server whether you're in Cursor, Claude, or the dev assistant on shopify.dev. AI agents can now handle the full development workflow end-to-end: scaffolding apps, running GraphQL operations, and generating validated code across Admin, UI extensions, Liquid, and Hydrogen.

This isn't about AI writing your entire app for you. It's about eliminating the repetitive stuff that slows you down. Ask questions in natural language and get back working, validated code with direct links to shopify.dev. 

Need to spin up a new app extension? Describe what you want and the .dev MCP Server will get you complete working code. Want to query customers or orders in a specific way? Just ask and you will get back fully working code.

In other words, you can spend less time on boilerplate and more time solving interesting problems.

“We rewired the platform to be AI-first and instant.” says Shopify’s VP of Product Eytan Seidman. “We overhauled our infrastructure by moving to server-side rendering for lightning-fast docs and expanded the Dev MCP Server to cover the entire platform. We are effectively eliminating the latency between having an idea and getting validated, working code.”

Search billions of products with one query 🔍

Meet Shopify Catalog, your go-to tool for product discovery at scale. This API lets your AI agent search across billions of products from merchants across Shopify. One query, endless data, massive reach.

We announced Shopify Catalog for select partners during Summer ‘25 Edition, but with this Edition we are rolling out Shopify Catalog to every developer using MCP tools or a REST API. You can build agents that take shoppers from discovery to purchase—search, selection, and checkout with Checkout Kit—all within the agent experience, creating full agentic flows for the first time. We're also previewing Checkout MCP tools for when additional human review or input is not required, available for select partners.

Whether you're building a shopping assistant that helps customers find the perfect gift, a recommendation engine that surfaces products based on conversational context, or a marketplace integration that needs deep product knowledge, Shopify Catalog gives your agent instant access to Shopify's entire commerce graph. You don’t have to think about manual indexing or stress over API rate limits. It’s just fast, reliable product search that works at the scale of Shopify's ecosystem.

A new playground for agentic commerce 🛠️

Dev Dashboard is where you can experiment with and build AI shopping experiences without wrestling with setup or config. Consider it an all-in-one workspace for Shopify's agentic commerce tools aka the APIs, MCPs, and SDKs that turn AI chat into actual shopping.

Want to prototype an agent that helps shoppers discover products and check out without leaving a chat? Build the flow in Dev Dashboard, test it, and ship it.

Inside Dev Dashboard, you get everything you need to experiment: Shopify Catalog for product search and Checkout Kit for conversions. Once you have figured out your experience you get a personalized endpoint that you can leverage as part of your agent experience.

Embed Checkout anywhere on the web 🌐

Speaking of checkout, you can now deliver a merchant’s checkout directly onto any web page using a lightweight JavaScript library that can handle authentication, third-party cookie restrictions, content security policies, the whole deal. It already works with Swift, Android, and React Native.

The library accepts a Checkout URL and renders it in a popup or inline frame, working around browser restrictions so the experience loads reliably across Safari, Chrome, and everything in between. If you're integrating commerce into a content platform, or creating a custom buying experience, embeddable checkout gives you the flexibility to put conversion exactly where your buyers are.

Devs get a production-ready integration. Buyers get a seamless, on-site checkout experience. Merchants get more sales and retain all of their important checkout customizations.

Make your app searchable in Sidekick 🦸

For the first time, app developers will be able to build Sidekick app extensions that let merchants access an app's data and invoke app actions from Sidekick.This is huge. It means your app's data—emails, workflows, customer records, analytics, whatever you're storing—becomes instantly searchable for merchants without them ever leaving Shopify Admin.

Here's how it works: register an extension that exposes your app's capabilities. When a merchant asks Sidekick a question, it queries across multiple apps simultaneously and returns ranked results with branded cards showing exactly the context they need. 

Your app becomes part of the merchant's natural workflow instead of a separate tab they have to remember exists. And merchants find what they need faster. Everyone wins.

“This update opens things up in a big way, helping bring merchants closer to our app and its capabilities when they need it. Instead of always having to open our app manually, it can now show up right next to others with real context and helpful actions,” says Björn Forsberg, founder of FORSBERG+two. “It feels like our product becomes a native part of the admin instead of an add-on tucked away.”

Shop Minis SDK hits general availability 🚀

The Shop Minis SDK is officially out of beta and ready for production. Build fast, secure, full-screen commerce experiences inside the Shop app and reach millions of active shoppers without having to solve discovery on your own.

Here's what moving to GA actually means for developers:

• Production-ready SDK: Fewer bugs, better stability, and monitoring tools that help you debug issues before they hit users

• Faster approvals: We're targeting a 3-day turnaround for submissions, with clearer workflows so you know exactly what's expected

• Daily developer support: Get unblocked fast with dedicated support channels

• Built-in discovery: Your Mini automatically shows up in the Shop app feed, gets its own permalink page with a QR code, and appears on shop.app/minis

You focus on building a great experience. We handle getting it in front of the right audience.

"With the Shop Minis SDK now generally available, we finally have a production-ready way to bring merchant experiences to millions of shoppers automatically,” says Emili Horncastle, co-founder and CMO at Zapiet. “What once felt like a pipedream is now a reality, and I can’t wait to launch our first Shop Minis."

Build ML pipelines visually with Tangle 🧪

Tangle is Shopify's new open-source ML experimentation platform. If you've ever waited hours for a model to retrain because you changed one small parameter, you're going to love this.

Tangle lets you build and share machine learning pipelines visually, without rewriting existing code or waiting for repeated computations. It intelligently caches every step of your workflow, so when you tweak one part of the pipeline, only the affected steps re-run. Even better, cached results are shared across your entire team. That means if someone else already ran that exact experiment, you get instant results.

It's platform-agnostic, which means you can bring whatever code, language, or tool you're already using. Python scripts, R models, custom binaries—Tangle doesn't care. No rewrite, no vendor lock-in, just faster iteration and smarter experimentation.

The Renaissance is happening, and you're building it

AI turns great developers into unstoppable ones. It's amplifying what you can do, automating the boring parts, and giving you room to build experiences that weren't possible six months ago. Winter '26 Edition is packed with tools designed to help you move faster, think bigger, and ship better. It doesn’t matter if you're a solo developer prototyping your first app or part of a team shipping commerce experiences at scale.

The platforms are ready. The APIs are open. The commerce renaissance is here, and it's being built by developers who see the opportunity to redefine what's possible.

Let's build something amazing.