Shopify launches Canvas, an AI chat tool for building stores

Shopify introduced a new site-building tool called Canvas on Thursday that lets merchants set up their store by chatting with the company’s AI agent, Sidekick. Shopify already offered a capable no-code builder before Canvas, letting merchants edit a chosen theme by rearranging modular sections and blocks, but deeper customization required editing code or hiring a developer. With Canvas, merchants simply describe what they want in a chat with Sidekick, and the tool renders the results in real time, letting merchants see the store as a whole or zoom in on specific details.

Unlike a static preview, Canvas renders the real code behind the store, according to Shopify, so merchants can test the page’s full interactivity and animation and see how it looks across different screen sizes. Sidekick also takes screenshots of its own work so it can see what the merchant sees as the site updates. Merchants can still click on individual elements to make changes directly, but more likely, most will simply tell Sidekick in the chat what they want done.

Canvas’s launch is part of a broader shift toward a future where building a website no longer requires coding it directly. It joins a wave of AI-powered site builders from companies including Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, and Framer, as well as vibe-coding platforms like Lovable and Replit. Sidekick itself isn’t new — it has already been used to write code, build apps, and customize themes — but it had not previously been combined into a single site-building product like Canvas, where merchants can view their entire store and pan and zoom while editing the site’s actual files. To make that possible, Shopify gave Sidekick the ability to work directly with a theme’s files and simplified the underlying theme architecture so the store’s structure, logic, and design would be easier for the AI to understand and change.

The product is still early, and Shopify says there are areas it needs to expand. Third-party theme support, app blocks and extensions, markets, translations, rollouts, and theme updates are not part of the initial launch, and Canvas works only on desktop for now. The company told TechCrunch it plans to add these capabilities over time.

Why it matters

As Canvas matures, Shopify says it could make becoming an online seller more accessible to people without the budget for developers and designers or the time to learn to code. The launch also sharpens competition among AI-assisted site builders that are collapsing the line between no-code editing and full custom development.