Shopify launches a new AI-powered design interface called Canvas, where merchants build their online store directly in chat with the assistant Sidekick. Instead of individual menu items, Sidekick adjusts the entire store in real time, displaying all pages at once.
According to product director Ben Sehl, a custom store can now be built in about twenty minutes.
Sidekick rebuilds the store live from chat input
Shopify describes Canvas as a workspace where merchants can zoom and pan across all pages of a store while Sidekick changes the actual code in the background – not just a preview.
To request a change, a merchant describes it in chat, such as a new color shade or a different homepage layout. Sidekick carries out the adjustment and explains its design decisions along the way.
The system remembers earlier instructions, so users do not have to repeat the same command, and lets them test the effect across different products, collections and screen sizes, including animations and interactions.
Sehl puts a concrete figure on the time saved: a store that previously took weeks to design individually, even with programming skills, now comes together with Canvas in about twenty minutes. According to the company, this rests on a lot of training work – Sidekick alone made more than 25 million changes to shop designs in the first half of 2026, from individual text blocks to entire theme sections.
Shopify design chief Austin Knight states, according to the company, that the real effort lies not in coding but in training the system to make good design decisions.
Canvas launches without third-party themes and only in English
At launch, Canvas does not cover the full range of the Shopify builder. Third-party themes, app blocks, extensions, multilingual markets, translations and automatic theme updates are missing.
Shopify says it will close these gaps over time. The previous theme editor stays in place for now, so Canvas does not automatically replace it. The tool initially works only in English and exclusively on desktop computers, not in the mobile Shopify app.
Shopify does not comment separately on pricing: Canvas builds on the Sidekick assistant already included in a Shopify account, and the company does not mention any additional fees. It also remains unclear when merchants in Germany or the rest of the EU will get access – the October 1, 2026 announcement only mentions a rollout "over the coming days" for existing Shopify accounts, without naming countries.
Other platforms show similar ambitions right now: Amazon recently opened its seller tools to Anthropic's Claude, though for inventory and pricing rather than visual store design.
What matters now is whether Shopify extends Canvas to more languages and markets quickly, before competing platforms with similar chat-based store-design tools catch up. The company has not yet announced a date for the non-English rollout.
