Shopify introduces Agentic Storefronts, placing commerce products directly into ChatGPT and Perplexity conversations.
What is happening: Shopify has released its Winter ’26 edition, featuring more than 150 product updates focused on practical applications of AI for merchants, developers, and partners.
Why this matters: These updates aim to streamline backend operations, from marketing to daily workflows, allowing businesses to focus their resources on creativity and customer service instead of administrative tasks.
Australian retailers facing rising costs and changing consumer behavior have new tools to help level operational demands. Shopify has unveiled its Winter ’26 edition, titled RenAIssance, featuring over 150 product updates designed to eliminate friction in business operations.
The launch focuses on practical AI applications that work behind the scenes rather than flashy automation. From generating custom admin apps through simple prompts to editing product photos right in the file editor, the updates address the specific pain points merchants face every day.
“Australian retailers operate in one of the most competitive and dynamic markets in the world,” says Shaun Broughton, general manager of APAC and Japan at Shopify. “Consumer expectations are rising rapidly and merchants need tools that help them act on real-time signals while eliminating as much operational friction as possible.”
The update positions Sidekick, Shopify’s AI assistant, as a proactive rather than reactive tool. Instead of waiting for merchants to ask questions, Sidekick now displays personalized, high-impact tasks on the home dashboard to help merchants focus on what’s most important.
Dan Small, chief customer officer at Boody, says the tool has changed the way the company operates.
“We use Sidekick to quickly discover actionable insights into shopper behavior,” says Small. “With a number of proven flagship products that are bestsellers day after day, we can sometimes miss small changes in consumer behavior. Sidekick helps us identify these subtle changes by showing how different customer segments interact with packages and promotions in real time.”
This allows Boody to optimize offers and marketing strategies responsively, fine-tuning decision making without extensive manual data analysis.
Sidekick becomes proactive
Sidekick now handles tasks that previously required technical knowledge or a significant time investment. Merchants can generate workflow automations from natural language descriptions, eliminating the need for programming skills to set up basic workflows. Theme settings can be customized using conversational commands instead of navigating complex menus.
The wizard can also create custom management applications from a message, without coding. Traders can save and reuse their most effective Sidekick prompts as skills, creating shortcuts for repeated tasks that can be initiated from a skill tray or slash command.
For product images, Sidekick offers image editing capabilities directly to the file editor, allowing merchants to produce better product photos faster without having to switch between multiple tools.
“In this edition, we provide Australian businesses with AI capabilities that streamline work behind the scenes, refining storefronts, simplifying merchandising and making daily operations more efficient,” says Broughton. “This allows retailers to focus on creativity, innovation and customer service, whether they are just starting out or scaling into other markets.”
Commerce meets conversation
One of the biggest additions is Shopify Agentic Storefronts, which addresses where commerce increasingly happens: within AI conversations.
The feature places commercial products directly into conversations on platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. One setup in the admin makes products immediately discoverable across multiple AI agents, without the need for complex integrations or separate apps for each platform.
Customers can complete purchases without leaving their conversations, while merchants maintain control over where and how their brand appears. Attribution data flows directly to the merchant admin and businesses can toggle which platforms display their products.
“Commerce happens in conversations, Shopify Agentic Storefronts ensure you’re a part of them,” says Vanessa Lee, VP Product Lead at Shopify.
For physical retail, Shopify has introduced POS Hub, which empowers in-person sales by connecting checkout hardware, including card readers, printers, keyboards, and scanners, to POS tablets via fast and reliable wired connections. The device works on both iOS and Android and can be mounted under counters or displayed on countertops.
The hardware is Apple MFi certified for multi-device wired connections and includes integrated monitoring with automatic updates for POS hardware. It is designed to maintain data flow between the merchant’s hardware and the Shopify point of sale during business hours.
Tests without traffic
SimGym represents a different approach to optimization. The app, released as a research preview, uses AI buyer agents with human-like profiles to model how different customers might experience a storefront.
Drawing on insights from billions of purchases each year, SimGym can model shopper behavior at both a general and store-specific level, from casual browsers to high-intent shoppers. This allows merchants to make changes to the storefront through simulated evaluations without requiring large volumes of traffic.
Larger brands can gather early signals before testing with real buyers, while smaller companies get access to the kind of testing capabilities typically only available to larger operations.
“We chose the theme Rebirth for this edition because it symbolizes progress, drive, courage, new beginnings and redefining what is possible,” says Lee. “Many of these features were not possible a year ago and redefine how we achieve our mission of improving commerce for all.”
The update also introduces native experimentation capabilities through Rollouts, giving merchants the ability to schedule changes, run experiments, and make data-driven decisions within their core workflow. A new Cross-Border Profitability Outlook Report helps merchants understand where tariffs, taxes and shipping adjustments impact margins, supporting more informed international pricing decisions.
For developers, the platform now offers end-to-end AI support for development workflows. AI agents can create development shops, scaffold applications, run GraphQL operations, and generate validated code, allowing developers to focus on architecture while AI takes care of configuration and repetitive tasks.
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