Overview
Shopify Sidekick has evolved from a simple chatbot into a full-featured AI coworker that can build automations, generate reports, edit your theme, and even create custom apps, all from natural language prompts. Yet most merchants barely scratch the surface of what it can do. This guide gives you 15 copy-and-paste prompts organized by task type so you can start saving hours of admin work today. Whether you are on the Basic plan or Shopify Plus, these prompts will help you get real results from Sidekick right away.
Contents
What is Shopify Sidekick?
Shopify Sidekick is Shopify's built-in AI assistant that helps merchants manage their stores through natural language commands. It is a built-in AI assistant inside your Shopify admin that you can chat with to set up, run, and grow your store using natural language prompts. It is powered by Shopify Magic, Shopify's commerce-focused AI stack, and connects directly to your store data so it can take context-aware actions and answer questions about your specific business.
Unlike generic AI tools such as ChatGPT, Sidekick has direct access to your Shopify data, understands commerce workflows, and takes action in your admin. Generic AI tools can't see your store or complete tasks for you. That context awareness is what makes Sidekick so practical for day-to-day merchant work.
With Shopify's Winter '26 "RenAIssance Edition" release, Sidekick has evolved from a reactive assistant into a proactive AI coworker. The platform introduced over 150 updates focused on making AI practical for everyday merchant tasks, with Sidekick positioned as the centerpiece of this transformation.
Sidekick is included with your Shopify plan. Features and usage limits vary by plan. There is no separate subscription or per-query fee to worry about.
Step 1 - Open Sidekick and learn the interface
Before you start prompting, you need to know where Sidekick lives and how to interact with it effectively.
Find the icon: Open your Shopify admin and click the purple glasses icon. That's it. No setup, no configuration.
Choose your input method: From any page in your Shopify admin, open Sidekick on desktop or mobile, and use text chat or voice and screen sharing for step-by-step visual guidance.
Use Mention for precision: Instead of describing what you're talking about, use Mention to select specific products, orders, customers, or collections by name. This ensures Sidekick knows exactly which items you mean. Click "Mention," search for what you want to reference, and select it. The item appears as a tag in your prompt.
Go full screen for complex tasks: Click the expand icon in the top-right to use full-screen mode for complex tasks.
Tip - Every response from Sidekick includes thumbs up/down buttons. Use these to help Shopify improve Sidekick's accuracy, especially when a response misses the mark or nails exactly what you needed.
What if I can't see the Sidekick icon?
Don't see the icon? Check that your admin language is set to English (Sidekick works best in English), refresh your browser, or clear your cache. Sidekick adapts to your store's language settings and can help you in multiple languages. Ask questions in the language you're most comfortable with.
Step 2 - Use analytics and reporting prompts
Sidekick can generate custom ShopifyQL queries in the ShopifyQL query editor that help you create new data explorations or customize existing reports. It can display visualizations, such as line, donut, or bar charts. You can also export reports generated with Sidekick to CSV, Parquet, JSONL, or XML format. Here are three prompts to try:
Prompt 1 - Top products report: "Show me the sales, costs, profits, returns, and discounts for my top 100 products."
Prompt 2 - Regional sales breakdown: "Show me my total sales for Canadian customers over the past 60 days."
Prompt 3 - Sales forecasting: "Using the last 12 months of sales data, project the next 90 days of sales and inventory needs for the week. Provide a table showing expected orders, revenue, and recommended restock quantities."
These prompts are especially powerful because Sidekick translates your plain English into the correct ShopifyQL query, so you never have to learn query syntax yourself.
Step 3 - Generate content and product copy
Sidekick can create content such as blog posts, marketing copy, product descriptions, customer segments, and images. Use these prompts to speed up content creation:
Prompt 4 - Product description: "Write a 150-word product description for [Product Name] that highlights its key features, uses a friendly and conversational tone, and includes the keywords 'sustainable' and 'handmade.'"
Prompt 5 - Email campaign draft: "Draft a promotional email for my Summer Sale collection with a subject line, preview text, and body copy. Use a playful tone and mention our free shipping offer."
Prompt 6 - AI image generation: "Create a banner image showing a vibrant beach scene with sunglasses for a summer sale promotion."
You can refine image results with follow-up instructions and save the ones you like to your Shopify files or media library. This feature lets store owners craft visual content without hiring a photographer or designer; what used to take days can now take minutes.
Tip - For consistent output, provide your brand voice details in the prompt. Include your tone, key phrases you always use, and words to avoid. Sidekick remembers information from your conversations to provide more relevant, personalized responses over time.
Step 4 - Edit your theme with natural language
You can now talk to your theme: customize any store element through natural language commands like "make this button rounded." Sidekick understands and modifies the appropriate settings instantly, whether it's global styles or settings on individual blocks.
Prompt 7 - Global style update: "Customize my theme to use rounded buttons, bold headings, and a pink and beige color scheme for a soft, feminine vibe."
Prompt 8 - Layout change: "Switch my product grid to 3 columns on desktop and 2 on mobile with tighter spacing."
Prompt 9 - Targeted element edit: You can now click on anything in the theme editor and ask Sidekick to make the edit for you. Try clicking a section header, then type: "Make this heading larger and change its color to dark navy."
Sidekick can create custom blocks in any theme from the Shopify Theme Store. This means you can add entirely new sections to your pages without touching code.
What if my theme changes don't apply?
Theme editing works best with modern Shopify themes. If you are running an older or heavily customized theme, Sidekick may not be able to modify certain elements. For configuration requests, Sidekick will outline the changes it plans to make and ask for your confirmation. For complex setup questions, it provides step-by-step instructions with links to the relevant admin pages. Always preview changes before publishing.
Step 5 - Build Shopify Flow automations
Sidekick now integrates with Shopify Flow to create automated workflows using natural language. Instead of learning Flow's visual builder or logic syntax, simply describe what you want. Sidekick builds and visualizes the entire flow for you, including all triggers, conditions, and actions. This makes workflow automation accessible to merchants without technical backgrounds.
Prompt 10 - Inventory alerts: "When inventory for any product drops below 10 units, send a Slack alert to my team and tag the product as 'low-stock.'"
Prompt 11 - Customer tagging: "Help me automatically tag customers if they place an order over $200."
Prompt 12 - Win-back trigger: "Create a Flow that tags customers who haven't ordered in 90 days as 'at-risk' and adds them to my win-back email segment."
Sidekick will generate the entire Flow workflow visually so you can review triggers, conditions, and actions before activating it. This is one of the biggest time-savers for merchants who previously avoided automation because of its complexity.
Step 6 - Handle everyday store management tasks
You can also ask Sidekick to handle tasks such as analyzing data, managing orders, or editing products. Here are three prompts for common daily operations:
Prompt 13 - Discount creation: "Create a 20% off discount code called SUMMER20 for all products in the Summer Collection, valid for the next 14 days."
Prompt 14 - Customer segmentation: "Create a customer segment of shoppers who have purchased more than twice in the last 6 months and subscribe to marketing emails."
Prompt 15 - App discovery: "Can you recommend the best gift card apps for my store?"
Sidekick brings app discovery to your workflow in the Shopify admin. Ask for an app or describe your goal to get recommendations, compare similar apps, and begin installation from chat.
For longer tasks, Sidekick continues working in the background, and you can return to the conversation when it's ready for your review. You will never be blocked while waiting for Sidekick to finish a complex request.
Step 7 - Activate Sidekick Pulse for proactive insights
Unlike the prompts above, Sidekick Pulse works without you asking. Sidekick Pulse now works proactively in the background, analyzing your store data and surfacing personalized recommendations before you even ask. It identifies growth opportunities based on your specific business patterns and market trends, then helps you execute on those insights.
If Sidekick Pulse is available in your store, then you can activate it from the Pulse card on your Shopify admin home. After you activate Pulse, you can access personalized recommendations by clicking on the card on your Shopify admin or in your Sidekick conversation history. The Pulse card appears on your Shopify admin home only when Pulse has an insight to share.
Pulse might alert you to a product selling faster than usual and warn you about upcoming stockouts, or suggest a promotion based on seasonal trends. Each recommendation includes actionable next steps you can execute immediately.
Side note - You need to have Shopify Network Intelligence activated in your store to use Sidekick Pulse.
Step 8 - Save your best prompts as reusable Skills
If you find yourself running the same prompt every morning or every campaign cycle, Sidekick Skills will save you time. Sidekick skills are saved prompts that you can reuse with custom shortcuts. Instead of re-entering the same requests or trying to remember how you phrased a successful prompt, you can save your best prompts as skills and use them again with a single command.
Type a prompt and run it.
Click the save icon next to the text box to save it as a new skill.
Give it a shortcut name (for example,
/daily-report).Next time, just type the shortcut and Sidekick runs it instantly.
You can create and save up to 25 prompts as skills in Sidekick to automate recurring tasks. Even better, you can share skills across your team or with the merchant community.
Sidekick limitations to keep in mind
Sidekick is powerful, but it has boundaries you should know about before relying on it for everything:
No customer-facing support: Sidekick cannot handle customer support conversations or talk to customers on your behalf. You will still need a dedicated support tool for live chat and ticket management.
Approval required for all changes: Sidekick is never allowed to make changes to your shop without your approval. It only presents options for you to preview and approve, maintaining your control over the store's operations.
Limited to the Shopify ecosystem: While Sidekick can recommend apps to install, it can't control or configure third-party apps yet - though this is coming. Everything Sidekick does happens within Shopify.
Advanced features may require higher plans: Sidekick can create simple internal tools such as product importers, report generators, or inventory aids. This is currently only available with the Grow plan or higher.
Tip - Treat AI output as a draft, not a final version, especially for legal, pricing, or policy content. Always review before publishing.
FAQ
Is Shopify Sidekick free?
Sidekick is completely free. It's included with every Shopify plan at no additional cost, from Basic to Shopify Plus. Some advanced capabilities like custom app generation require the Grow plan or higher, but core features including analytics, content generation, and theme editing are available on all plans.
How is Sidekick different from ChatGPT?
Unlike generic AI chatbots (such as ChatGPT) that are not integrated with your systems, Shopify Sidekick has direct access to your store's data and admin. This means Sidekick can answer store-specific questions and perform actual store actions, which a standalone AI like ChatGPT cannot do out of the box. For example, ChatGPT might help you brainstorm product names or write ad copy, but it won't know your inventory levels or be able to create a discount in your Shopify admin.
What languages does Sidekick support?
Sidekick offers support for 20 languages. That said, it works best in English. If you are working in another language, you may find some features or responses are less polished.
Can Sidekick work with my third-party apps?
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. It means your app's data, such as emails, workflows, customer records, and analytics, becomes instantly searchable for merchants without them ever leaving Shopify Admin. This feature is still rolling out, so check whether your specific apps have added Sidekick extensions yet.
How do I get better results from Sidekick?
Be specific in your prompts. Include details like time ranges, product names, and the exact tone you want for content. Experiment with different command structures and ask follow-up questions to refine Sidekick's responses. Consistent interaction helps Sidekick learn your preferences, improving the quality of its assistance over time. Use the Mention feature to reference specific products or collections rather than typing their names out.
View on app store