Shopify introduces Canvas, a new AI-powered live store design view

Shopify is rolling out Canvas, a new visual workspace for creating and customizing online stores with Sidekick, its AI agent. Store pages are displayed together on one surface, where merchants can move between them, zoom into sections, edit elements directly, or ask Sidekick to make changes through chat.

Canvas renders the actual store code rather than a static mockup, so merchants can interact with pages, animations, and other elements while editing. They can also preview different products, collections, and screen sizes. For larger changes, Sidekick can work across theme files and templates, validate generated code, and inspect screenshots of the results. Shopify says it has also simplified its theme architecture and added theme specific design patterns and evaluation data.

Canvas is still an early product and will not replace Shopify's existing online store editor at launch. Shopify says there are still functionality gaps and plans to continue refining it based on merchant feedback.