Shopify

Building Agents @Shopify | Director of Machine Learning Engineering | Bringing AI to entrepreneurs | Bush Pilot | Maple Syrup Producer https://t.co/haSezvLkIm

Sidekick is Shopify's AI commerce assistant, built directly into the Shopify admin to help merchants start, run, and grow their stores through text chat or voice and screen sharing for step-by-step visual guidance. It sits one click away inside the dashboard most merchants already use every day, and can handle tasks such as analyzing data, managing orders, or editing store content on the merchant's behalf. This launch matters because Sidekick is moving from a chat helper toward something closer to an operator that can act inside the store, a shift that lands as agentic AI tools start to compete for a place in small business workflows. The video pitch leans on testimonials from real merchants, including one who came to e-commerce in their late fifties, framing Sidekick as an always-available expert that compresses tasks which used to take a day into something closer to a minute. The product is positioned around a single test, whether a feature actually helps more merchants succeed, which is the framing Andrew McNamara uses in the launch tweet. Practically, that has translated into voice mode that lets you speak instead of type, and screen sharing that lets Sidekick guide you through tasks step by step on your actual screen , plus deeper integrations so third-party apps can plug into the assistant. The launch is led by Andrew McNamara, Director of Applied ML at Shopify, who leads Sidekick and has been building assistants for over 15 years . For founders and operators evaluating where AI actually shows up in commerce stacks, Sidekick is worth tracking as the default assistant inside one of the largest merchant bases on the internet, and as a reference point for how a platform company is wiring agents into an existing admin surface rather than shipping a standalone tool.

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