Matthew Collins, the 8th of January 2026
Every store we support has a list of small jobs nobody has got round to. Tag wholesale orders. Tell the warehouse when a bestseller runs low. Give the service team a quicker way to look something up. They're too small for a project and too fiddly to do by hand forever.
In December 2025, Shopify gave Sidekick two new skills aimed at exactly that list. It can build simple custom apps that run inside the admin, and it can draft Flow automations from a plain description. Both are useful for small internal tools and routine automation. Neither replaces a properly designed integration for stock, prices or orders.
What can Sidekick build now?
Two changelog entries cover this.
On the 10th of December, Shopify announced you can create custom apps with Sidekick. You describe the functionality you need. Sidekick writes the code, builds the interface with Polaris components and connects to the GraphQL Admin API. The result is a single-page tool that runs inside your admin. You can preview it, ask for changes to the code or design, and deploy it for your team. It's available on Grow, Plus and Enterprise plans, with usage limits.
A day later, Shopify added the option to create Flow automations with Sidekick. You open Flow, select the Sidekick icon and describe what you want. Sidekick generates a workflow with the right trigger, conditions and actions, then opens it in the editor for testing. You still activate it yourself. It's available on Basic, Shopify, Advanced and Plus, and it needs Flow installed and a desktop.
Where does it fit?
Shopify says the Flow feature works best for customer and order tagging, email and Slack notifications, inventory alerts and scheduled automations. That matches what we'd use it for.
Good first jobs for Sidekick look like this.
- Tagging orders from new trade customers so someone reviews them.
- A Slack message when a high-value order comes in.
- A low stock alert for the products that matter most.
- A simple admin screen that pulls together details your team looks up every day.
- A scheduled task that tags customers who haven't ordered for a while.
These have something in common. If one goes wrong, someone notices quickly and the fix is easy. Nobody loses an order and no price changes by mistake.
Where does it stop?
Shopify is clear that advanced Liquid or custom code in Flow may need manual changes. We'd add a wider rule of thumb from integration work.
Use a generated tool when the job stays inside Shopify and the risk is low. Bring in a developer when the job crosses systems, or when a silent failure costs money.
That means an ERP sync, a wholesale pricing engine or a 3PL export still needs design work. Someone has to decide which system owns stock, what happens when an update fails halfway, and who gets told. Sidekick can write code quickly. It can't make those decisions for your business.
There's also the question of scale. A tool that suits one person checking a few orders might not suit a team working through hundreds. Performance, permissions and audit trails matter more as usage grows.
Who should own what Sidekick builds?
This is the part most teams skip. A tool anyone can generate is a tool anyone can forget about.
Before you deploy a Sidekick app or activate a workflow, agree three things.
- Who asked for it and who maintains it.
- What it's allowed to change, such as tags only, or product and customer data too.
- Where it's written down, so the next person knows it exists.
Custom apps changed in another way at the start of the year. From the 1st of January 2026, new custom apps can't be created directly in the Shopify admin. We covered that in our note on the legacy custom apps deadline. However an app is made, the same ownership questions apply. Once apps are live, keeping an eye on custom app health becomes part of the routine too.
How do you try it safely?
A few habits keep experiments from turning into problems.
- Start with a notification, not an action. A Slack alert can't break anything.
- Use a narrow condition first, such as one product type or one customer tag.
- Read the generated workflow before you activate it. Check the trigger and every condition.
- Name workflows and tools clearly, so their purpose is obvious from the list.
- Review active workflows and admin tools every quarter, and switch off what nobody uses.
If a job keeps growing, treat that as a signal. A workflow with a dozen conditions or an admin tool the whole team depends on has become a system. It deserves the same care as any other integration, including testing and a named owner. Our guide on choosing a custom Shopify app or a public app covers the next step up.
Where parallel helps
We build custom Shopify apps and ERP integrations. We also help teams decide which jobs belong in Flow, which suit Sidekick and which need proper code. See how we approach apps and integrations.
If you have a list of small automations and a couple of big ones, send us a brief. We'll tell you which ones Sidekick can handle and which are worth building.