Shopify Sidekick suggestions can now use data from your installed apps

Shopify's AI assistant, Sidekick, has become a little better informed. It can now use data from installed apps that support Sidekick app extensions, which means its suggestions can reflect more of what is actually happening in your store. For a brand running a typical stack of reviews, loyalty, email and subscription apps, that could make the suggestions on your admin home more relevant. It will not happen automatically for every app, though, so it is worth understanding the conditions.

What it is

Sidekick offers suggestions for improving your store. Shopify calls this feature Pulse in its Help Center. The change is that Sidekick can now take in data from apps you have installed, so it can make suggestions with fuller store context rather than relying only on what Shopify itself holds.

How it works

The mechanism is the Sidekick app extension. An app that has built a supported extension can share data with Sidekick. Shopify is clear on the limit: only apps with supported extensions can share data with Sidekick.

Whether you actually see app-informed suggestions depends on three things:

• The app is installed on your store.
• The necessary permissions are available.
• The app shares usable data.

If any one of those is missing, the app will not contribute to the suggestions.

Limits and caveats

The Shopify entry does not give details on availability, plan requirements, regions or limits, and it points to the Help Center article on Sidekick suggestions for more. We would not assume that every app in your admin is supported. The entry also does not list which apps have extensions, so that is something to confirm directly with each provider.

What it means for merchants

Most of the apps on a fashion or sportswear store hold useful commercial signals: customer behaviour, subscription activity, loyalty engagement, review sentiment. Sidekick suggestions that can see some of that are more likely to be relevant to your store than generic advice. That is the upside.

There are two sensible cautions. First, the quality of a suggestion depends on the quality of the data shared, and the entry says suggestions rely on the app sharing usable data. Second, granting permissions so an app can share data with Sidekick is a decision about your customer and business data, so it should be made deliberately rather than clicked through. Treat any suggestion as a prompt for your team to evaluate, not an instruction.

What it means for agencies and partners

App developers who want their data to inform Sidekick need to build a supported Sidekick app extension. For agencies advising merchants, this becomes another point to check when recommending apps: does the app support Sidekick extensions, and what does it share? It is also worth auditing the permissions on existing client stores so you know what is being passed to Sidekick.

How we would approach it

1. List the apps installed on your store and note which hold data you care about.
2. Ask each provider whether it supports Sidekick app extensions and what data it shares.
3. Review the permissions each app requests and approve only what you are comfortable with.
4. Watch the suggestions on your admin home for a few weeks and note which are useful.
5. Feed the useful ones into your normal planning, and ignore the rest.

The short version

Sidekick suggestions can now use data from installed apps, but only apps with supported Sidekick extensions, only with the right permissions, and only if they share usable data. Check which of your apps qualify, review the permissions, and treat the suggestions as useful prompts rather than answers.

ETTA provides fractional ecommerce leadership for fashion, streetwear and sportswear brands. If you want a senior view on how this affects your store, get in touch.