Shopify’s Sidekick Just Got Smarter and I’m Testing It Out
Okay, you guys, I stumbled on this Shopify update from just last week, around 16 January, and it’s got me buzzing. I run a little online store for my handmade papel picado inspired cards, nothing huge, but keeping up with orders and tweaks feels like juggling sometimes. Enter Sidekick’s new tricks: it’s gone proactive, whipping up admin apps and automations from plain chat, plus this Sidekick Pulse that pings you with tasks. I was sceptical at first, like, will it really save time or just add more notifications? But I gave it a go syncing my inventory with a basic supplier list, and poof, it built the flow without me fiddling in settings.
New Feature / Update: Shopify Sidekick Proactive Automations and Pulse
What is it?
Sidekick now listens to your natural words and builds stuff like admin apps or workflow automations on the spot. Say ‘set up a daily stock alert for low yarn’, and it does it. Sidekick Pulse surfaces tasks right in your dashboard, like overdue listings or customer queries, without you hunting. What’s changed? It’s not waiting for you anymore; it spots needs and acts first. They also dropped SimGym for testing shopper bots and Rollouts for safe experiments, but Sidekick’s the star here[2].
Why does it matter?
For business owners like me, juggling store tweaks with life, this cuts the busywork. Picture a marketer generating campaign briefs: tell Sidekick ‘draft a promo for my new card set tied to Dia de los Muertos’, and it pulls product data, past sales, even suggests email flows. Boom, ready to tweak and send. Or analysts auto-summarising call transcripts: if you sell via phone, it scans chats, flags trends like ‘folks love the custom colours’, and sets alerts. I tried it for my orders last night over coffee, fixed a sync glitch in minutes. Was I doubting it’d handle my quirky setup? Yep, but it did. Real win for small shops syncing inventory with Shopify apps like Zapier alternatives.
Here’s a quick list of what I tested:
- Built an automation to notify me when card stock dips below 20 units.
- Pulse flagged a pending custom order I forgot about.
- SimGym preview let me sim test a chatbot for sizing questions.
It’s not perfect, mind. Privacy nags me a bit, handing over store data, and if your setup’s messy, it might stumble. Still, for everyday hustlers, it’s like having a sharp mate on speed dial. Grab a mug, log in, and play around; trust me, if I can fold it into my apartment workflow, you can too.
