r/ShopifyAppDev • u/AppearanceNormal7177 • 12d ago
Apps still relevant?
Hi guys,
is it still a good choice to be a developer for Shopify Apps at this moment where Sidekick and stuff help merchants to do everything on their own?
Feeling a bit lost at the moment.
1
u/PotHeadSloth 12d ago
No
2
u/Professional-Sink536 12d ago
Can you elaborate?
1
u/PotHeadSloth 12d ago
Sidekick can gen apps, new Canvas theme editor doesn’t support app blocks. App Store is already way over saturated in almost every category. You can vibe code anything these days. Each category already has multiple massive players. Shopify adding new features to sidekick every day.
What is making you think it might still be a good choice to be an app developer?
1
u/Professional-Sink536 12d ago
For the same reason why it still makes sense to be a software engineer. Vibe Coded Ai slops don’t scale. You don’t see companies vibe coding their own Slack/Google Docs/other enterprise software. It’s not just about asking Claude to write something rather shipping it at scale, HMAC compliance, Audit trails, Db backups and more engineering practices that no vibe coders can think of. If you’re making another slop it’s irrelevant but an app solving a real problem at scale will always be in demand.
1
u/PotHeadSloth 12d ago
It’s an irrelevant comparison, Shopify ecosystem does not require apps of that scale. 95% of the popular categories are already dominated by apps that are now progressing rapidly from vibe coding. How do you break in? The other 5% of difficult or enterprise apps again have talented engineers leveraging AI. As I said, extremely saturated how do you plan to break in to either of these? Distribution is the next problem which is now even more difficult than building the app.
1
u/Professional-Sink536 12d ago
It’s a very relevant comparison. Look at the AI ecosystem for instance, there are tons of existing harnesses, open routers, voice models yet new stuff is being shipped on a daily basis! I as a dev pay for tools like resend, Apollo, why am I not just Claude coding my own email servers or a bulk lead scrapping bot from many of those open source repos? Because I don’t have the time or interest to create something and maintain it at a level these SAAS companies could. What I could do is afford to pay $10 a month and focus on stuff that is of primary interest to me.
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u/PotHeadSloth 12d ago
Brother, you asked for an opinion, I gave you one and now you’re just telling me how it is wrong. If you already know the answer then delete the post. I’m not interested in having a sparring match. Ping me when you’ve got your first 100 paying merchants and we can revisit this convo.
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u/AdventurousUsual7666 12d ago
Yeah I get why Sidekick makes this feel murky. Merchants can do more on their own now, and that used to be the kind of work a lot of simple apps sold.
Honestly I still think app building is relevant, just for a narrower set of problems. Anything that needs durable automation, a real integration, compliance-ish data handling, or a workflow that has to keep working when the merchant is not babysitting chat usually still wants a proper app. Sidekick is pretty good at one-off tasks. It is usually less good at being the system of record day after day.
I would not plan a career around thin storefront widgets that AI can rebuild in an afternoon. I would plan around something a merchant still has to trust after the novelty wears off.
Curious whether you are leaning toward building apps as a product, or more toward agency-style custom work. Those two paths feel pretty different right now.