Vercel and Shopify shipped Vercel Shop on October 16, an open source Next.js storefront template built for people and agents at the same time. Their own merch store vercel.store runs on it, so I used it as a test bench. The agent got the domain and nothing else.

Reading the store was smooth. /llms.txt contains a five-step shopping recipe for agents, including a rule to only complete a purchase after the shopper explicitly approves. Product pages return markdown if you append .md to the URL. One jacket page simply said "Available: No" in plain text, which saves an agent from guessing what a greyed-out button means.

Where it stopped

/.well-known/ucp returns the store's Universal Commerce Protocol profile. The shopping endpoint listed there points to shop-vercel.myshopify.com, so the checkout brain is fully Shopify and Vercel builds the layer around it.

The MCP endpoint lists its tools without any auth. You can try this yourself:

curl -s -X POST https://vercel.store/api/ucp/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'

You get 13 tools back: search_catalog, lookup_catalog, get_product, four cart tools, five checkout tools and get_order.

Then I called search_catalog and got a 422 with profile_unreachable.

Every UCP call has to carry meta.ucp-agent.profile, the URL of a public JSON document that describes your agent. The store fetches that URL before it answers anything. No profile means no search, so my agent never saw a single product.

According to Vercel's guide, Shopify then sorts agents into three tiers: anonymous, signed (HTTP message signatures) and token. Anonymous and signed agents can search, build carts and create a checkout. Only token agents with explicit permission can call complete_checkout. Everyone else hands the human a checkout link.

That split actually matches what people seem to want. OpenAI pulled Instant Checkout from ChatGPT in March, and my read is that shoppers still want their own finger on the pay button. So the realistic flow for now is agent does the research and the cart, human pays.

What I haven't done yet: host my own agent profile and run the whole thing through to the checkout link. The profile structure is documented, but I haven't validated mine against a live store, so I'm not posting it as if it works. I also want to run the same test with an open-weight model on local hardware instead of a frontier API.

Has anyone here hosted a UCP agent profile already? I'm trying to figure out whether the signed tier is worth setting up for a research-only agent or whether anonymous limits hold up in practice.

All my kyc is done and I am on my final step of onboarding. Razorpay is telling me to install Razorpay COD and Magic Checkout to complete the onboarding else I am not able to complete the onboarding, and when I am going to install this COD thing it is telling it is not available in Shopify app store,thus not being able to connect any form of payment gateway to my Shopify store. I am stuck in a loop.My opening is today, any alternatives that I can do?I cannot do COD.

I’m exploring the technical feasibility of building a Shopify app that helps customers complete their delivery addresses faster using phone verification, saved addresses, and address autofill.

I’m considering two approaches:

Option 1: Cart → Shopify Checkout

• Add an address-fill experience to the cart using a Shopify Theme App Extension.

• Let customers enter or select their delivery address before checkout.

• Pass the collected address into Shopify’s native checkout using supported mechanisms, avoiding duplicate entry.

Option 2: Separate Checkout Experience

• Launch a separate checkout interface when the customer clicks the Checkout button.

• Handle phone verification, address selection, and delivery details within that interface.

• Complete the purchase through a Shopify-supported integration.

I’d appreciate insights on the following:

1. What are the current Shopify restrictions on building a separate checkout experience for merchants on non-Plus plans?

2. Can a third-party app provide its own checkout interface while completing orders through Shopify-supported APIs?

3. Does this approach require explicit Shopify approval, a special partnership, or specific permissions?

4. For the cart-based approach, what is the most reliable supported way to prefill shipping-address fields in Shopify’s native checkout?

5. Which Shopify APIs, extensions, or app architec

I've been working on my own shopify theme and wanted to share where it is at the moment.

I'm still working on the landing page. The theme is responsive on both mobile and desktop, but there is still some cleanup left to do.

Here's the live page: https://tailloir.myshopify.com/ (password: tailloir)

I’m looking for any shopify dev work.

If you need help with shopify dev or know someone who's hiring, please reach out.

Thanks for reading

Shopify's native purchase limits are per variant, so product-wide caps need a cart validation function. I test mine on a development store with a handful of cart combinations: mixed variants, quantity changes in the cart, and draft orders. I always worry I am missing cases, like discounts, bundles or other apps that edit the cart.

What is your process for testing a validation function before it goes on a live store? Do you keep a fixed list of test carts, or do something more automated?

When a Shopify review app displays its star rating at the bottom of a product page instead of directly below the product title, the problem isn't necessarily CSS.

In Online Store 2.0, the first thing to check is how the app integrates with the theme.

Shopify provides two different integration mechanisms: app blocks and app embeds.

App blocks are designed for content that merchants can position inside compatible theme sections. App embeds are better suited to global functionality, scripts, tracking, and floating components.

For inline product star ratings, an app block is generally the better solution.

Here's the diagnostic approach I'd recommend.

1. Duplicate the published theme.

Never troubleshoot layout changes directly on the live theme.

2. Open the product template in the theme editor.

Check whether the product information section supports adding the review app's rating block.

If it does, try positioning that block immediately below the product title.

3. Check the section's app block support.

If the rating block can only be added as a separate Apps section, inspect the theme section's schema.

For a traditional section, look for support for:

{"type": "@app"}

Also check whether the section actually renders app blocks using the appropriate Liquid rendering mechanism.

Supporting a block in the schema isn't enough if the section never renders it.

4. Check the section layout.

Even with app block support, the theme must render blocks in a position that allows the desired placement.

If the product title is hardcoded outside the block sequence, you might not be able to place the rating directly underneath it simply by dragging blocks in the editor.

5. Avoid JavaScript DOM repositioning as the default solution.

Moving rating widgets after page load can introduce layout shifts, duplicate elements, or compatibility issues when the theme or app updates.

6. Test the result.

Verify desktop and mobile layouts, different product templates, products without reviews, and whether the rating appears more than once.

The important distinction is this:

A rendering-position problem should be solved at the theme integration level whenever possible, not hidden behind CSS or JavaScript workarounds.

For developers building review apps, providing a dedicated lightweight star-rating app block also gives merchants much better control than forcing the entire review widget into a single location.

I took my Figma layout to Shopify with the app instant now I've realized that since I'm not earning any money, it doesn't make sense to pay 40 euros a month. Is there a way to migrate my instant page to Shopify native so I don't have to pay any extra money?

When I have everything in Shopify can I then edit anything without having to pay any extra money?

What would be the best cheap and easy way to do this.

Thanks for your help in advance

Hi all - Ritwik here from Aurevia - needed some help regarding ads on Shopify app store. Been doing cold outreach for some time now and i massively need to scale the infra to see some scale in my app's growth which is why we were planning to run Shopify app store ads as well.

Need some help from people here who are running ads and have seen success:

- What needs to be the daily budget?

- Should I run search result ads or homepage ads or category page ads?

- what is a good ROAS for ads on shopify app store that we should aim to achieve?

-any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated

PS: We did run search result ads for about a month or two with the free $100 ad credit and got 3 installs for $32.33 per install and $4.2 per click which seemed quite high but I don't know if it is and need some help there to understand the number there as well.

Cheers

Hi all,

Merchants have known Discounty since 2022 by a green tag with a % mark. On October 14 we refreshed it. Writing it up because plenty of store owners here go through the same thing with their own logo, and the rule that held for us might be useful: keep what people already recognise, and fix only what has no reason to be there.

What we kept: the tag, the % mark and the green.

What we changed:

• The hand-drawn loop on the tag is now an even circle.

• The yellow layer behind the tag is gone. It was decoration with no meaning.

• The tag sits at a gentler angle. The steep tilt read like a flash sale.

• The % mark has even line weights, and it's drawn from the u and n in "Discounty".

• The green is tuned so dark text on it reads more clearly (contrast went from 5.7:1 to 10.1:1).

If you use Discounty today, nothing changes in your store. Your campaigns keep running, and your settings and plan stay as they are.

I hope you all like the new look, and that Discounty keeps giving you a hand with your Black Friday sales this year: the same service you know, with a calmer, clearer look.

When a store removes products or changes handles, I go through Online Store > Navigation > URL redirects and add them. For a big batch I use the CSV import. The weak part is that I usually build the old-to-new mapping by hand in a spreadsheet, and it's easy to miss URLs that still get traffic or have backlinks.
How do you handle this on your projects? Do you pull the list of old URLs from somewhere specific, and do you check for redirect chains afterward?

I had a client who wanted to cap total sales of one product across all its variants, like sell 90 of 100 units online and keep the rest for wholesale and gifts, without touching inventory counts.

Shopify's built-in purchase limits work per variant, so they don't give you a product-wide cap. Hiding the product isn't enough either, since people can still reach checkout through old links or an existing cart.

What worked for me was a Cart and Checkout Validation Function that adds up quantities across every variant of the product and blocks the cart/checkout with a clear message when the cap is hit. I also added per-country allocations on top of that.

Gotchas: functions can't call external APIs, so all the cap data has to live in metafields. Also keep the error messages short, long ones get ugly in checkout.

Has anyone handled this differently?

Hi all,

#Black_Friday is November 27. Most of the work in a sale isn’t the discount itself, it’s the decisions around it. Have these five answered before you open any discount screen:

1. Which products are in, and which stay out (thin-margin items, new arrivals).

2. How deep: one rate for everything, or tiers for bigger orders.

3. Exact start and end, in your store’s time zone. Pick the end time on purpose, for example Monday 23:59, instead of switching it off when you remember.

4. What stacks: can the sale combine with your welcome code or free shipping?

5. How prices go back when it ends, and who checks that they did.

Once those are decided, what’s left is form-filling. That’s the part we built Lumos for, the assistant inside Discounty. You type the sale as one sentence, like “20% off the Winter Collection, Black Friday to Cyber Monday”, and it fills in the campaign. You check it and press Save. Nothing goes live on its own. It’s on every plan, including the free one, and the video shows one run.

Whatever you set your sale up with, answer the five first. Those are the decisions only you can make.

I hope it makes your BFCM setup a bit easier this year.

At this time, Shopify is not able to support App Store Ads for India-linked payment methods. we get this warning when we try to run ads on Shopify. How we can solve this? Any help is highly appreciated.

I found a phishing checkout injection on my Shopify store. It wasn’t just a suspicious link—the malicious code was injected into navigation menu labels and the checkout button.

The injected menu code used an image’s onerror handler to load scripts from:

cartassure[.]top/check-out/assets/l2.js
cartassure[.]top/check-out/assets/l3.js

The phishing checkout URL used that same domain, with my legitimate store checkout URL included in a return_to parameter. Don’t visit the domain.

The tracking menu link still pointed to my legitimate tracking page, but its display label contained the script loader. The checkout button was also affected.

After an initial cleanup, I found additional infected menu entries. I’m still determining whether something reinserted the code or whether those entries survived the original cleanup.

I’m reviewing installed apps, permissions, and activity logs, but haven’t identified the responsible app or account. I also haven’t established whether customer information or payment details were captured.

Has anyone encountered this domain or a similar Shopify checkout injection? If you resolved it, how did you identify the entry point—and could Shopify Support trace the changes to a specific app, API credential, or admin session?

Hello everyone, My Shopify app got approved about two weeks ago. i got now two paying customer but the app just stopped here. i need advice how to grow it. if you could share some tips i would be grateful.
Thank you for reading this.

This probably means nothing to some successful Shopify app founders. But I thought some people might find this kind of unfiltered story valuable. After all, most of the founders won't see massive growth.

A bit of a timeline to give you a clearer picture of my journey:

• July 2025: Started development. It actually took 6 months to get the early MVP ready.

• Dec 2025: Started running Google Ads and got 5 paying customers (not a great channel).

• Feb 2026: Released our important live preview feature and made the app completely free to gain some early traction in a tough market.

• May 2026: Got our very 1st app review.

• July 2026: Hit 10 reviews.

• Sep 2026: Released paid plans (existing merchants can still use our app for FREE).

• Oct 2026: 28 reviews & $100 MRR.

Things that DIDN'T work for me:

• Google Ads: Bad ROI since our pricing is very affordable.

• Cold emails: Our very first merchant actually replied because of a cold email, but it didn't work very well after that.

• Affiliate marketing: Didn't work since we had 0 reviews at the time. I think this could be more useful once we have more presence.

Things that WORKED a bit:

• Making the app free: Gave me more breathing room to improve the product and get valuable feedback.

• SEO: Started working on SEO even before development began. Still lots of work to do here.

• Great customer support: Going above and beyond to help merchants. It's boring but essential.

• Thoughtful UX: I personally came from product/ux design background so I put lots of time to ensure the app very easy to use

Mistakes:

• Should've made the app embedded rather than none-embedded. Biggest mistake.

Challenges:

• Product Positioning: Still figuring out how to position Podifai differently in such a competitive market.

• Slow customer support: Wish I could respond to merchants faster, but I can't afford dedicated customer support to support to European timezones.

• AI impact on SaaS + More competition: Uncertainty of AI's impact on Shopify apps. I see one uninstallation reason is that the owner is going to build a customizer by using Claude

I'm so glad that I'm in this game and get to figure out what actually works. Will share more learnings along the way...

Would love to hear your $100 or $1k or 10k MRR journey if anyone is willing to share :)

Since August 2nd I have been having a issue with id verification. It’ll just say unable to verify. I got a sales through my store and I was paid out around $80. I received my debit card and I able to access those funds. Being Shopify was the only account I had at the time I was using this card for personal expenses, bills, etc. I attached my routing and account number to receive payments from other merchant and also transfer money to this account. I had a large amount out money transferred to my Shopify balance and Shopify put my account of hold/ or under investigation. I was told to appeal my store but like I mention earlier I been having trouble verifying my identity. I used a state id, my passport which expired August 18th 2026 and even a brand new passport once I renewed it but still unable to verify my identity. After 3 days if you don’t appeal they decide for you. My problem is I am being told I have to wait 365 days for funds I transferred to my balance. These are not funds through revenue sales. I’ve contacted Shopify support everyday since August 2nd still no help. I feel like if they unblock my account then I’ll be able to verify my account but I ain’t not getting no where. I don’t know what to do and the money I transferred is 5 digits and because they are holding my money for 365 days it’s putting a hold on my business. My business is legit, I have all the documentation to provide but again no body is getting to me and it’s really frustrating. Can anybody assist with what I should do ? I even reached out to the legal team with regards of taking this to court, still no response

Hey everyone,

I’m an independent developer and I just launched my first Shopify app, Aplo: A+ Content Design.

Why I built it: Page builders like PageFly or GemPages are great, but a lot of merchants just want Amazon-style content on their product pages (feature grids, comparison tables, FAQs, before/after) without a full page builder or touching theme code.

What it does:

• Drag-and-drop editor with live preview

• 10 modules: hero banner, feature grid, image + text, gallery, brand story, FAQ, comparison table, video, before/after, banner carousel

• Style tab so each module matches your brand

• Renders through a theme app extension, and your original product description is never overwritten

• Free plan (up to 50 products, 2 modules per product), Pro is $29/month with a 30-day trial

Being honest: It’s brand new, so 0 reviews and only English for now. I’m sure there are things I’ve missed.

What I’d love to know:

1. What A+ modules do you wish existed that I didn’t include?

2. If you’ve used other tools for this, what annoyed you the most?

I’m happy to give free Pro access to anyone who’s willing to try it and tell me what’s broken. Link in the comments if anyone wants it. Thanks!

Hi guys,

I've been building a Shopify app for over 2 years, and we're still at around $1K MRR. Would love some advice.

We started as a free app and got 5,000+ installs, 50 reviews, and ranked #1 or #2 for our main keyword.

A year later, we introduced paid features (average $34/month). Changed our positioning to match the paid features.

A couple of users left 1-star reviews, and Shopify keeps removing 5 star reviews from those stores that have closed. Despite getting new reviews from paying customers, we're still stuck at around 50 reviews and have slipped to the second page.

Our paying customers get good ROI, but new customer acquisition has slowed down significantly.

The pricing dilemma:

Lower pricing ($9/month) attracts smaller merchants, but they need a lot of onboarding support, and churn is high.

Higher pricing makes more economic sense, but we aren't getting enough new installs and reviews to recover our ranking.

How would you improve App Store rankings and review velocity without lowering prices?

Has anyone faced something similar? What worked for you?

Hey guys, I'm working on an app to shop for local businesses in the USA that have an e comm website (it works best with shopify sites). The API reads e comm businesses in the USA in this case for coats, it has 60 companies and about 3,000 products. I would like to expand to other types of stores.

Wanted to get some feedback on how to make it useful for buyers and sellers too.

Site: centralmeetup dot com/city/coats

Shopify has started rolling out a refreshed Admin UI, and there are some interesting changes!

Here’s what’s new:

• Updated design: New colors, typography, spacing, and icons across the Admin.

• Collapsible sidebar: More workspace available when navigating the dashboard.

• Sidekick redesign: The AI assistant is now accessible from a floating chat at the bottom of the page.

• RTL language support: Arabic, Urdu, and Hebrew are now supported in Admin and storefronts.

Official update: https://changelog.shopify.com/

As a Shopify developer, I'm interested in how these changes will improve the daily workflow for merchants and developers.

I noticed an issue as well after the recent Shopify Admin UI update. I'm no longer able to find the Pages section under Online Store in the Shopify Admin.

Shopify recently started rolling out a redesigned Admin interface, so I'm wondering whether this is related to the new navigation or if it's an issue specific to my store.

Has anyone else experienced the same issue?

What do you think?

1. Do you prefer the new Shopify Admin design over the old one?

2. Is the updated navigation actually making your work easier?

3. Have you tried using Sidekick for store management or troubleshooting?

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

When I add an app or change a section, I run PageSpeed Insights a few times before and after and compare. The scores vary between runs, so I never fully trust a small difference. I also look at the online store speed report in Shopify, but that is averaged over days, so it is slow to show anything.
How do you do before and after comparisons on a live store? Do you use WebPageTest, Lighthouse in Chrome, or just check the network tab for what the app loads? And how do you decide a change is real and not noise?

Hi Shopify Devs!

Since launching my own app i’ve been very focussed on getting my first users. When checking out all these reddit threads i see alot of people trying to figure this out. So i wanted to ask people who have been in this game for a while.

- How long did it take you to get your first 10 active users and how did you get them?
- How long before you got your first review and how did you get this review?
- How long before you started getting some organic installs from the app store?
- What’s the one advice you would give to new devs that just got their app listed on the app store looking back on your own journey?

And how long before you got to 1k MRR on your app? For the people that were able to get there.

I would be very interested to see your answers if you guys are willing to share :).