Eytan Seidman, VP of product at Shopify, joins the podcast to unpack Shopify's Winter '26 Edition and how AI is emerging into the market for developers and merchants. They discuss the new Dev MCP server, showing how tools like Cursor and Claude Desktop can rapidly scaffold Shopify apps, wire up Shopify functions, and ship payment customization and checkout UI extension experiences that lean on Shopify primitives like meta fields and meta objects across online stores and point of sale. Eytan also breaks down how Sidekick connects with apps, why the new analytics API and ShopifyQL open fresh analytics use cases, and more. Links Shopify Winter '26 Edition: https://www.shopify.com/editions/winter2026 We want to hear from you! How did you find us? Did you see us on Twitter? In a newsletter? Or maybe we were recommended by a friend? Fill out our listener survey (https://t.co/oKVAEXipxu)! https://t.co/oKVAEXipxu Let us know by sending an email to our producer, Elizabeth, at
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[email protected]), or tweet at us at PodRocketPod (https://twitter.com/PodRocketpod). Check out our newsletter (https://blog.logrocket.com/the-replay-newsletter/)! https://blog.logrocket.com/the-replay-newsletter/ Follow us. Get free stickers. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form (https://podrocket.logrocket.com/get-podrocket-stickers), and we’ll send you free PodRocket stickers! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket provides AI-first session replay and analytics that surfaces the UX and technical issues impacting user experiences. Start understanding where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com. Try LogRocket for free today. (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr) Chapters 01:00 — AI as the Focus of Winter ’26 02:00 — MCP Server as the Ideal Dev Workflow 03:00 — Best Clients for MCP (Cursor, Claude Desktop) 04:00 — Hallucinations & Code Validation in MCP 06:00 — Developer Judgment & Platform Primitives 07:00 — Storage Choices: Meta Fields vs External Storage 09:00 — Learning UI Patterns Through MCP 10:00 — Sidekick Overview & Merchant Automation 11:00 — Apps Inside Sidekick: Data & UI Integration 13:00 — Scopes, Data Access & Developer Responsibility 14:00 — AI-Ready Platform & Explosion of New Apps 16:00 — New Developer Demographics Entering Shopify 17:00 — Where Indie Devs Should Focus (POS, Analytics) 18:00 — New Analytics API & Opportunities 19:00 — Full Platform Coverage via MCP Tools 20:00 — Building Complete Apps in Minutes 21:00 — Large Stores, Token Limits & MCP Scaling 22:00 — Reducing Errors with UI & Function Testing 23:00 — Lessons from Building the MCP Server 25:00 — Lowering Barriers for Non-Experts 26:00 — High-Quality Rust Functions via MCP 27:00 — MCP Spec Adoption: Tools Over Resources 28:00 — Future: Speed, Quality & UI Precision 29:00 — Model Evolution, Evals & Reliability 31:00 — Core Shopify Primitives to Build On 33:00 — Docs, Community & Learning Resources
